[1] A sixth, less characteristic, might be included, viz. the "pine
flats," generally wet, which are N. of Lake Pontchartrain, between
the alluvial lands and the pine hills, and, in the S.E. corner of the
state, between the hills and the prairie.
[2] The original channel of the Red river. It has been so useful in
relieving the Mississippi of floods, that the Red river may possibly
be permanently diverted again into the bayou artificially.
[3] The population was 76,556 in 1810; 153,407 in 1820; 215,739 in
1830; 352,411 in 1840; 517,762 in 1850; 708,002 in 1860; 726,915 in
1870; 939,946 in 1880; 1,118,588 in 1890; and 1,381,825 in 1900.
[4] Other acts bearing on Territorial government are those of the
31st of October 1803 and the 23rd of March 1805.
[5] Terms of _actual service in Louisiana_; Gayarré is the authority
for the French and Spanish period.
[6] Did not openly assume power or supersede Aubry.
[7] Captain-general charged to establish order and settle Unzaga as
governor.
[8] At first, till 1779, only acting governor.
[9] Actual exercise of power 20 days.
[10] Counted out by partisan returning-board and not recognized by
U.S. government.
[11] Not recognized by U.S. government.
[12] Elected U.S. Senator 1910; accepted, but afterward withdrew.
LOUISIANA, a city of Pike county, Missouri, U.S.A., situated below the
mouth of the Salt river, on the western bank of the Mississippi, about
90 m. N. of St. Louis. Pop. (1900) 5131, including 1075 negroes and 161
foreign-born; (1910) 4454; there is also a considerable suburban
population. Louisiana is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and
the Chicago & Alton railways, and by several lines of river steamboats.
The river is spanned here by a railway bridge. The city is laid out
fairly regularly in the river valley and on bluffs along the river, and
has attractive residential districts, commanding good views. It has very
active and varied industries, and is a trade centre for a large grain-
and fruit-producing and stock-raising region, and has one of the largest
nurseries in the United States. Louisiana was laid out in 1818, was the
county-seat from that date until 1825, was incorporated as a town in
1845 and was chartered as a city in 1849.
LOUISIANA PURCHASE, a large portion of the area of the United States of
America, purchased from the French Republic in 1803. The territory to
which France held explorer's title originally included the entire valley
of the Mississippi (see Louisiana); but the "Louisiana" which was ceded
by her to Spain in 1762 (England refusing it, preferring the Floridas),
retroceded to France in 1800,[1] and ceded by Napoleon to the United
States--in violation of his pledge to Spain that he would not alienate
the province--embraced only the portion W. of the river and the island
of New Orleans on the E. (and, as might be claimed with some show of
argument, West Florida to the Perdido river).
With the settlement of the trans-Alleghany region, the freedom of the
Mississippi had become of vital importance to the western settlements,
and Spain had recognized these interests in her treaty with the United
States of 1795, by guaranteeing freedom of navigation and the privilege
of deposit at New Orleans. The transfer of Louisiana from a weak
neighbour to so powerful and ambitious a state as France was naturally
unwelcome to the United States, and Robert R. Livingston, the American
minister in Paris, was instructed by Secretary-of-State Madison to
endeavour to prevent the consummation of the retrocession; or, should
that be irrevocable, to endeavour to buy the Floridas (either from
France, if they had passed with Louisiana, or through her goodwill from
Spain)--or at least West Florida--and if possible New Orleans, so as to
give the United States a secure position on the Mississippi, and insure
the safety of her commerce. The United States was also trying to collect
claims of her merchants for spoliations by French cruisers during the
late war between France and Great Britain. In his preliminary
propositions Livingston lightly suggested to Talleyrand a cession of
Louisiana to satisfy these claims; following it with the more serious
demand that France should pledge observance of the Spanish concession to
the Mississippi trade. This pledge Napoleon readily gave. But during
these negotiations a suspension by the Spanish governor of the right of
deposit aroused extreme apprehension in America and resulted in warlike
votes in Congress. Of these, and of London reports of a British
expedition against New Orleans preparing in anticipation of the imminent
