Spanish agent Juan de Miralles had led Congress and John Jay to expect that Spain would receive him as minister plenipotentiary without hesitation. Spanish foreign minister Floridablanca, however, had no intention of compromising important Spanish objectives—conquest of the Floridas and territory along the Mississippi River and the establishment of Spanish control over all lands washed by the Gulf of Mexico—by recognizing the United States and becoming her ally.1

Jay well knew that Spain had previously refused to allow Arthur Lee to present himself at court.2 To avoid embarrassment, Jay sent his secretary, William Carmichael, to Madrid to test the waters. Carmichael soon discovered that Jay would be dealing with Floridablanca, who was determined to avoid any gesture that might suggest recognition of American independence, rather than José de Gálvez, minister of the Indies, to whom, on Conrad Alexandre Gérard’s instruction, Jay had addressed himself. Floridablanca’s refusal to receive Gérard as retiring French minister to the United States forecast his decision, announced to Carmichael on 26 February, to deny Jay ministerial status until after a treaty was concluded between the two powers.3 Instead, he said, Jay would be admitted as a “distinguished foreigner.” On 9 March, Floridablanca presented Carmichael with a series of queries about the “civil and military state of the American Provinces” that, under the pretext of assessing the United States’ need for aid, underscored the fragility of its claim to be considered a potential and desirable ally and questioned its ability to provide Spain with ships and naval supplies in return for financial assistance.4

Montmorin, French minister to Spain, feared that the slight to Gérard would convince Jay that Spain would not recognize American independence and cause him to return to America immediately. Montmorin regretted that Jay and Gérard had landed at Cádiz rather than Paris, where, it had been proposed, negotiations between the Americans and the Spanish were to have begun with Aranda, Spain’s minister to France, rather than with Floridablanca.5 Montmorin believed that, by withholding recognition, Spain was providing France with a means to retreat from its commitment to American independence in the event that the war went badly. He told French foreign minister Vergennes that Floridablanca wanted to keep Spain’s relationship with the United States ambiguous to restrain its pretensions and hoped to limit the United States to a feudal independence similar to that of the states of the Austrian Empire in relation to Vienna.

Vergennes realized that it would be useless to press Spain to recognize American independence at this point, but he hoped that joint Spanish-American military operations in the Floridas might convince the Americans that recognition was being delayed but not rejected.6 Having learned that Floridablanca would not receive Jay as minister, he addressed Jay as “former president of Congress” in his reply to Jay’s letter announcing his mission to Spain.7 He instructed Montmorin to take no direct part in Jay’s negotiations with Spain and to conduct himself in such a way as to maintain the confidence of both parties. He also instructed La Luzerne, French minister to the United States, to present Congress with a list of conditions Spain required as a basis for a relationship with the United States. These made it very clear that Spain had declared war on Britain to advance its own interests and that it intended to circumscribe the territory of the United States as narrowly as possible and to offer the Americans “amity,” not recognition. Floridablanca’s response of 24 February to Jay’s announcement of his mission carried the same message. La Luzerne avoided the overt, counterproductive advocacy that had characterized Gérard’s efforts to persuade Congress to modify its territorial expectations and recommended that Spain continue its campaigns to recover the lower Mississippi and the Floridas. Success there would compel the United States to accept Spanish claims to those territories.8

Jay did not set out for Madrid until he received news in early March that he would be received in some capacity.9 He arrived there on 4 April and spent the next three weeks preparing a response to Floridablanca’s questionnaire. On 27 April, two days after he sent his reply,10 he received the letter of 11 December 1779 from the Committee for Foreign Affairs informing him that Congress had drawn bills on him for £100,000.11 Jay’s attempts to cover these bills, which began to be presented for payment almost immediately, dominated his life for many months and left him begging Floridablanca to prevent the destruction of American credit at a time when Spain’s own finances were in crisis. The embarrassment gave Floridablanca the opportunity to dole out funds in small amounts while evading substantive discussion of a treaty.12

In the course of their first meeting, on 11 May 1780, Jay and Floridablanca discussed both the American need for financial aid and the treaty. Although he gave assurances that Spain intended to aid the United States despite the high cost of its own expenditures on the war, Floridablanca immediately made it plain that there were conditions to be met: ships and naval supplies in exchange for a loan and relinquishment of the claim to navigate the Mississippi River in exchange for a treaty, discussion of which the minister deferred. Floridablanca did not meet with Jay again until 5 July, after news of the fall of Charleston to British forces had circulated. He questioned why the city had not been better defended. Although he had previously promised to provide Jay with his ideas about a treaty, they were not forthcoming. The death of Miralles in America offered another occasion to temporize. Discussion of substantive matters, including means to cover the bills being presented to Jay, would have to be deferred, he said, until a successor to Miralles had been found and instructed.13

The pattern established here persisted, especially with regard to the treaty. As Jay’s financial situation became more desperate, his requests for meetings with the Spanish minister went unanswered, and the comte de Montmorin had to be pressed to use his influence to gain Jay a hearing. Floridablanca designated Diego de Gardoqui as his intermediary. Gardoqui informed Jay in no uncertain terms that Spain would never acknowledge American rights to navigate the Mississippi. Spain’s financial difficulties had increased, and its offer to provide Jay with funds was replaced with an offer to guarantee repayment of funds Jay could raise elsewhere. When it became obvious that the guarantee was useless, at year’s end, in a conference about which Jay recorded few details, Floridablanca, now more optimistic about Spain’s ability to raise funds, agreed to cover bills presented month by month in 1781 to a total of $150,000. This commitment held for a few months but then proved fragile as well and left Jay scrambling to raise funds to cover the bills throughout the remainder of the year. Finally, in March 1782, Jay was forced to default on obligations totaling no more than $25,000.14

Jay did not learn until several weeks later that, as he had done previously, Franklin had secured funds from France to cover the last batch of bills. This freed Jay to join him in peace negotiations then ongoing in Paris. Floridablanca agreed that Jay could conduct negotiations for a treaty between the United States and Spain with Aranda, still Spain’s minister to France.15 These discussions, however, reached a stalemate when Aranda, with French support, insisted on a western boundary for the United States that would have kept it far from the Mississippi.16 Frustrated by Spain’s intransigence and irritated by its decision to allow British soldiers captured by Spanish forces at Pensacola and the Bahamas to be paroled to New York and Charleston without an explicit provison that they could not engage in combat against the United States, Jay made a final attempt to secure American rights to navigate the Mississippi River. On his own initiative, he proposed to Richard Oswald, the British peace commissioner, that Britain withdraw its forces from the two cities and use them to reconquer West Florida before the conclusion of peace. The two parties could then share the navigation of boundary waters, including the Mississippi, on liberal terms. For reasons described below, Britain did not make the attempt.17 As secretary for foreign affairs after his service in the peace commission was concluded, Jay would again have to confront the unfinished business of his mission to Spain.