eld Louisiana and the Floridas
together as part of her colonial empire in America; in 1763 she had
ceded New Orleans and the territory west of the Mississippi to Spain,
and at the same time she had transferred the Floridas to Great Britain;
in 1783 Great Britain had returned the Floridas to Spain which were then
reunited to Louisiana as under French rule. Ergo, when Louisiana was
retro-ceded "with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain,
and that it had when France possessed it," it must have included West
Florida.

That Livingston was able to convince himself by this logic, does not
speak well for his candor or intelligence. He was well aware that
Bonaparte had failed to persuade Don Carlos to include the Floridas
in the retrocession; he had tried to insert in the treaty an article
pledging the First Consul to use his good offices to obtain the Floridas
for the United States; and in his midnight dispatch to Madison, with
the prospect of acquiring Louisiana before him, he had urged the
advisability of exchanging this province for the more desirable
Floridas. Livingston therefore could not, and did not, say that Spain
intended to cede the Floridas as a part of Louisiana, but that she
had inadvertently done so and that Bonaparte might have claimed West
Florida, if he had been shrewd enough to see his opportunity. The United
States was in no way prevented from pressing this claim because the
First Consul had not done so. The fact that France had in 1763 actually
dismembered her colonial empire and that Louisiana as ceded to Spain
extended only to the Iberville, was given no weight in Livingston's
deductions.

Having the will to believe, Jefferson and Madison became converts
to Livingston's faith. Madison wrote at once that in view of these
developments no proposal to exchange Louisiana for the Floridas should
be entertained; the President declared himself satisfied that "our right
to the Perdido is substantial and can be opposed by a quibble on form
only"; and John Randolph, duly coached by the Administration, flatly
declared in the House of Representatives that "We have not only obtained
the command of the mouth of the Mississippi, but of the Mobile, with its
widely extended branches; and there is not now a single stream of note
rising within the United States and falling into the Gulf of Mexico
which is not entirely our own, the Appalachicola excepted." From this
moment to the end of his administration, t