THE PURCHASE OF THE PROVINCE OF LOUISIANA
Not a war cloud was in the sky when Jefferson took the oath of office.
The European calm, to be sure, proved to be only a lull in the tempest
of war which was to rage fifteen years longer; but no man could have
cast the horoscope of Europe in that age of storm and stress. The times
seemed auspicious for the Republican program of retrenchment and
economy. Jefferson was so sanguine of continued peace that he would have
been glad to lay up all seven of the frigates which then constituted the
navy in the eastern branch of the Potomac, where "they would be under
the immediate eye of the department, and would require but one set of
plunderers to take care of them." Peace was his passion, he frankly
avowed. He would have been glad to banish all the paraphernalia of war.
Yet within three months the United States was at war with an
insignificant Mediterranean power and menaced by France from an
unexpected quarter.
Early in the spring of 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli, one of the Barbary
powers which for years had preyed upon the commerce of the
Mediterranean, declared war upon the United States by cutting down the
flagstaff at the residence of the American consul. European states had
purchased immunity for their commerce by paying tribute to these
rapacious pirates; and the United States had followed the custom. The
Pasha of Tripoli, however, was dissatisfied with the American tribute, a
paltry eighty-three thousand dollars, and demanded more. The other
Barbary powers threatened to make common cause with him. Anticipating
trouble, Jefferson had sent a small squadron to the Mediterranean even
before the dramatic act of the Pasha at the American consulate; and
hostilities began on August 1 with the capture of a corsair by the
schooner Enterprise. Therewith Jefferson's dreams of a navy for coast
defense only vanished in thin air.
Contrary to all expectations, the Tripolitan War dragged on for four
years, causing the peace-loving Administration no end of embarrassment.
So far from reducing expenditures, Gallatin was obliged to devise new
ways and means for an ever-increasing naval force. An additional duty of
two and one half per cent was laid on all imports which paid an _ad
valorem_ duty, and the proceeds were kept as a separate treasury
account. The Administration was sensitive to the charge that it was
guilty of the very crime which it had accused the Federalists of
committing--"taxing the industry of our fellow citizens to accumulate
treasure for war." With superior wisdom and a higher sense of popular
responsibility, the Republicans, so the argument ran, were establishing
a "Mediterranean Fund," so that the people might know in detail just
what was collected and spent for war purposes.
Tales of individual daring go far to relieve the tedious record of
ineffective blockades and bombardments during the war. Two exploits left
an imperishable memory in the minds of contemporaries--Lieutenant
Stephen Decatur's destruction of the captured frigate Philadelphia,
under the guns of the forts in the harbor of Tripoli; and the tragic
death of Lieutenant Richard Somers and the crew of the Intrepid, as they
were about to blow up the Tripolitan gunboats in the harbor. These deeds
of heroic adventure created the very last thing that Jefferson desired,
something closely akin to an _esprit de corps_ in the new navy.
It was not so much the onslaughts of Commodore Preble's gunboats,
however, as an unexpected attack on his eastern frontier which brought
the Pasha to terms. His exiled brother, Hamet Caramelli, had fallen in
with an American adventurer by the name of Eaton, who persuaded him to
join an expedition against their common enemy. With a motley army they
marched across the desert from Egypt and fell upon the outlying domains
of the Pasha. That astute monarch then yielded to persuasion. On June 3,
1805, with many protestations that he was being subjected to humiliating
terms, he agreed to live on terms of peace with the United States and
renounce all claim to tribute; but his injured feelings were salved by a
ransom of sixty thousand dollars for the crew of the Philadelphia. The
Pasha's brother was rewarded with a pension of two hundred dollars a
year.
At the same moment that hostilities broke out in the Mediterranean,
Jefferson heard disquieting news from France. "There is considerable
reason to apprehend," he wrote to Monroe, on May 26, 1801, "that Spain
cedes Louisiana and the Floridas to France. It is a policy very unwise
in both, and very ominous to us." What Jefferson apprehended was,
indeed, an accomplished fact. On October 1, 1800, the day after Joseph
Napoleon, in the name of his brother, set his hand to the Treaty of
Morfontaine, which restored amicable relations between France and the
United States, General Berthier under instructions from Napoleon signed
at Ildefonso a treaty which restored Louisiana to France. In effect, as
Mr. Henry Adams says, the second treaty undid the work of the first.
The retrocession of Louisiana, long desired and sought by the Directory,
was regarded by Talleyrand as a diplomatic triumph of first magnitude.
