Following France's defeat of Spain in the War of the Pyrenees, land speculators, already on the financial brink, worried that the French would eventually gain control of Spanish-controlled Louisiana and shut off American access to the Mississippi River. In hopes of preventing this, Blount and his friend, an American Indian agent named John Chisholm, concocted a plan to allow Britain to gain control of Florida and Louisiana, and in return give free access to both New Orleans and the Mississippi River to American merchants. The plan called for territorial militias, with the aid of the British fleet, to attack New Madrid, New Orleans, and Pensacola.