86 University of California Publications in History

the King and his favorites of trying to dissipate what advantage
the United States would acquire from the session.
 The new instructions reached Onei on October 31, 1817, in the
hands of his secretary of legation, Luis Noeli, who had waited in
Spain during the summer's deliberations. They arrived in time to
enable Onis to begin his work in Washington as Congress convened,
forestalling precipitate action by that body. But the efficacy of the
instructions was menaced by new disturbing developments-in-
trigues in the Floridas, a plot to revolutionize Texas, and the threat
of recognition of Buenos Aires by the United States.
 In East Florida the famous General Gregor McGregor, veteran
of the struggles of Miranda and Bolivar in Venezuela, had begun
the operations by which he hoped to free both Floridas from Span-
ish dominion. With a commission from the agent in Philadelphia
of the republic of Venezuela," McGregor gathered a force num-
bering about a hundred fifty and from a rendezvous in Georgia
captured Amelia Island in June, 1817, through a ruse which led
the Spanish commander to overestimate the "patriot" forces. Mc-
Gregor issued proclamations to some two hunderd "Anglo-Ameri-
cans" who had set up a practically autonomous regime with the
approval of the Spanish governor of East Florida, Jos6 Coppinger,
in the region between the St. John's and the St. Mary's. Coppinger
refused to welcome McGregor's "liberating" efforts, however, and
when the latter's financial backers and purveyors despaired of his
success he had to withdraw. Following a chaotic few weeks in which
a Spanish force from St. Augustine was turned back, apparently
because of the incompetence of its commander, the island was taken
over by the notorious pirate Louis Aury, fresh from buccaneering
operations at Galveston. Writers generally describe Aury as a
pirate who was interested only in the lucrative business of bring-
ing prizes in for condemnation in an outlaw port such as he con-
trolled at Amelia. But it appears that he was also authorized by
South American revolutionary governments to aid in the dismem-
berment of Spain's colonial empire." He used the flag of the Mexi-
can revolutionists.
 Whatever Aury's motives were, surely piracy was among them,
 and the United States government, harassed by complaints of the
 illegal acts done at Amelia, so near its borders, and involving its
 citizens, determined to intervene. President Monroe in his opening