rupture of the peace of Amiens, Livingston made most capable use; and
pressed for a cession of West Florida, New Orleans and Louisiana north
of the Arkansas river. But without New Orleans Louisiana was of little
present worth, and Napoleon--the collapse of whose American colonial
schemes seemed involved in his failure in Santo Domingo, who was
persuaded he could not hold Louisiana against Great Britain, and who was
already turning from projects of colonial empire toward his later
continental policy--suddenly offered to Livingston the whole of the
province. Livingston disclaimed wanting the part below the Arkansas. In
even mentioning Louisiana he had gone outside his instructions. At this
stage James Monroe became associated with him in the negotiations. They
were quickly closed, Barbé Marbois acting for Napoleon, and by three
conventions signed on the 30th of April 1803 the American ministers,
without instructions, boldly accepted for their country a territory
approximately 1,000,000 sq. m. in area--about five times the area of
continental France. For this imperial domain, perhaps the richest
agricultural region of the world, the United States paid 60,000,000
francs ($11,250,000) outright, and assumed the claims of her citizens
against France to the extent of 20,000,000 francs ($3,750,000)
additional; the interest payments incidental to the final settlement
raising the total eventually to $27,267,622, or about four cents an
acre.
Different writers have emphasized differently the various factors in
this extraordinary diplomatic episode. Unquestionably the western people
were ready to war for the navigation of the Mississippi; but, that being
guaranteed, it seems certain that France might peaceably have taken and
held the western shore. The acquisition was not a triumph of American
diplomacy, but a piece of marvellous diplomatic good fortune; for the
records abundantly prove, as Madison said, that the cause of success was
a sudden policy of Napoleon, forced by European contingencies.
Livingston alone of the public men concerned showed indubitably before
the event a conception of the feasibility and desirability of the
acquisition of a vast territory beyond the Mississippi. Jefferson had
wished to buy the Floridas, but alarmed by the magnitude of the cession,
declared his belief that the United States had no power to acquire
Louisiana. Though such strict construction of the constitution was a
cardinal dogma of the Democratic party, this dogma was abandoned
outright in practice, Jefferson finding "but one opinion as to the
necessity of shutting up the constitution" (or amending it, which was
not done) and seeking justification of the means in the end. The
Federalist party, heretofore broad-constructionists, became
strict-constructionists under the temptation of factious politics, and a
very notable political struggle was thus precipitated--notable among
other things for strong expressions of sectionalism. The net result was
the establishment of the doctrine of "implied powers" in interpreting
the constitution; a doctrine under which the Supreme Court presently
found power to acquire territory implied in the powers to wage war and
make peace, negotiate treaties, and "dispose of and make all needful
rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property
belonging to the United States."
The exact limits of the acquisition were not definitely drawn. The
French archives show that Napoleon regarded the Rio Grande as the W.
boundary of the territory of which he was to take possession, and the
United States up to 1819 ably maintained the same claim. She also
claimed all West Florida as part of Louisiana--which, in the usage of
the second half of the 18th century, it apparently was not. When she
acquired the Floridas in 1819-1821 she abandoned the claim to Texas. The
line then adopted between the American and Spanish possessions on the W.
followed the Sabine river from the Gulf of Mexico to the parallel of 32°
N., ran thence due N. to the Red river, followed this to the meridian of
100° W. and this line N. to the Arkansas river, thence along this to its
source, thence N. to the parallel of 42°, and along this line to the
Pacific. Such is the accepted description of the W. boundary of the
Louisiana Purchase--waiving Texas--thus retrospectively determined,
except that that boundary ran with the crest of the Rocky Mountains N.
of its intersection with the parallel of 42°. No portion of the Purchase
lay west of the mountains, although for some years after 1870 the
official maps of the United States government erroneously included
Oregon as so acquired--an error finally abandoned by 1900.
