198 The Winning of the West 



such when, in the spring of 1785, Don Diego Gar- 

 doqui arrived in Philadelphia, bearing a commission 

 from his Catholic Majesty to Congress. At this 

 time the brilliant and restless soldier Galvez had left 

 Louisiana and become Viceroy of Mexico, thus re 

 moving from Louisiana the one Spaniard whose en 

 ergy and military capacity would have rendered him 

 formidable to the Americans in the event of war. 

 He was succeeded in the government of the Creole 

 province by Don Estevan Miro, already colonel of 

 the Louisiana regiment. 



Gardoqui was not an able man, although with 

 some capacity for a certain kind of intrigue. He 

 was a fit representative of the Spanish court, with 

 its fundamental weakness and its impossible pre 

 tensions. He entirely misunderstood the people 

 with whom he had to deal, and whether he was or 

 was not himself personally honest, he based his chief 

 hopes of success in dealing with others upon their 

 supposed susceptibility to the influence of corruption 

 and dishonorable intrigue. He and Jay could come 

 to no* agreement, and the negotiations were finally 

 broken off. Before this happened, in the fall of 

 1786, Jay in entire good faith had taken a step 

 which aroused furious anger in the West. 4 Like 

 so many other statesmen of the day, he did not real 

 ize how fast Kentucky had grown, and deemed the 

 navigation question one which would not be of real 

 importance to the West for two decades to come. 



4 State Dept. MSS., No. 81, Vol. II, 193, 241, 285, etc.; Re 

 ports of Sec'y John Jay. 