The price, easily paid by one who held Italy under his iron heel, was a
kingdom in Tuscany for the young Duke of Parma, nephew and son-in-law of
Charles IV of Spain. The gateway to this vast province was New Orleans,
and the avenue of approach lay by way of Santo Domingo, once an
important French colony, but now under the rule of Toussaint
L'Ouverture. Before Talleyrand's dream of a revived colonial empire in
the heart of the North American continent could be realized, this
"gilded African" must be removed and Santo Domingo restored to its
former position as the center of the French West Indies. The conquest of
a negro republic surely could not be a difficult undertaking for one who
had humbled Austria on the battlefields of northern Italy. In November,
1801, Napoleon dispatched Leclerc with an army of ten thousand men to
recover Santo Domingo.
Jefferson was thoroughly alarmed at the news of Leclerc's expedition.
"Every eye in the United States," he wrote, "is now fixed on this affair
of Louisiana. Perhaps nothing since the Revolutionary War has produced
more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation." No discerning
man could mistake the significance of the expedition; the French troops
would proceed to Louisiana after finishing their work in Santo Domingo.
The retrocession of Louisiana, in short, as Jefferson said, completely
reversed all the political relations of the United States. Hitherto,
from the Republican point of view, France had been our natural friend.
Henceforth, as the possessor of New Orleans, through which three eighths
of the produce of the West passed to market, she became a natural and
habitual enemy. "France placing herself in that door," wrote Jefferson
to Livingston, "assumes to us the attitude of defiance. The impetuosity
of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a
point of eternal friction with us, and our character, ... these
circumstances render it impossible that France and the United States can
continue long friends when they meet in so irritable a position.... The
day that France takes possession of New Orleans fixes the sentence which
is to restrain her forever within her low-water mark. It seals the union
of two nations who in conjunction can maintain exclusive possession of
the ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet
and nation."
Even as he expressed his apprehensions to Livingston, then Minister to
France, Jefferson suggested ways and means for averting the clash of
conflicting interests. If France was bent on possessing and holding
Louisiana, might she not make concessions for the sake of retaining the
friendship of the United States? Livingston was to sound the French
Government to ascertain whether it would entertain the idea of ceding
the Island of New Orleans and the Floridas. "We should consider New
Orleans and the Floridas as equivalent for the risk of a quarrel with
France produced by her vicinage," he assured Livingston.
What the Western world had to fear from the French occupation of
Louisiana appeared in November, 1802, when Governor Claiborne, of the
Mississippi Territory, reported that the right of deposit at New Orleans
had been withdrawn. The act, to be sure, was that of the Spanish
intendant, but every one believed that it had been incited by France.
The people of the Western waters, particularly in Tennessee and
Kentucky, were outraged and demanded instant war against the aggressor.
Even in Congress a war party raised its head. During all this popular
clamor the self-restraint of the Administration was admirable. The
annual message ignored the existence of the war party and referred to
the cession of Louisiana in colorless language worthy of Talleyrand.
The Administration was not, however, without a well-considered policy.
In January, at the instance of party leaders, an appropriation of two
million dollars was voted by Congress "to defray any expenses in
relation to the intercourse between the United States and foreign
nations"; and James Monroe was appointed Minister Extraordinary to
France and Spain, to aid Livingston and Pinckney in "enlarging and more
effectually securing our rights and interests in the river Mississippi
and in the territories eastward thereof."
Meantime, Napoleon's colonial schemes had received a decisive check. The
transfer of Louisiana had been delayed by the opposition of Godoy, who
had returned to royal favor in Spain; Leclerc's invading army had been
worn away by the attrition of incessant war with the negroes; a second
army had been decimated by yellow fever; and finally Leclerc himself had
succumbed to the dread destroyer, leaving the remnants of the French
troops to their fate. Without the most extraordinary exertions, Santo
Domingo was lost; and what was Louisiana without the island which was
the very heart of the projected colonial system? The First Consul was
almost ready to abandon a project which after all had originated in
Talleyrand's brain rather than in his own. What he sought was a fair
pretext to cover his retreat from failure.
Livingston plied the French Ministers with arguments to prove that it
was good policy to put the Americans in possession of the Island of
Orleans. One day, while he was repeating the old story, Talleyrand
suddenly asked what he would give for the whole of Louisiana. For the
moment Livingston was nonplussed, and declined to make any offer.
