219
From San Lorenzo to Ret1'ocession of Louisiana, 1795-1801
pense you as I have already intimated." 23 He was advanced a loan of seven thousand pesos at this time by the Spanish governor who on May 22 recommended that he be retained in the service of Spain with a pension of two thousand pesos. This pension was formally granted by the king in 1792. 24 Such hopes as Wilkinson and his friends may have seriously entertained had, in fact, been blasted by the rejection of a proposal for the secession from the Union by the Convention of Kentucky held in July, 1788. Interest in the schemes of Wilkinson waned between 1789 and 1794. In January and February of this year, however, he again wrote enthu- siastically that the time for decisive action had arrived. Kentucky was tired of the inefficiency of the Federal Government, and its people were determined to gain accession to the Mississippi either by secession from the Union or by conquest of Louisiana. The visit in the winter of 1793 of Michel Lacassagne, a French merchant from Kentucky, who came to New Orleans to collect six thousand pesos on Wilkinson's pension account, had prepared Carondelet for the news. From April to July, the Spanish governor urged Godoy to make a decision between strengthening the outposts of Louisiana and Texas and stirring up the Indians against the Americans on the one hand-and on the other, scheming for the withdrawal of Kentucky from the Union to constitute a buffer province. The latter policy involved, among other expenses, the increase of the pen- sion of General Wilkinson. In fact, Carondelet, on his own initiative, early in 1794 sent Wilkinson sixteen thousand dollars, of which he received only fifty-one hundred; Lacassagne received four thousand more, of which he kept fourteen hundred; and of the twelve thousand sent by Henry Owens and Henry Collins, only twenty-five hundred reached Wilkinson, because Owens had been murdered and robbed by his Spanish escort, and Collins had incurred heavy expenses in conducting the money. 25 Wilkinson justified his demands for additional money by alleging he had sustained considerable expense in buying off George Rogers Clark. But he failed to come to New Orleans as he had promised. or to send delegates for a final agreement. Suspicion of the sincerity of the American conspirator, the inherent danger of war with the United States, the strained relations with Great Britain, and the fear of a general uprising of Indians finallv resulted in the Council of the Indies' abandoninO' • b•
23 Fortier, o;. cit., II, 135-142. 24 Whitaker, o;. cit., 117; Fortier, ibid., II, 1 43. 25 Whitaker, T/,4 Sjanisll-Am4rica,, Fronti4r
1 190-196.
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