The price of silver, today, is about $50.00 an ounce. Not long ago, it was $7.00/oz. It goes up as the leaders of our government appear to be less competent. They are appearing to be so with increasing speed.
In the Post-Colonial period, wealthy Southerners were rich in land, but not in silver. Mexico, however, had silver mines that had been producing since the mid-1500s.
That was a target for cash-poor Southerners and was a powerful, but rarely mentioned cause for many in the South to join various semi-military groups whose vague aim of “Empire” masked a drive for hard cash. The thought attracted Aaron Burr in what Jefferson thought to be a treasonous activity. It quite possibly crossed Alexander Hamilton’s mind, as well.
In the late 1700s and the first part of the next century, Spain was not as negligible a force as it would become. Her alliance with Napoleon made her a threat that had to be of even greater concern. As long as silver flowed from her colonies in the New World, Spain would not be a pushover for bunch of backwoodsmen.
Andrew Jackson’s defeat of the British at New Orleans, killing 2,500 British infantry while losing less than a hundred of his own men, showed that the “backwoodsmen”, under an effective leader, were the equal of the finest European land forces.
Suddenly, the profitable silver resources that Spain owned in Mexico were realized to be vulnerable. Bands of cash-poor Americans could make real trouble by heading South. Spain soon saw the advantages of giving/selling remaining parts of Florida to the United States. The ravenous appetite for hard cash, in the form of Spanish silver, was partly quieted by the acquisition of what, at first, appeared to be little more than a giant swamp.