Talleyrand repeated his question and Livingston replied that twenty
millions of francs would be a fair price, if France would pay the
spoliation claims of American citizens since the Treaty of 1800.
Talleyrand demurred: the sum was too small. Thereupon Livingston
promised to advise with Monroe who was expected soon.
Monroe, as it happened, arrived on this very day. On the following day
Livingston learned casually from Marbois, a minister who stood very
close to the First Consul, that Napoleon had named a hundred million
francs and the payment of the American spoliation claims as the price of
Louisiana. Further conversation elicited the information that Napoleon
would consider an offer of sixty million francs with claims amounting to
twenty millions more. For a fortnight the two envoys, at the risk of
losing everything, sought to secure better terms. But the First Consul
would not abate his demands. On May 2, 1803, Livingston and Monroe set
their signatures to a treaty by which Napoleon agreed to sell a province
of which he was not in possession and which he had contracted never to
alienate. The price to be paid was the sum last named, amounting in
American figures to $11,250,000. The amount of outstanding claims which
the United States agreed to assume was estimated at $3,750,000. After
signing his name to the treaty, Livingston rose and shook hands with
Monroe and Marbois. "We have lived long," he said with emotion, "but
this is the noblest work of our lives."
In less exalted moments, Livingston and Monroe may well have
experienced some disquietude at what they had done. The instructions
given to Monroe contemplated no more extensive purchase than New Orleans
and West Florida, at a sum not exceeding $10,000,000. The envoys had set
out to purchase a tract of land which controlled the delta of the
Mississippi they had acquired an empire beyond the Mississippi whose
limits they did not know, at a price which exceeded their allowance by
$5,000,000. Besides, it was not at first believed that West Florida was
included in this purchase. Livingston was keenly disappointed, until on
narrower examination he found, in the words of the treaty, evidence
which satisfied him that France--to quote Mr. Henry Adams--"had actually
bought West Florida without knowing it and had sold it to the United
States without being paid for it." The words on which he founded his
theory were those which retroceded Louisiana "with the same extent as it
now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it,
and such as it should be according to the treaties subsequently entered
into between Spain and the other States." Monroe soon adopted
Livingston's view and pressed it upon the President.
The news of the purchase of Louisiana reached the United States in the
latter part of June and occasioned much rejoicing among stanch
Republicans of the Middle and Southern States. The people east of the
Alleghanies were densely ignorant about this Spanish province, but they
sensed in a vague way that its possession by a power like France would
have dragged the United States into the maelstrom of European politics.
The Federalists of the Eastern States looked askance at this as at every
act of the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, without knowing anything
about this vast domain beyond the Mississippi. The President himself was
not much better informed about Louisiana. In a report to Congress he
undertook to put together such information as he could cull from books
of travel and pick up by hearsay. His credulity led him into some
amazing statements. A thousand miles up the Missouri, he stated soberly,
there was a salt mountain, one hundred and eighty miles long and
forty-five miles in width, composed of solid rock salt, without any
trees or even shrubs on it. He would not have believed the tale but for
the testimony of travelers who had shown specimens of the salt to the
people of St. Louis. Federalist newspapers made merry over the
President's discovery. "Can this be Lot's wife?" asked one editor.
But Jefferson had already taken steps to dispel general ignorance about
the Far West. Securing from Congress an appropriation for an expedition
among the Missouri Indians, ostensibly to extend the external commerce
of the United States, he commissioned his private secretary, Meriwether
Lewis, and William Clark, brother of George Rogers Clark, to undertake
one of the most important explorations in American annals. With a body
of picked men, Lewis and Clark made their way to the upper waters of the
Missouri, and passed the winter of 1804-05 among the Mandans. In the
following spring and summer they crossed the Rocky Mountains to the
waters of the Columbia. Here they spent a second winter, and then began
their arduous return, by way of the Great Divide, the Yellowstone River,
and the Missouri, to St. Louis. The journals of the members of this
expedition are a remarkable record of personal adventures and scientific
observations. It was not until 1814, however, that the details of this
expedition were given to the public.
Meantime, Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike had won immediate fame by
publishing an account of two thrilling expeditions into the Far West. On
the first expedition Pike traced the upper course of the Mississippi
almost to its source; on the second, begun soon after his return to St.
Louis in 1806, he followed the course of the Arkansas to the peak which
bears his name. His attempt to explore the headwaters of the Rio Grande,
which he mistook for the Red River, led to his capture by the Spanish
authorities. After a roundabout journey through Mexico and Texas, he was
released on the Louisiana frontier.
