Brooks: Diplomacy and the Borderlands 193
thorized to study and adjudicate, as provided in Article 9 of the
treaty, claims for damages done by military operations in the Flor-
idas. The Treasury Department threw out most of the claims with
the declaration that the "late operations" in the Floridas mentioned
in the document did not include those of 1812 and 1813, and that
those of 1814 were acts of war. A dispute over interest payments
continued late into the century, but on the value of the claims
which were finally allowed slightly over a million dollars was
paid."
 Spain attempted in 1827 to collect from France the amount of
the damages incurred by United States ships captured by French
corsairs and condemned in Spanish ports from 1797 to 1801, to
which the United States waived claim in the treaty."
 The boundary in the southwest was approved by Mexico, in-
heritor of Spanish sovereignty, in her treaty with the United
States of January 12, 1828. The ratification of that treaty was de-
layed until 1831, partly by President Jackson's efforts to acquire
Texas." No successful survey was made for many years. The ex-
pedition of Captain R. B. Marcy in 1852 was the first effective
exploration of the Red River." As late as 1896 a Supreme Court
decision settled a dispute between Oklahoma and Texas by defin-
ing the south instead of the north branch of the Red as the line of
1819. In a dispute over oil rights under the river's bed, the same
tribunal made the treaty the basis for its decision in 1921 that the
boundary was the south bank instead of the center of the river."
This decision regarding the black gold of the twentieth century
was founded upon a provision of Article 3 of the document, agreed
upon after a last-minute argument between Adams and Onis over
navigation of the stream. Little did they imagine to what remote
concerns their conclusion would extend
 It has been seen that the United States yielded Texas with re-
gret, but, considering the limited knowledge that Adams had of
the circumstances of the negotiation, it was not unreasonable that
she did so. Had the treaty taken Texas from Spain, her rati-
fication would certainly have been even more difficult to obtain.
Hostilities might even have resulted. It is interesting to note the
extreme statement of the late Professor Latan6 that "the relin-
quishment of Texas was an unfortunate mistake that later cost us
the war with Mexico and made the Civil War inevitable.'" One