Only a week before this letter was written, the scheme of seizing West Florida had been publicly avowed by John Randolph on the floor of the House. Randolph’s speech of October 24, in language as offensive to Spain as was possible in the mouth of a responsible leader, asserted, as a fact admitting no doubt, that West Florida belonged to the United States.[161] “We have not only obtained the command of the mouth of the Mississippi, but of the Mobile, with its widely extended branches; and there is not now a single stream of note rising within the United States and falling into the Gulf of Mexico which is not entirely our own, the Appalachicola excepted.” In a second speech the next day, he reiterated the statement even more explicitly and in greater detail.[162] The Republican press echoed the claim. Jefferson and Madison encouraged the manœuvre until they could no longer recede, and pushed inquiries in every direction,[163] without obtaining evidence that West Florida was, or ever had been, a part of the government of Louisiana. They even applied to Laussat,[164] the mortified and angry French commissioner whom Bonaparte had sent to receive possession of New Orleans; and Laussat, to the annoyance of Talleyrand and Godoy, told the truth,--that the Iberville and the Rio Bravo were the boundaries fixed by his instructions, and therefore that West Florida was not a part of the purchase, but that Texas was. Notwithstanding John Randolph’s official declaration, when the time came for the delivery of Louisiana the Spanish governor, Dec. 20, 1803, peacefully surrendered the province to Laussat; Laussat handed it in due form to Claiborne; and Claiborne received it without asking for West Florida, or even recording a claim for it. That this silence was accidental no one pretended. The acquiescence in Spanish authority was so implicit that Madison three months afterward, at a time when both Executive and Legislature were acting on the theory that West Florida was in Louisiana, found himself obliged to explain the cause of conduct and contradictions so extraordinary. He wrote[165] to Livingston at Paris that the President had for several reasons preferred to make no demand for West Florida,--