ARP366 Rhode Island & the Treaty of NY, 1790

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spk_0 This week, episode 366, Rhode Island and the Treaty of New York.

spk_0 So this week we're going to talk about two different subjects.

spk_0 The first is the ratification of Rhode Island, finally making it the 13th state to join the Union.

spk_0 The other is a treaty that took place in New York with the Creek Indians.

spk_0 In our last regular episode, we talked about George Washington's state of the Union address where he laid out an agenda for the new session of Congress in 1790.

spk_0 In that address, Washington noted with satisfaction that North Carolina had ratified the Constitution making it the 12th state to join the Union.

spk_0 That left Rhode Island as the lone holdout.

spk_0 The Constitution, by its own terms, went into effect when nine of the 13 states had ratified the 9th state ratified the Constitution in June of 1788.

spk_0 By the time that the elections were organized in late 1789, 11 states had ratified.

spk_0 Only North Carolina and Rhode Island had refused to ratify in time for the elections.

spk_0 North Carolina bowied by the proposal of the Bill of Rights and also seeing threats of trade sanctions if they did not ratify, finally ratified the Constitution in November of 1789.

spk_0 We discussed Rhode Island's refusal to ratify a few months ago.

spk_0 As you may recall, much of the reason for the refusal was financial.

spk_0 A populist government had been elected, which had flooded the state with new paper money, which quickly devalued.

spk_0 For the vast majority of voters who were heavily in debt, this was great news.

spk_0 They could pay off their debts with nearly worthless dollars and become debt-free.

spk_0 Merchants and moneyed interests, of course, were aghast at this idea.

spk_0 It motivated the Constitutional Convention to give exclusive authority to the federal government to print paper money.

spk_0 Thus, Rhode Island's paper money party would come to an end when they joined the new government.

spk_0 Between September of 1787 and January of 1790, Rhode Island's legislature, or the people themselves through referendum, rejected all efforts to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

spk_0 In an attempt to put more pressure on them, Congress had approved import tariffs that would essentially make trade between Rhode Island and other states un-economical.

spk_0 North Carolina faced the same threat, and they got Congress to delay implementation until January of 1790.

spk_0 By that time, North Carolina wasn't the Union, but Rhode Island still was not.

spk_0 So when that January deadline came, Rhode Island officials convinced Congress to delay implementation of tariffs a second time so that Rhode Island could hold another ratifying convention in March.

spk_0 That ratifying convention met and adjourned without a vote on ratification.

spk_0 So finally, on May 18th, about a week before the Rhode Island convention would reconvene for a second term,

spk_0 a frustrated U.S. Congress passed a bill barring all commercial trade between Rhode Island and the other 12 states.

spk_0 It barred U.S. vessels from docking in Rhode Island ports and insisted that Rhode Island make a payment in lieu of taxes toward paying off their share of the National War debt.

spk_0 This law would go into effect on July 1st, and it was made clear that there would be no further delays.

spk_0 Only one member of Congress voted against the bill, and President Washington signed it into law.

spk_0 Federalists in Providence and a few other areas actually debated seceding from Rhode Island and joining the U.S. on their own.

spk_0 These merchants were never happy with the state's monetary policies, and they saw the new trade ban as fatal to their commercial future.

spk_0 So when the ratification convention met again in late May, there was intense pressure to accept the Constitution.

spk_0 Despite the pressure, the initial vote failed pretty decisively.

spk_0 Over the course of the next week, debate continued.

spk_0 At least one town that had been against ratification sent instructions to have its delegates vote in favor.

spk_0 In another case, a town replaced a delegate who refused to vote for ratification.

spk_0 Finally, late in the afternoon of May 29th, the convention held another vote.

spk_0 It finally agreed to ratify the Constitution by a vote of 34-32.

spk_0 As part of the vote, the delegates called on Congress to protect 18 separate rights and to make 21 different amendments to the Constitution, including one that would protect the state's paper money policy.

spk_0 But this ratification was not made contingent on any of these changes.

spk_0 Rhode Island had agreed to become part of the United States.

