therefore that West Florida was not a part of the purchase, but that Texas was.
Notwithstanding John Randolph's official declaration, when the time came for the delivery of Louisiana the Spanish governor, Dec. 20, 1803, peacefully surrendered the province to Laussat; Laussat handed it in due form to Claiborne; and Claiborne received it without asking for West Florida, or even recording a claim for it. That this silence was accidental no one pretended. The acquiescence in Spanish authority was so implicit that Madison three months afterward, at a time when both Executive and Legislature were acting on the theory that West Florida was in Louisiana, found himself obliged to explain the cause of conduct and contradictions so extraordinary. He wrote[1] to Livingston at Paris that the President had for several reasons preferred to make no demand for West Florida,—
- "First, because it was foreseen that the demand would not only be rejected by the Spanish authority at New Orleans, which had in an official publication limited the cession westwardly by the Mississippi and the Island of New Orleans, but it was apprehended, as has turned out, that the French commissioner might not be ready to support the demand, and might even be disposed to second the Spanish opposition to it; secondly, because in the latter of these cases a serious check would be given to our title, and in either of them a premature dilemma would result between an overt submission
- ↑ Madison to Livingston, March 31, 1804; State Papers, ii. 575.
