Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/71

Rh result of any distrust of their title, but was occasioned by their conciliatory views,” and announcing that “possession should be taken of the said territory in the name and behalf of the United States.” A bill was then introduced in the Senate December 18, 1810, providing that the Territory of Orleans, one of the two territories into which Louisiana was divided, “shall be deemed, and is hereby declared, to extend to the river Perdido,” and that the laws in force in the Territory of Orleans should extend over the district in question.

The Federalists, who always had a deep-seated jealousy of the growing West, attacked the steps taken by President Madison as acts of spoliation perpetrated upon an unoffending and at the time helpless power, and their spokesmen in the Senate, Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts, and Horsey of Delaware, strenuously denied that the United States had any title to West Florida. Clay took up the gauntlet as the champion not merely of the administration, but of his country. For the first time in the Senate he put forth the fullness of his peculiar power. “Allow me, sir,” said he, with severe irony, “to express my admiration at the more than Aristidean justice which, in a question of territorial title between the United States and a foreign nation, induces certain gentlemen to espouse the pretensions of the foreign nation. Doubtless, in any future negotiations, she will have too much magnanimity to avail herself of