A few days afterward the convention, through its president, wrote to the Secretary of State, Robert Smith, urging the annexation of the new territory to the United States, but claiming all the public lands in the province for “the people of this Commonwealth, who have wrested the government and country from Spain at the risk of their lives and fortunes.”[261] These words accorded ill with their appeal to the Supreme Ruler of the world for the rectitude of their intentions, and their protest of “our inviolable fidelity to our king and parent country while so much as a shadow of legitimate authority remained to be exercised over us.” Yet neither with nor without their elaborate machinery of legitimate revolution could Madison have anything to do with them. Innumerable obstacles stood in his way. They declared the independence of territory which he had long since appropriated to the United States. This course alone withheld Madison from recognizing the new State; but other difficulties forbade any action at all. The Constitution gave the President no power to use the army or navy of the United States beyond the national limits, without the authority of Congress; and although extreme emergency might have excused the President in taking such action, no emergency existed in October, 1810, since Congress would meet within six weeks, and neither Spain, France, nor England could interfere in the interval. The President’s only legal course was to wait for Congress to take what measures seemed good. Madison saw all this, but though aware of his want of authority, felt the strongest impulse to act without it. He described his dilemma to Jefferson in a letter written before he received the request for annexation, then on its way from Baton Rouge:[262]-- “The crisis in West Florida, as you will see, has come home to our feelings and interests. It presents at the same time serious questions as to the authority of the Executive, and the adequacy of the existing laws of the United States for territorial administration. And the near approach of Congress might subject any intermediate interposition of the Executive to the charge of being premature and disrespectful, if not of being illegal. Still, there is great weight in the considerations that the country to the Perdido, being our own, may be fairly taken possession of, if it can be done without violence; above all, if there be danger of its passing into the hands of a third and dangerous party.”