spk_0 Couriers spent news of the ratification to New York, where George Washington reported the official news to Congress, on June 1st.

spk_0 A couple of weeks later, the convention convened again to ratify the Bill of Rights that Congress had already proposed.

spk_0 The legislature appointed two U.S. senators who took their seats on June 25th.

spk_0 One of them was a Federalist, Theater Foster, and one an Anti-Federalist, Joseph Stanton.

spk_0 The state held its first election in August, sending Federalist Benjamin Born to take the state's only house seat in early September.

spk_0 So, with Rhode Island's reluctant ratification, the ratification of the Constitution by all the states was finally unanimous.

spk_0 While officials were pleased with Rhode Island's acquiescence, their attention during most of the spring and summer was focused more on the West.

spk_0 The issue of Western expansion continued to create challenges for the new government.

spk_0 Northern settlers had already begun moving into the territory north of the Ohio River, into what had been established as the Northwest Territory.

spk_0 At the same time, settlers from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia were also pushing Westward into new territories.

spk_0 Back in Episode 335, I talked about the state of Franklin, which was created out of lands that were part of Western North Carolina.

spk_0 The settlers had formed their own state after North Carolina had given the land to the continental Congress, when Congress did nothing to actually accept the land, the people formed a new state in 1784,

spk_0 and sought recognition from Congress. Both North Carolina and the continental Congress refused to recognize the new state.

spk_0 For several years, though, the state existed and made treaties with Indians in the region.

spk_0 Franklin's president, John Severe, had been a leader at the Battle of Kings Mountain and was a prominent North Carolina politician during the war.

spk_0 He made treaties with the nearby Cherokees.

spk_0 The Indians disputed these treaties. Congress's 1785 Hopewell treaties that I covered in Episode 339 recognized the Cherokee claims on the land and did not recognize the treaties that the state of Franklin had made with them.

spk_0 After being rejected by the Americans, Severe reached out to Spain to see if he could get support from them.

spk_0 This was too much for the Americans. North Carolina attempted to seize Severe's property for non-payment of taxes to North Carolina. Severe himself was eventually arrested for treason.

spk_0 Soon afterward, the state of Franklin completely fell apart. Seeking to put this fight behind them, Severe swore allegiance to North Carolina and the governor pardoned him.

spk_0 What had been the state of Franklin was reintegrated into North Carolina and the locals would elect Severe as a state senator in North Carolina.

spk_0 Having reunited the two states, the North Carolina legislature once again in early 1790 seated that territory to the U.S. Congress as part of its creation of a new federal territory.

spk_0 The southwest territory was supposed to consist of all the western lands south of the Ohio River that had been ceded by other states.

spk_0 But Virginia had not yet ceded Kentucky. That was still a few years away.

spk_0 So for the moment, the southwest territory consisted of North Carolina's land session which would eventually become the state of Tennessee.

spk_0 Congress essentially governed the southwest territory under the same terms as it did the Northwest Territory.

spk_0 It appointed a territorial governor and expected that the territory would become a state when the population was sufficient.

spk_0 The most significant difference between the southwest territory and the northwest territory was that the southwest territory allowed the introduction of slavery.

spk_0 Washington appointed William Blount as the new territorial governor. Severe had one of the job but his past actions pretty much kept him out of consideration.

spk_0 Blount had been born and raised in western North Carolina but his path differed greatly from Severe.

spk_0 Blount's father Jacob Blount had been a justice of the peace and it helped rural governor William Trian crush the regulatory movement in the early 1770s.

spk_0 As a young man, William Blount joined the army that was sent to crush the regulators, although he didn't see any action.

spk_0 When the revolution came though, the Blount family sided with the Patriots and served in the militia.

spk_0 Both of William's brothers accepted commissions in the continental army but William remained in North Carolina with the militia.

spk_0 In 1780 he served as commissary to General Horatio Gates for a few months until the Battle of Camden.

spk_0 After that, Blount focused more on politics. Beginning in 1782, Blount served in the continental congress with the North Carolina delegation.

