4 University of Caiforni Publications in History

sister; and the Marquis of Casa Irujo, Spanish minister in this
country. Major points of contention were the right of deposit,
claims for damages to United States shipping during the European
wars, Spain's objections to the Louisiana Purchase, and the con-
tinued efforts of the United States to obtain the Floridas.
 Pinekney began the debate over claims, which included those
for the spoliations by Spanish vessels in the European wars just
ended and those for prizes captured by French ships and sold or
condemned in Spanish ports. In negotiations with Cevallos, he
was able to arrange a convention, signed on August 11, 1802, by
which the claims of the United States against Spain were to be
adjudicated by a joint commission. That body was to meet in
Madrid and was to conclude its business within eighteen months
after the ratification of the agreement. Rights of the two parties
concerning the French spoliations were to be determined later.'
 The convention was rejected by the United States Senate in
1803, but was approved when reconsidered a year later. By this
time, however, other events had made Spain change her mind about
ratifying. Robert R. Livingston, minister to France, had been
instructed to ascertain the possibility of acquiring New Orleans
and the Floridas, it being erroneously suspected that both had
been ceded to France. Out of French embarrassments in Europe
and Livingston's designs on the lower Mississippi came the sudden
engineering of the Louisiana Purchase. Monroe arrived in Paris as
a special commissioner, just in time to help clinch the transaction.
 Louisiana, originally a huge French colony, had been lost to
 France in 1763. England at that time acquired the part east of the
 Mississippi by conquest and Spain gained the western part through
 a diplomatic maneuver, without, however, having its limits defi-
 nitely established." At the same time, the transfer of the Floridas
 to England had cut off from Louisiana, at least temporarily, the
 region between the Mississippi and the Perdido rivers. Livingston,
 during his negotiations over the Floridas, learned that by the
 secret Treaty of San Ildefonso, October 1, 1800, Spanish Louisiana
 had been retroceded to France at the demand of Napoleon. Later
 Livingston realized that a now-famous ambiguity in the treaty
 left uncertainty whether West Florida was included in the retro-
 cession (as if it had always been a part of Louisiana) or remained
 Spanish (as having been separated from Louisiana by the Anglo-