Unexpected as the acquisition of Louisiana was to the Administration,
President Jefferson was quick to appreciate the vast importance of the
province to the United States. "Giving us the sole dominion of the
Mississippi," he wrote, "it excludes those bickerings with foreign
powers, which we know of a certainty would have put us at war with
France immediately: and it secures to us the course of a peaceable
nation." At the same time he was equally quick to see that the
acquisition would give "a handle to the malcontents." To his intimates
he avowed with the utmost frankness that the Administration had
exceeded its constitutional powers. The Constitution, he conceived, did
not contemplate the acquisition of territory not included within the
limits fixed by the Treaty of 1783. Yet he was firmly convinced of the
practical necessity of ratifying the treaty of purchase. The only way
out of the dilemma, he thought, was frankly "to rely on the nation to
sanction an act done for its great good, without its previous
authority."
Never doubting that so benevolent a purpose would be cordially approved,
Jefferson drafted an amendment to the Constitution authorizing the
acquisition of Louisiana and providing for its government. To his
surprise, leading Republicans received his proposal with indifference,
not to say with coolness. Nicholas thought that the power to acquire
territory by treaty might fairly be inferred from the Constitution, and
advised the President not to run the risk of turning the Senate against
the treaty by raising constitutional scruples. In much distress of
spirit Jefferson replied that to assume by free construction the power
to acquire territory was to make blank paper of the Constitution. If the
treaty-making power could be stretched in this fashion, then there was
no limit to its extent. But finding that his party did not share his
scruples, Jefferson abandoned his amendment to the Constitution,
"confiding that the good sense of our country will correct the evil of
construction when it shall produce ill effects." Hamilton in all the
pride of triumphant Federalism had never gone further than this.
The debates in Congress over the treaty are full of interest to the
student of constitutional law. The treaty fairly bristled with
controversial points. The exigencies of politics played havoc with
consistency. Parties seemed to have changed sides. Federalists borrowed
state-rights arguments without a tremor; and Republicans employed the
language of centralization with Federalist facility. Federalists from
New England looked beyond the immediate issue and discerned the
inevitable economic as well as political consequences of westward
expansion. The men who would have naturally populated the vacant lands
of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont would inevitably seek this "new
paradise of Louisiana," observed a New England pamphleteer. Jeffersonian
Democracy rather than Federalism would become the creed of these
transplanted New Englanders, if Ohio were a fair example of future
Western Commonwealths. Moreover, as these new States would in all
probability enter the Union as slaveholding communities, they would
further impair the influence of the Eastern States in the National
Government. Even the remnant of the Federalist party in the South
opposed the purchase of Louisiana, fearing that the Atlantic States
would be depressed in influence by the formation of great States in the
West.
Upon one great constitutional principle, both Federalists and
Republicans were disposed to agree: that the United States had the power
to acquire foreign territory, either by treaty or conquest. Senator
Tracy, of Connecticut, conceded this point, but denied that the
inhabitants of an acquired territory could be admitted into the Union
and be made citizens by treaty. In providing that "the inhabitants of
the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union," the
Administration had exceeded its constitutional authority. The consent of
all the States was necessary to admit into the Union. Senator Pickering,
of Massachusetts, held the same view. "I believe the assent of each
individual State to be necessary," said he, "for the admission of a
foreign country as an associate in the Union, in like manner as in a
commercial house the consent of each member would be necessary to admit
a new partner into the company." To this line of argument, Taylor, of
Virginia, replied that the words of the treaty did not contemplate the
erection of the ceded territory as a State, but its incorporation as a
Territory.
On October 17, 1803, the Senate ratified the treaty by a vote
of twenty-four to seven. Two constitutional principles seemed,
therefore, to be decided: the Government had a constitutional
right to acquire foreign territory; and the treaty-making power could
incorporate--whatever that expression might mean--such territory into
the Union. A third matter of policy had yet to be determined: what
powers had Congress over the new territory? Two courses lay open, either
to make Louisiana a part of the "territory" which the Constitution gives
Congress power to "dispose of," or to hold the province as a dependency
apart from other organized Territories. The provisional act which
Congress adopted pointed in this latter direction, since it authorized
the President to take possession of the province and concentrated all
powers, civil and military, in the hands of agents to be appointed by
him. When objection was made that such despotic authority was
incompatible with the Constitution, Rodney, of Maryland, declared in the
House of Representatives that Congress had a power in the Territories
which it could not exercise in the States, and that the limitations of
power found in the Constitution were applicable to States and not to
Territories. The Republicans were making rapid progress in learning the
vocabulary of Federalism.