spk_0 In 1783 he returned to state politics. He was the politician who introduced what became known as the land grab act, allowing certain influential North Carolinians to obtain large amounts of western land at virtually no cost.

spk_0 He was also very active in the settlement of these western lands. When the state of Franklin became an issue in North Carolina, Blount did not really take a strong position on either side.

spk_0 He had opposed the Hopewell Treaty that Congress signed with the Cherokee. He tried to stop its implementation but was unsuccessful.

spk_0 In 1787, Blount went back to Philadelphia as a North Carolina delegate to the Constitutional Convention.

spk_0 It was there that he and Washington got to know each other a little bit. Blount did not stay for the entire convention.

spk_0 He went back up to New York where he was still serving as a delegate in the Confederation Congress.

spk_0 But he did return to Philadelphia near the end to sign the final document. He then became a leader in the fight for North Carolina's ratification, which as we know took two tries before the state finally ratified in November of 1789.

spk_0 It was probably Blount's reputation as a leading federalist in the state that gave Washington the confidence to nominate him as the territorial governor in 1790.

spk_0 When Blount created his territory a government, he did not try to push aside anybody who was involved in the state of Franklin affair.

spk_0 In fact, he appointed severe as one of two brigadier generals in the territorial militia and appointed a number of other former Franklinites to various territorial government positions.

spk_0 Among his appointments was a young attorney who had just passed the bar two years earlier. Blount appointed Andrew Jackson as prosecutor for the territory.

spk_0 With the hope well treaties in place, population growth in the approved areas of the new territory went pretty smoothly and there was relatively little concern about the Indians.

spk_0 The real threat from Indians remained further south. The Cherokee and Muscogee and the Southwest territory had agreed to treaties with Congress in 1785 and were largely in compliance.

spk_0 Congress had approached the creeks at the same time, but they refused to sign away their land. A big part of Creek Resistance was the work of Alexander McGilvray.

spk_0 I've mentioned McGilvray before. He was the son of a Scotsman who had settled in South Carolina and his mother was a Creek woman who was herself the daughter of a Frenchman and another Creek woman.

spk_0 McGilvray was only one quarter Creek. He was raised in Charleston and lived in normal white society, but when the revolution began, McGilvray remained a loyalist and went to live inland with his Creek relatives under his Indian name, Oh Boy, Healing Mico.

spk_0 Patriots seized his family's property in South Carolina and McGilvray received a Colonel's commission in the British Army.

spk_0 When the British left after the war, McGilvray continued to hold a position of power and influence among the creeks. He discouraged them from giving way more land to the Americans when other tribes signed on in 1785.

spk_0 Instead, he traveled to Pensacola to get support from Spain to protect Creek land.

spk_0 Spain very much wanted the Creek to serve as a buffer between their control of the Mississippi and the Gulf areas and the Georgians who were pushing westward.

spk_0 So Spain did provide supplies and arms to the Creek to resist American aggression.

spk_0 With Spanish backing, McGilvray tried to consolidate power among the Creek. Traditionally, each village could negotiate for itself.

spk_0 McGilvray wanted to negotiate with the Americans on behalf of all creeks so that smaller American groups could not simply pressure one village after another to sell out.

spk_0 Smaller groups of creeks had signed treaties with Georgia. The Treaty of Augusta in 1783 purported to give away a bunch of Creek lands to which the signatories really didn't have control.

spk_0 So other creeks who were living on that land greatly objected to that session. American negotiators had tried to negotiate a new treaty with the Creek in 1785.

spk_0 Congressional and state negotiators met with the Creek at Galfinton, Georgia. McGilvray, however, did not come to that event.

spk_0 The creeks who did show up did not have authority to negotiate on behalf of all creeks. And because of this, the federal negotiators gave up and left.

spk_0 However, state negotiators from Georgia were happy to negotiate with those who did show up. And presumably after offering them some gifts and other benefits, they got the Creek representatives to sign another treaty that essentially confirmed the land sessions from the Treaty of Augusta in this new treaty called the Treaty of Galfinton.

spk_0 Because McGilvray and the majority of creeks did not recognize the validity of either of these treaties with Georgia, they went about attacking settlements on their land.