On the 20th of December 1803, at New Orleans, the United States took
possession of the lower part of the province, and on the 9th of March
1804, at St Louis, of the upper. The entire region then contained
possibly 80,000 residents. The treaty of cession required the
incorporation of Louisiana in the Union, and the admission of its
inhabitants, "as soon as possible, according to the principles of the
Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages and
immunities of citizens of the United States." By act of the 26th of
March 1804 the region below 33° N. was organized as the Territory of
Orleans (see Louisiana), and that above as the District of Louisiana.
The region above 33°, renamed in 1805 the Territory of Louisiana, and in
1812 the Territory of Missouri, was divided as time went on into many
Indian reservations, territories and states. Thus were carved from the
great domain of the Purchase Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa,
Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Oklahoma in their
entirety, and much the greatest part of Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming and
Montana. There is justification for the saying of Thiers that the United
States were "indebted for their birth and for their greatness"--at least
for an early assurance of greatness--"to the long struggle between
France and England." The acquisition of so vast a territory proved thus
of immense influence in the history of the United States. It made it
possible for them to hold a more independent and more dignified position
between France and England during the Napoleonic wars; it established
for ever in practice the doctrine of implied powers in the
interpretation of the Federal Constitution; it gave the new republic a
grand basis for material greatness; assured its dominance in North
America; afforded the field for a magnificent experiment in expansion,
and new doctrines of colonization; fed the national land hunger;
incidentally moulded the slavery issue; and precipitated its final
solution.
It is generally agreed that after the Revolution and the Civil War, the
Louisiana Purchase is the greatest fact in American history. In 1904 a
world's fair, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, was held at St Louis in
commemoration of the cession. After one hundred years the wilderness
then acquired had become the centre of the power and wealth of the
Union. It contained in 1903 15,000,000 inhabitants, and its taxable
wealth alone was four hundred times the fifteen millions given to
Napoleon.
AUTHORITIES.--The official literature is in the _American State
Papers, Foreign Relations_, vol. 2, and _Public Lands_, vol. 2;
diplomatic papers reprinted in _House Document 431, 57^th Congress,
2nd Session_ (1903); to which add the _Histoire de la Louisiane et de
la cession_ (Paris, 1829; Eng. trans., Philadelphia, 1830), by
François Barbé-Marbois. This book abounds in supposed "speeches" of
Napoleon, and "sayings" by Napoleon and Livingston that would have
been highly prophetic in 1803, though no longer so in 1829. They have
been used liberally and indiscriminatingly by the most prominent
American historians. See also T. Donaldson, _The Public Domain, House
Miscellaneous Document 45, pt. 4, 47^th Congress_, _2nd Session_. For
the boundary discussions by J. Q. Adams and Don L. de Onis, 1818-1819,
_American State Papers, Foreign Relations_, vol. 4; also in Onis's
_Official Correspondence between Don Luis de Onis_ ... _and John
Quincy Adams_, &c. (London, 1818), or _Memoria sobre las negociaciones
entre España y los Estados Unidos que dieron motivo al tratado de
1819_ (Madrid, 1820). See also discussion and map in _U.S. Census,
1900, Bulletin 74_; and the letters of Thomas Jefferson, James
Madison, Rufus King and other statesmen of the time. By far the best
general account of the diplomacy is in Henry Adams's _History of the
United States_, vols. 1 and 2; and of Western conditions and American
sentiment in J. B. McMaster's _History of the United States_, vols. 2
and 3. Consult also Justin Winsor, _Narrative and Critical History_,
vol. 7; and various valuable periodical articles, especially in the
_American Historical Review_, by F. J. Turner and others. Reference
may be made to B. Hermann, _The Louisiana Purchase_ (Washington,
1898), and Theodore Roosevelt's _Winning of the West_, vol. 4. Of the
various special but popular accounts (by J. K. Hosmer, Ripley
Hitchcock, R. Blanchard, K. E. Winship, &c.), not one is worthy of its
subject, and all contain various inaccuracies.