Page:Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy (1918).djvu/66

46 suspicions. Reyneval had handed him a memorandum, of which this is the salient passage:

"If by the future treaty of peace, Spain preserves West Florida, she alone will be the sole proprietor of the course of the Mississippi from the thirty-first degree of latitude to the mouth of this river. Whatever may be the case with that part which is beyond this point to the north, the United States of America can have no pretentions to it, not being masters of either border to this river."

This meant that the United States was to be confined for ever to the Atlantic coast, and not only not become a power, but was never even to open the Mississippi basin. And that our allies were insisting on these terms, while supposed to be aiding our cause. And this was the more accentuated by the receipt of a document put into his hands on Sept. 10th by an agent of the British government.

This was a dispatch from Barbé Marbois, French chargé d'affaires at Philadelphia, to the