spk_0 They wiped out a settlement at Muscle Shoals and continued to raid frontier homesteads as they appeared on their land.

spk_0 Many on both sides expected that there was eventually going to be an all-out war between the Creek and Georgia.

spk_0 Representatives of Congress realized that they needed a real treaty that the Creek leadership accepted if they wanted to avert a war.

spk_0 The Creek leaders wanted to deal with Congress and not the state officials based on the history of bad faith negotiations.

spk_0 The Confederation Congress had appointed James White as superintendent of Indian Affairs back in 1786 to engage in these negotiations.

spk_0 White was a doctor and a revolutionary war veteran who had established a home near the new settlement of Knoxville.

spk_0 At the time, this was still in the state of Franklin. White ended up resigning his commission in 1788 after Congress failed to back the state of Franklin.

spk_0 And he instead went to work for the Spanish who were trying to form an alliance between the state of Franklin and Spain.

spk_0 In this role, White ended up helping to supply the creeks with Spanish arms to use against Georgia settlers.

spk_0 When the state of Franklin collapsed a year later, White just returned to his home near Knoxville.

spk_0 At this experience, seemed to convince the creeks that the Confederation Congress seemed more open to a fair treaty than did the state officials in Georgia.

spk_0 Around this time, Spanish officials, however, told McGillivary that they could not provide more supplies and military support, thus forcing the Creek to rely on some negotiations with the Americans.

spk_0 Shortly after Washington took office as president in 1789, he sent invitations for Creek leaders to meet in New York City to discuss a strong and lasting treaty that would settle the ongoing disputes.

spk_0 Marinus Willett, who I've mentioned before for his active role during the Revolutionary War and who was currently serving as sheriff of New York, carried Washington's message to McGillivray and the Creek leaders.

spk_0 During the summer of 1790, McGillivray led a delegation of 27 Creek and Seminoleaders to New York to negotiate a new treaty with the Americans.

spk_0 This delegation arrived in late July.

spk_0 While in New York, the delegation was greeted by the newly organized Society of St. Tammany, which was developing into a political organization.

spk_0 The Society was named after the Delaware Chief Tammany, who had successfully established a peaceful land session agreement with William Penn a century earlier.

spk_0 The Creek chiefs were paraded through town and onlookers celebrated their arrival as they would foreign royalty.

spk_0 President Washington personally received McGillivray and the other chiefs and he treated them as he would foreign dignitaries.

spk_0 Meetings between the two sides continued for about three weeks.

spk_0 Secretary of War Henry Knox led the negotiations for the Americans with some support from Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.

spk_0 In the evenings, President Washington hosted dinners for the Creek leaders, giving them a chance to interact with senators and congressmen and other important people in the city.

spk_0 The groups smoked pipes together, exchanged wampum belts.

spk_0 Washington also revealed for the first time a full-length portrait of himself painted by John Trumbull.

spk_0 Newspapers reported that Washington's dinners were more lavish and festive than anything that New York had seen since the inauguration.

spk_0 In about three weeks, the two sides had drafted an acceptable treaty.

spk_0 The Treaty of New York guaranteed boundaries between the Creek and the Georgians.

spk_0 No U.S. citizen would be permitted to settle on Indian lands.

spk_0 If they tried to do so, they forfeited the protection of the U.S. and the Creek were free to deal with them as they wished.

spk_0 No American could even hunt in Creek territory without a U.S. passport authorizing them to do so.

spk_0 The Creek's agreed to turn over criminals or escape slaves that had taken refuge among the Creek.

spk_0 If people have either side committed an offense, the other would reach out to authorities to assure they would be punished by their own government rather than simply seeking retribution.

spk_0 Beyond setting up borders, the treaty also hoped to bring what Americans called, quote, a greater degree of civilization to the Indians.

spk_0 They would provide domestic animals and farm implements in hopes of getting the Creek to take up farming rather than living primarily as hunters.

spk_0 The Creek would also send a few of their own to live among the Americans, learn their language, so they could serve as interpreters and also learn American customs.

