Was James Robertson, the Founder of Nashville, a Spanish Traitor?
By Paul Whitten, Founder of Nashville Adventures
Picture the Cumberland settlement in 1788. A few hundred stubborn souls clinging to a riverbank, surrounded by frontier, cut off from the rest of the young United States by hundreds of miles of wilderness. Now picture their leader quietly writing friendly letters to a Spanish governor in New Orleans.
That leader was James Robertson, the founder of Nashville, the man we call the Father of Middle Tennessee. And yes, he really was cozying up to a foreign empire during the shaky first years of the city.
Traitor? That is the fun part. Let me walk you through what actually happened, because the truth is stranger, and a lot more human, than the word "traitor" lets on.
Who Was James Robertson, Anyway?
Before we put him on trial, let us meet the man.
Born in Virginia in 1742, James Robertson led the party that founded Fort Nashborough on the bluffs above the Cumberland River. His men reached the site on Christmas Day, 1779, and started building the crude cabins that would grow into Nashville. He fought, farmed, negotiated treaties, started the first school, and buried more friends and family than any founder should have to. By the late 1780s he was the closest thing the Cumberland had to a government.
He was not a schemer by nature. He was a survivor. And survival, out here, meant making deals that would have gotten you side-eyed back in Philadelphia.
The Problem: A City Starving for a River
Here is the thing nobody tells you about early Nashville. It was landlocked in every way that mattered.
Almost every river in Tennessee drains toward the Mississippi, and in a world before railroads and steamboats, that made New Orleans the only real doorway to the sea. A barrel of Cumberland corn or whiskey had exactly one path to market, and that path ran straight through Spanish territory.
Then in 1784, Spain slammed the door. They closed the lower Mississippi to American traders, and the frontier economy started to choke. As one history of the era puts it, the closure caused:
great consternation to political leaders and tradesmen on the frontier. (via The Tennessee Magazine)
On top of that, Spain was quietly arming Creek and Chickamauga warriors who were raiding the Cumberland settlements. So Robertson had a foreign power holding both his wallet and a knife. What would you do?
The Flirtation: Naming a Whole District After a Spanish Governor
What Robertson did was lay on the charm, thick.
In 1788 he pushed the North Carolina legislature to create a new court district for Middle Tennessee and name it the Mero District, after Esteban Rodriguez Miro, the Spanish governor of Louisiana. The settlers even misspelled it, but the message was clear. This was flattery as foreign policy, a group of frontier Americans naming their home after the very official they needed to win over.
The goal was not to become Spanish. The goal was to reopen the river and call off the raids. Historians are blunt about the motive. One account describes Robertson as:
scheming to establish a good relationship with Miro in order to gain the Spanish governor's assistance. (via Tennessee Encyclopedia)
Here is a detail I love on tour. The Mero District's first judge was John McNairy, and its first district attorney was a sharp young lawyer named Andrew Jackson. The same Andrew Jackson who would later make a career out of taking Spanish Florida. History has a sense of humor.
So Was He a Traitor? The Honest Verdict
Now for the question on the banner. And the honest answer is no, though I understand why it looks bad.
Robertson flirted. He flattered. He opened a back channel to a foreign governor while technically a citizen of the United States. If that were the whole story, we could end the argument there. But it is not the whole story.
When Spain made its actual pitch, offering Robertson free navigation of the Mississippi if he would pull the western settlements out of the United States and set up an independent government under Spanish protection, he turned it down flat. By the accounts of his life, he refused to even consider the matter.
That is the line between diplomacy and treason, and Robertson stayed on the right side of it. Compare him to General James Wilkinson, who was taking actual secret payments from Spain the entire time. Wilkinson was a paid foreign agent. Robertson was a frontier leader using the only leverage he had to keep his people fed and alive.
So call it a flirtation, a gamble, even a little cynical. Just do not call it treason. Robertson was playing a weak hand against an empire, and he played it to protect Nashville, not to sell it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was James Robertson a traitor to the United States?
No. James Robertson, the founder of Nashville, courted Spanish favor in the 1780s to reopen Mississippi River trade and stop frontier raids, and he even named the Mero District after a Spanish governor. But when Spain offered him free river access in exchange for leaving the United States, he refused. Historians view his actions as pragmatic frontier diplomacy, not treason.
What was the Mero District?
The Mero District was a court district created in 1788 for the Cumberland settlements of Middle Tennessee. James Robertson had it named after Esteban Rodriguez Miro, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, as a calculated gesture to win Spanish cooperation on trade and security.
Why did Nashville settlers need Spain at all?
Before railroads, Tennessee's rivers all flowed toward the Mississippi and New Orleans, which Spain controlled. When Spain closed the river to American trade in 1784 and armed Native nations raiding the frontier, Nashville's survival depended on dealing with Spanish officials.
Who really was a Spanish agent on the frontier?
General James Wilkinson was the genuine article. He secretly took payments from Spain while serving the United States, making him one of early America's most notorious paid agents. James Robertson, by contrast, negotiated openly on behalf of his settlements and refused Spain's offer to break away.
Walk the Ground Where It Happened
Here is what gets me, every single time. All of this, the letters, the flattery, the knife-edge survival, happened on the ground you can still walk today, a few blocks off Broadway.
On our Nashville walking tour, I tell the real founding story, the one with Spanish governors and desperate deals and a city that almost did not make it. If you want the setup, start with why Nashville exists because of the American Revolution and the story of the man Fort Nashborough was named after, then come see how Nashville was a city long before it was Music City.
Come find out why the founder of Nashville was writing love letters to the King of Spain. I promise the sidewalk version is even better.
