The Situation at Natchez.

At the Chickasaw Bluffs, and at Natchez, there was always danger of a clash; for at these places the Spanish soldiers were in direct contact with the foremost of the restless backwoods host, and with the Indians who were most friendly or hostile to them.  Open collision was averted, but the Spaniards were kept uneasy and alert.  There were plenty of American settlers around Natchez, who were naturally friendly to the American Government; and an agent from the State of Georgia, to the horror of the Spaniards, came out to the country with the especial purpose of looking over the Yazoo lands, at the time when Georgia was about to grant them to the various land companies.  What with the land speculators, the frontiersmen, and the Federal troops, the situation grew steadily more harassing for the Spaniards; and Carondolet kept the advisors of the Spanish Crown well informed of the growing stress.

    The Separatists Play into the Hands of the Spaniards.

The Spanish Government knew it would be beaten if the issue once came to open war, and, true to the instincts of a weak and corrupt power, it chose as its weapons delay, treachery, and intrigue.  To individual Americans the Spaniards often behaved with arrogance and brutality; but they feared to give too serious offence to the American people as a whole.  Like all other enemies of the American Republic, from the days of the Revolution to those of the Civil War, they saw clearly that their best allies were the separatists, the disunionists, and they sought to encourage in every way the party which, in a spirit of sectionalism, wished to bring about a secession of one part of the country and the erection of a separate government.  The secessionists then, as always, played into the hands of the men who wished the new republic ill.  In the last decade of the eighteenth century the acute friction was not between North and South, but between East and West.  The men who, from various motives, wished to see a new republic created, hoped that this republic would take in all the people of the western waters.  These men never actually succeeded in carrying the West with them.  At the pinch the majority of the Westerners remained loyal to the idea of national unity; but there was a very strong separatist party, and there were very many men who, though not separatists, were disposed to grumble loudly about the shortcomings of the Federal government.

    Their Influence in Kentucky. 
    Their Fatuity.

These men were especially numerous and powerful in Kentucky, and they had as their organ the sole newspaper of the State, the Kentucky Gazette.  It was filled with fierce attacks, not only upon the General Government, but upon Washington himself.  Sometimes these attacks were made on the authority of the Gazette; at other times they appeared in the form of letters from outsiders, or of resolutions by the various Democratic