[84] Id. p. 75. [85] Id. p. 82. [86] American State papers, vol. 4, p. 468. [87] Id. vol. 2, p. 662. [88] As it may be important that the reader should understand the title to Louisiana under which the boundary of the Rio Grande was claimed, the following is a summary of its history. Louisiana originally belonged to France, but by a secret compact between that country and Spain in 1762, and by treaties, in the following year, between France, Spain, and England, the French dominion was extinguished on all the continent of America. In consequence of the treaty between this country and England in 1783, the Mississippi became the western boundary of the United States from its source to the 31° of north latitude, and thence, on the same parallel to the St. Mary's. France, it will be remembered, always had _claimed_ dominion in Louisiana to the Rio Bravo or Rio Grande, by virtue 1st. Of the discovery of the Mississippi from near its source to the ocean. 2d. _Of the possession taken, and establishment made by La Salle, at the bay of St. Bernard, west of the rivers Trinity and Colorado, by authority of Louis XIV, in 1685_; notwithstanding the subsequent destruction of the colony. 3d. Of the charter of Louis XIV, to Crozat in 1712. 4th. The historical authority of Du Pratz, Champigny, and the Count de Vergennes. 5th. Of the authority of De Lisle's map, and of the map published in 1762 by Don Thomas Lopez, _geographer to the king of Spain_, as well as of various other maps, atlases, and geographical and historical authorities. By an article of the secret treaty of San Ildefonso, in October, 1800, Spain retroceded Louisiana to France; yet this treaty was not promulgated till the beginning of 1802. The paragraph of cession is as follows: "His Catholic majesty engages to retrocede to the French republic, six months after the full and entire execution of the conditions and stipulations above recited relative to his Royal Highness, the Duke of Parma, the colony and province of Louisiana, with the same extent that it already has in the hands of Spain, _and that it had when France possessed it_, and such as it should be, after the treaties passed subsequently between Spain and other powers." In 1803, Bonaparte, the first consul of the French republic, ceded Louisiana to the United States, as fully and in the same manner as it had been retroceded to France by Spain in the treaty of San Ildefonso; and, by virtue of this grant, Messieurs Madison, Monroe, Adams, Clay, Van Buren, and Jackson contended that the original limits of the state had been the Rio Grande. However, by the 3rd article of our treaty with Spain in 1819, all our pretensions to extend the territory of Louisiana towards Mexico or the Rio Grande, were resigned and abandoned by adopting the River Sabine as our southern confine in that quarter. See Lyman's diplomacy of the United States. Vol. 1, p. 368, and vol. 2, p. 136.