PREFACE

Tms ACCOUNT of the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819 between
 Spain and the United States has resulted from an investiga-
 tion of its background and of the interests and activities of
 all the countries represented in the negotiation. In it I have essayed
 to weigh the comparative influences of frontier conditions and of
 political considerations upon the diplomats. Certain aspects of the
 agreement involved inevitable recognition of existing occupation
 of territory, whereas others were largely matters of arbitrary bar-
 gaining on paper by the negotiators, who faced some circum-
 stances unknown on the frontiers.
 Heretofore the treaty has been subjected to limited interpre-
 tations because of its having been studied in the archives and li-
 braries of only one of the nations concerned. Profiting by an
 examination of materials in Spain, France, and England, as well
 as in the United States, this portrayal, it is hoped, will give a
 broad view of all the major complications involved.
 The rl1e played by Spain has been the phase most neglected by
 historians, and it forms the core of this narrative. Accordingly,
 the central theme is the career of Don Luis de Onfs as Spanish
 minister in this country from 1809 to 1819. The intricacies of fol-
 lowing the thread of a single negotiation through the kaleidoscopic
 tangles of the post-Napoleonic period have made the selection of
 materials a difficult task.
 The treaty was intimately concerned with the boundaries of the
 Louisiana Purchase, but it did not define them as such. The de-
 cisions reached were not based upon the rights acquired in that
 purchase, but were determined by the comparative power of the
 two nations, the conditions of settlement on the frontiers, and the
 skill of the negotiators.
 Certain of the territorial claims which were advanced are still
 disputed among historians. These claims did not determine the
 delineation of 1819, nor were they settled by it; some conclusions
 regarding them, however, are reached in this study. It appears that
 the United States had no justifiable title to West Florida as a part
 of the Louisiana Purchase, but the fact that the United States had
 occupied the region was a strong bargaining point. Partly through