Our Catliolic Heritage in Texas
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Conditions grew worse as time passed. A Mr. Green from Tennessee made an offer to Ellicott to raise one hundred men to take Fort Natchez by force, and a Mr. Anthony Hutchins, a British agent, offered to capture Gayoso and deliver him to the Chickasaws to avoid responsibility for his fate. Ellicott refused both proposals, but he condoned the enlist- ment of men for service in the United States Army. 16 On May 30 Governor Carondelet issued a proclamation in French, in which he declared that the Spanish minister to the United States had learned on good authority that an English expedition was being organized on the Great Lakes to attack the country of the Illinois and to invade Louisiana. In view of these circumstances, the evacuation of Natchez and Nogales, already begun, would be suspended as a means of defence. The measure was made all the more imperative by the information received from Natchez itself that a division of the American Army on the Ohio had been ordered to this post, and that the militia of Cumberland had been instructed to be in readiness. Gayoso had communicated this infor- mation to El_licott thirty days before with a request that he ask the American Government to deny permission to the English to march through American territory, and to explain the postponement of the execution of the terms of the treaty of 1795 was necessary in view of the turn of affairs. 17 By his own admission, Ellicott's conduct after May I was not above reproach nor in keeping with international law. On May 16 he set down in his diary that he had undertaken to win over the Choctaws and planned to fortify Baton Rouge. He kept these activities secret, he said, becau,e "its being known would injure, if not ruin, Mr. Nolan." But he explained in his entry for June 5 that his relations with the Choctaws were dictated by his desire "to render the Indians harmless in case of a rupture." 18 That a rupture was not a remote possibility was pointed out by Carondelet in his proclamation of May 30, when he referred to the strained relations between the United States and France as a result of Citizen Genet's activities and the fact that France was the "intimate ally" of Spain. 19 16 /bid., 74·79, 17 Proclamatlon of Governor Carondelet, New Orleans, May 30, I 797. Sp;ntsh translation by Jose Piernas in Bexar Archives. Ellicott, Journal, 80-82; Fortier, Histor-y of Louisiana, II, I 68-169. Ellicott in his diary referred to the proclamation in his entry for May 24, indicating its prabable publication before May 30. Fortier
gives the date as May 31. 11Elllcott, Journal, 80-99. 1 9 Fortler, o,P. cit., II, I 68.
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