spk_0 To get McGillivray to support the treaty, there was also a few secret provisions that impacted only him.

spk_0 McGillivray received a commission as a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army, which entitled him to a salary of $1,200 a year.

spk_0 By putting the Creek leader on the U.S. payroll, he had a strong incentive to maintain good relations going forward.

spk_0 McGillivray also got a one-time $100,000 payment for properties confiscated from his father during the war.

spk_0 On August 13th, both sides signed the treaty, which the Senate would ratify.

spk_0 McGillivray and the chiefs returned home.

spk_0 A little over a week later, President Washington issued the Proclamation of 1790, essentially warning U.S. citizens to stay out of Indian lands.

spk_0 With the establishment of the Treaty of New York, Washington and others hoped that the threat of war with the Indians would subside, at least for the time being.

spk_0 Next week, we're going to look at how the federal government resolved two of the most contentious issues facing the new nation during this time in the grand compromise of 1790.

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spk_0 In January of 1915, Ernest Shackleton's ship, Endurance, became encased in the ice in the wettle sea.

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spk_0 Now this week we covered two big events.

spk_0 The first was Rhode Island's ratification.

spk_0 Rhode Island was definitely the most hostile to the new constitution.

spk_0 They very much like things the way they were, and they were in no hurry to give more powers to the federal government.

spk_0 Now some of us today might ask, why would anyone want to see more power to a potentially intrusive and expensive foreign government?

spk_0 We sometimes lose sight of the fact that while any government may do things that we don't always like, they really do serve a valuable purpose.

spk_0 We might not always like the way the government regulates trade, but small states would be in big trouble if they had to negotiate trade agreements on their own.

spk_0 And then they would have to negotiate trade agreements with major world powers.

spk_0 Of course there's also the issue of national defense.

spk_0 The framers well understood that if they had not united against Britain, there would have been no way they could have won the war.

spk_0 Even if they tried to go their own separate ways after the war, most historians agree that major European powers, people like Britain, France, Spain, possibly others,

spk_0 would have tried to regain or regain influence over certain states as various contests with their neighboring states grew more intense.

spk_0 It was only by uniting with the other states that the US became a formidable independent power that could keep the foreign powers at bay.

spk_0 And that really remains true to this day.

spk_0 The US has become an important world power only because political leaders could put aside their parochial interests for the greater good of establishing a powerful and united states.

spk_0 We should never lose sight of this fact.

spk_0 A Rhode Island thought it could have had the best of both worlds.

spk_0 It wanted to run its own affairs, avoid federal taxes, but still enjoy trade and protection from the rest of the states.

spk_0 Congress had to make clear to them that that was not going to happen.

spk_0 They did this by threatening to cut off trade with Rhode Island.

spk_0 Fortunately, under that pressure, Rhode Island finally accepted that some compromise was part of being part of a great country.

spk_0 There's been talk of this session throughout US history.

spk_0 It's only actually been tried once, leading to the bloodiest war that Americans have ever fought.

spk_0 It is easy to get frustrated with other states and people that don't always share all of our political beliefs, but the importance of compromise to keep the US and what one former president called a shining city on the hill is an important perspective.

spk_0 If we ever fall apart, we will inevitably lose a great deal of what we once were.

spk_0 The other big issue we covered this week was the treaty with the Creek.

spk_0 It probably won't be a spoil or alert to anyone to know that these treaties did not solve US problems with the Indians.

spk_0 Some have compared Washington's proclamation of 1790, warning Americans against moving into Indian lands, to a King George's proclamation of 1763 that pretty much tried to do the same thing.

spk_0 Washington's proclamation met with equal success.

spk_0 Settlers continued to move west as their only opportunity to gain land and become self-reliant.

spk_0 Georgia, which had been pushing the Creek, only continued to do so.

spk_0 Only four years after this treaty, we're going to see the Yazoo land scandal, which is full of corruption and greed as speculators try to buy off the Georgia legislature in order to grab Indian lands in the West.

spk_0 And we'll probably get to that whole thing in a future episode.

spk_0 But the bottom line is that westward expansion never really slowed if anything had probably sped up.