It is one of the ironies of history that the province over which parties
battled with so much display of legal profundity was not yet in the
possession of the First Consul. Six months after the ratification of the
treaty, in the old Cabildo at New Orleans, Laussat received from the
Spanish governor the keys of the city and took possession of the
province in the name of his master. For twenty days the Tricolor floated
over the Place d'Armes, emblem of the shadowy French tenure. On December
2, it, in turn, gave place to the Stars and Stripes, as Louisiana passed
into the hands of the last of its rulers, the puissant young republic.
In the following year Congress divided the province, giving to the
southern part, the Territory of Orleans, which contained most of the
inhabitants, a separate territorial government, and annexing the
sparsely settled upper part to the Indiana Territory. The Act of 1804
was roundly abused because it gave to the President the appointment of
all officers in the Territory of Orleans, even the appointment of the
legislative council of thirteen. By the treaty, it was pointed out, the
inhabitants of Louisiana were guaranteed all "the rights, advantages,
and immunities of citizens of the United States." Was not representative
government one of these privileges? The obvious answer was the
unpreparedness of the Spanish inhabitants for Anglo-American
institutions. To the Western American who floated down the Mississippi,
past the cotton-fields and sugar plantations cultivated by African
negroes, and who landed his cargo on the levee at New Orleans, among the
motley throngs, province and city seemed like a foreign country, and the
inhabitants aliens in speech and habits. From the buildings, with their
many arcades and balconies and varied coloring, to the courts of law
where the Code Napoleon, introduced by Laussat, added confusion to the
Spanish law, the atmosphere of New Orleans was that of a city of the Old
World, where one civilization was superimposed upon an older. Men bred
in the traditions of the English law might reasonably doubt whether the
people of Louisiana were ready for self-government.
Before the new territorial government could be organized, a remonstrance
had been drawn up by the people of Louisiana and forwarded by three
commissioners with all possible dispatch to Washington. In the following
year (1805), Congress so far yielded to the complaints of the people of
Louisiana as to authorize an elective assembly and to hold out the
promise of eventual statehood.
But what were the bounds of Louisiana? No one knew with certitude. The
letters of Livingston and Monroe had convinced Jefferson that Louisiana
included at least West Florida, and for two years he sought by every
diplomatic device to wrest from Spain a confirmation of this shadowy
title. That Spain did not intend to cede West Florida and that France
had no expectation of receiving it seems clear enough from the
instructions to Laussat. What he handed over to the American
representative was Louisiana, with the Rio Bravo and the Iberville as
boundaries. With some show of right, Jefferson might have occupied
Texas; he preferred, however, to chase his phantom claim to Florida. For
Texas nobody then cared, but the Floridas were coveted by Southern
planters.
In a letter written soon after the signing of the Louisiana Treaty,
Robert Livingston relates a suggestive conversation which he had with
Talleyrand. "What are the eastern bounds of Louisiana?" asked Livingston
rather naively. "I do not know," replied Talleyrand; "you must take it
as we received it." "But what did you mean to take?" Livingston
insisted. "I do not know," was the reply. "Then you mean that we shall
construe it our own way?" "I can give you no direction," replied the
astute Frenchman. "You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I
suppose you will make the most of it."
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The history of the Barbary Wars is well told by G. W. Allen, _Our
Navy and the Barbary Corsairs_(1905), and by C. O. Paullin,
_Commodore John Rodgers_(1910). The investigations of Henry Adams
in foreign archives enabled him to treat the diplomatic history of
the purchase of Louisiana with great fullness. F. A. Ogg, _The
Opening of the Mississippi_(1904), and J. K. Hosmer, _The
Louisiana Purchase_ (1902), contain brief accounts of the
acquisition of the province. The actual route of the Lewis and
Clark expedition may be traced with the aid of O. D. Wheeler, _The
Trail of Lewis and Clark_, 1804-1904 (1904). The constitutional
aspects of the Louisiana Treaty and the subsequent legislation for
the territory are discussed at length by Adams, and less
satisfactorily by Schouler and Von Holst. Channing, _The
Jeffersonian System, 1801-1811_ (1906), contains a good account of
the whole episode. The problem of the original boundaries is
discussed by F. E. Chadwick, _The Relations of the United States
and Spain_(1909).