[Footnote: Gardoqui MSS., Gardoqui to Morgan, Sept. 2,
1788. Morgan to Gardoqui, Aug. 30, 1788. Letters of Sept. 9, 1788, Sept.
12, 1788; Gardoqui to Miro, Oct. 4, 1788, to Floridablanca, June 28,
1789. Letter to Gardoqui, Jan. 22, 1788.]
Clark's Proposal.
Another adventurer who at this time proposed to found a colony in
Spanish territory was no less a person than George Rogers Clark. Clark
had indulged in something very like piracy at the expense of Spanish
subjects but eighteen months previously. He was ready at any time to
lead the Westerners to the conquest of Louisiana; and a few years later
he did his best to organize a freebooting expedition against New Orleans
in the name of the French Revolutionary Government. But he was quite
willing to do his fighting on behalf of Spain, instead of against her;
for by this time he was savage with anger and chagrin at the
indifference and neglect with which the Virginian and Federal
Governments had rewarded his really great services. He wrote to Gardoqui
in the spring of 1788, boasting of his feats of arms in the past,
bitterly complaining of the way he had been treated, and offering to
lead a large colony to settle in the Spanish dominions; for, he said, he
had become convinced that neither property nor character was safe under
a government so weak as that of the United States, and he therefore
wished to put himself at the disposal of the King of Spain.
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