spk_0 Most of us know the sad history of broken treaties and forcing Indians further west onto poorer land that could support only a fraction of them.

spk_0 But in 1790, there was still hope that there was enough land to go around for everyone.

spk_0 Alexander McGillivray, who cut the deal with the feds in order to get a huge salary, never really suffered any consequences.

spk_0 He used the money to buy three large plantations and 60 more slaves in what is today Alabama.

spk_0 Two years later, he repudiated the treaty anyway and tried to make another deal with the Spanish in Louisiana.

spk_0 Hereafter that, he was living in Pensacola, suffering from syphilis and rheumatism.

spk_0 He died at the age of 42.

spk_0 My book recommendation this week is The Most Perfect Justice.

spk_0 Alexander McGillivray and George Washington strive to save the Creek Nation by Jean Lufkin Buller.

spk_0 This is a really short book, it's under 200 pages, and it mostly looks at the life of Alexander McGillivray with the creeks and his efforts to negotiate with the United States.

spk_0 There are a few older books that were written about McGillivray, but this is the only one written in the last few decades.

spk_0 It was published in 2020.

spk_0 The author is a former journalist who has written several books.

spk_0 It's available in paperback or on Kindle.

spk_0 So if this topic interests you and you want to read more, get The Most Perfect Justice.

spk_0 Alexander McGillivray and George Washington strive to save the Creek Nation by Jean Lufkin Buller.

spk_0 My online recommendation is a copy of the actual treaty signed in 1790.

spk_0 It's pretty short, easy to read, and will give you a good understanding of what the two parties hope to achieve.

spk_0 The document is available several places online.

spk_0 My link takes you to the Tribal Treaties database at the University of Oklahoma.

spk_0 My question this week comes from Curtis Johnson, who asks,

spk_0 during the early Revolution period, pre-1776,

spk_0 would the New England colonies have felt a closer kinship to the Canadian colonies than say the Middle or Southern colonies?

spk_0 If so do you believe this played a role in the decision to conduct an invasion of Quebec by Arnold and Montgomery?

spk_0 Well, Curtis, yes.

spk_0 The New England colonies did have a closer kinship with much of what is today Canada, even more so than they did with many other colonies.

spk_0 GF to remember that New England was practically at war with New York for a long time.

spk_0 New York was much more similar to the Southern colonies, and that it had very large estates, rather than smaller family farms.

spk_0 The leaders in New York were also largely Dutch, which the New Englanders viewed with a bit of hostility.

spk_0 New Englanders had a very different society than pretty much all the other lower colonies, especially those in the South.

spk_0 They really had relatively little in common, socially, economically or culturally, other than their shared relationship with the mother country Britain.

spk_0 By contrast, many of the settlements in Canada were largely the same as New England.

spk_0 When the British expelled the Acadians from Canada, it was New Englanders who repopulated the region.

spk_0 So these people who moved into that place were the brothers and cousins of people who were still living in New England.

spk_0 There were also, of course, the French speaking people in Quebec who were viewed with a little more suspicion by New Englanders.

spk_0 But even there we see an act of trading relationship with New England before the war.

spk_0 The Americans believed that the Canadians were just a bit too timid to act.

spk_0 The French were afraid of reprisals if they were belled.

spk_0 Those along the coast of Canada were too heavily dominated by the British army in navy bases.

spk_0 The Americans believed that if they could show that the British could not control them militarily, that these people would happily join the United States.

spk_0 The real division came during and after the Revolutionary War itself.

spk_0 So many loyalists moved from New York and New England to Canada that it became a loyalist stronghold.

spk_0 Ideological divisions became geographic divisions due to the expulsions of those who disagreed with the movement for independence.

spk_0 But before the war and all those migrations, there was probably not much of an ideological difference between New Englanders and their Northern neighbors.

spk_0 If you have a question you'd like me to answer, please reach out to me either via email or on x, Facebook, Quarra or Reddit.

spk_0 Well that's all for this week. I hope you will join me again next week for another American Revolution podcast.

ARP366 Rhode Island & the Treaty of NY, 1790

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