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66	MISSISSIPPI:	THE GENERAL BACKGROUND
from the center of action made it a haven for fleeing Royalists; but anxious not to be involved in the conflict, the Natchez District gave a promise of neutrality to James Willing, the representative sent by the American Continental Congress. Willing, however, quickly lost the colonists’ respect by stealing sections of their lands and a shipment of supplies.
Spain, taking advantage of British preoccupation with the revolution, re-established its authority in the Gulf country in 1779. Moving up the river, Spanish troops took over Natchez in 1781. But Spanish rule in the Natchez country defeated its own end. Purposely mild to attract emigrants from the new Republic of the United States, it eventually was overthrown by the increasing pro-American sentiment. Protestantism, served by such zealous preachers as Richard Curtis, Samuel Swayze, and Adam Cloud, gained on Catholicism despite the rigid Spanish laws regarding religion.
Although British West Florida had extended north to 320 28', by the second Treaty of Paris in 1783, England recognized United States' claims south to the 31st parallel. This Spain refused to do. For a period of years, therefore, sovereignty to the land between 310 and 320 28' was under dispute, Spain claiming it by right of conquest and the United States by right of treaty. To complicate matters further, the State of Georgia also claimed the region by her charter of 1732, even going so far as to organize it into the County of Bourbon in 1785 and to sell it in the notorious "Yazoo Fraud” of 1795. By the treaty of Madrid in 1795 the dispute between the United States and Spain was theoretically settled in favor of the former. But the Spanish took their time in evacuating Natchez; Andrew Ellicott, a Quaker surveyor appointed to run the line of demarcation,"was kept grating" a jear on this accounc.^When American troops arrived in 1798, the Spanish at last evacuated their posts, and the American flag was officially raised. By act of Congress on April 7, 1798, the Mississippi Territory was created, and the century of Old World dominance had ended. Natchez became the first Territorial capital; but on February x, 1802, the seat of government was removed six miles east to the town of Washington.
But though the shackles of Europe had fallen from the Territory, it had still to consolidate its position. The labyrinthian complications of disputed sovereignties to the region had been but a surface sign of deeper conflicts which lay inherent in the people who composed its population. On the Gulf Coast were descendants of French settlers; around Natchez was a small but influential group of Englishmen whose allegiance to
AN OUTLINE OK FOUR CENTURIES	67
the Republic was grudging; new settlers, with antecedents in the older Colonies, were independence incarnate. These people, not yet knit into the fabric of American life and economically remote from the seaboard, were divided by old allegiances and easily swayed by the power of a personality. Their only bond was a common hatred of Spain, a hatred intensified when that country, in July 1802, forbade any land grants to American citizens, and in October of the same year closed the port of New Orleans to American goods. Neither the opening of the port in March 1803 nor the Louisiana Purchase a month later, diminished the settlers’ common opposition to Spain. When crises arose, the unity of the Territory was maintained not by allegiance to the United States but by an intense distrust of foreigners that acted as a nucleus for policy formation.
Following consummation of the Louisiana Purchase in April 1803, the opening of the Mississippi River, and the cession of western lands by the State of Georgia, a land boom swept Mississippi. On March 3, 1803, Congress passed a measure providing for a survey of the Territory; the surveyor-general’s office was established at Washington, Mississippi, with Isaac Briggs as the first incumbent; and, following the traditional national urge for land, people began to pour into Mississippi from the eastern areas, including New England.
An example of anti-Spanish sentiment was the response to Aaron Burr’s expedition in 1806. Presented to the residents as a scheme to occupy Spanish territory and perhaps create a new state in the Southwest, Burr’s plans were blocked only by the duplicity of James Wilkinson and an alignment of national politics that found President Jefferson taking the role of Burr’s chief accuser. However, when Burr surrendered to Mississippi authorities in January 1807, and was awaiting trial at Washington, the Territorial capital, leaders of the community vied with one another for the honor of entertaining him as their guest.
Following the cession of Louisiana in 1803, Spain held the Baton Rouge and Manchac districts, lying between New Orleans and the Natchez district, and also the coast region, formerly under the government of Mobile. All this territory was formerly French Louisiana, and the American Government was making claims to it as a part of the French concession. The Kemper brothers, who then were living near Pinckneyville, initiated the first open and organized rebellion against Spanish authority. The Kemper movement, the plot to capture Mobile, and the operations of Aaron Burr were all connected, and all hastened the actual annexation of the territory to the United States. The Kempers raised the flag of revolu-