The interlude helped only to embarrass the true question,--what should be done with West Florida. President Madison’s doctrine, embodied in Giles’s bill, carried out the Livingston-Monroe theory that West Florida belonged to Louisiana. In theory, this arrangement might answer the purpose for which it was invented; but in fact West Florida did not belong to Louisiana, either as a Spanish or as an American province, and could not be treated as though it did. If Mobile Bay and the Gulf coast as far as the Perdido belonged to Louisiana, the territory afterward divided into the States of Alabama and Mississippi had no outlet to the gulf. Georgia would never consent to such treatment, merely to support President Madison in alleging that West Florida was occupied by him as a part of the Orleans territory. Senator Giles’s bill was silently dropped. The Senate reached this point December 31, but meanwhile the House reached the same standstill from another side. December 17 the Speaker appointed a committee, with Macon at its head, to report on the admission of Orleans territory as a State. The admission of the State of Louisiana into the Union was for many reasons a serious moment in American history; but one of its lesser incidents was the doubt which so much perplexed the Senate, whether Louisiana included West Florida. If this was the case, then by the third article of the treaty of purchase the inhabitants of Mobile and the district between Mobile and Baton Rouge, without division, should be “incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible” to the Union as part of the territory of Orleans. This was the opinion of Macon and his committee, as it had been that of Giles and his committee, and of the President and his Cabinet. December 27 Macon reported a bill admitting Louisiana, with West Florida to the Perdido, as a State; but no sooner did the debates begin, than the Georgians for the first time showed delicacy in regard to the rights of Spain. Troup could not consent to include in any State this territory “yet in dispute and subject to negotiation.” Bibb held the same misgivings: “The President by his proclamation, although he had required its occupation, had declared that the right should be subject to negotiation; now, if it became a State, would not all right of negotiation be taken from the President?” To prevent this danger, Bibb moved that West Florida, from the Iberville to the Perdido, should be annexed to the Mississippi Territory or made a separate government. On the other hand, Rhea of Tennessee held that no other course was open to Congress than to admit the Orleans territory in its full extent as ceded by France, according to the President’s assertion. The treaty was peremptory, and Congress was bound by it to annex no part of the Orleans purchase to a pre-existing territory. West Florida belonged to Louisiana, and could not lawfully be given to Mississippi.