cat in the fable, pull her chestnuts out of the fire. It is no part of
a king's trade to set up a republic. France played her own game,[2]
played it astutely and to the end. When the Colonies, with her help,
achieved their independence, she showed them, much to their wonder, for
they were fresh to the tricks of diplomacy, that in politics there is
no more friendship than in trade, or rather that politics is a game in
which the best player wins.
In view of what it had cost her to give up Louisiana, in the first
place, not only in loss of territory, but national prestige, it is
perhaps not strange that when, as our ally, France was in turn a victor,
she should be found trying to get back Louisiana for herself. To do this
she had to play a double game, with the help of Spain, while that power
stood ready in the background to take any thing that came in her way.
These two gamesters wished to restore what we should call the old
balance of power, thus confining the United States nearly in the limits
they had occupied as colonies. To her honor, England would not listen
to their seductive pleadings. Not that she loved her revolted subjects
more, but that she loved her old rivals less. When John Jay gave their
schemes to the light of day, it was seen France had never meant we
should be a power among the nations—only a little republic. In the end
England's pride prevailed over the sting of wounded self-love. Instead
of dictating the terms of peace, as she had meant to do, France had to
see herself shut out from Louisiana, for good and all, while Spain, the
Mephistophiles of American affairs, recovered Florida from England, so
excluding the United States from access to the Gulf of Mexico either
by the seaboard or the Mississippi River. What was now left of French
Louisiana, as it existed previous to this war, presented the anomaly of
a colony of French people living under the Spanish flag.
[Illustration: A MISSISSIPPI FLAT-BOAT.]
In effect, John Jay had urged upon England that blood is thicker than
water. Franklin said, "Let us now forgive and forget." And so the
Anglo-Saxon spirit prevailed.
With independence achieved, the United States gained, as we have seen,
all the territory, except Canada, which England had conquered from
France. At a single stride her frontier had reached the Mississippi on
the west and the Great Lakes on the north.
Before the war, of which this was the grand sequel, a thin stream of
English immigrants, chiefly from Virginia and North Carolina, under the
lead of Daniel Boone, had crossed the mountains of North Carolina into
Kentucky. This movement was central in what is commonly known as the
Blue Grass Region, of which Lexington may be considered the pivot.
After the war, a second and larger emigration, chiefly from New England,
crossed over the Alleghanies to the head of navigation on the Ohio,
whence it moved down that river to the Muskingum, and was central
about Marietta. Here, then, we have two separate streams of population,
belonging to the same sturdy Anglo-Saxon race, though originating in
different sections of the young Republic, each taking along with it to
its new home in the West the customs and traditions of its own section,
and guided by instinct or destiny upon lines which, ere long, were to
divide slave from free States.
By an Act of Congress, known in history as the Ordinance of 1787, all
that great block of wilderness country, into which this last emigration
was setting, became one political division under the name of the
North-west Territory.[3] The Act creating this territory also provided
for making three States from it, and most wisely forbade that slavery
should ever exist within its borders. Thus it was that the Ohio came
to be not only a physical, but a political, dividing-line between the
sections, which, now that the law of the land had fixed a limit slavery
should not overstep, came to be designated as North and South, not, as
formerly, from geographical situation only, but because the line had
been thus sharply drawn between free and slave institutions. Each was
now on trial before the world; each was now to show what it could do for
human progress, under its own institutions, with its own means, and on
its own chosen ground.
It would seem as if this splendid acquisition of ours, this North-west
Territory, now constituting the great heart and seat of power in the
American Union, might well have filled the fullest measure of patriotic
desire for territorial expansion. It was to be, however, but the cradle
of a newer and more robust growth, as the original States had been
for that just beginning at the centre. It was an empire in itself,
comprising all those States now enclosed between the Mississippi, the
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the Great Lakes. Yet this whole tract held,
in 1792, no more than ten thousand whites, settled in widely scattered
spots, among sixty-five thousand wild Indians.
These widely scattered spots were the new settlements at Marietta and
Fort Harmar on the Muskingum, Cincinnati and Fort Washington on the
Ohio, Clarksville at the Falls of the Ohio, with the old French posts
of Vincennes on the Wabash, Kaskaskia on the river of the name, and
Fort Chartres and Cahokia on the Mississippi. Over this vast tract
a score of military posts held the Indians in check, and formed the
kernels of future settlements. Along the line of the Great Lakes,
and contrary to treaty stipulations with her, England still held the
key-points,—Niagara, Miami, Detroit, Michilimackinac,—thus restricting
the movement of our citizens from east to west on that line, and so
shutting them out from the lucrative Indian trade of the Far West.
Let us now look at the section south of the Ohio.
[Illustration: ON THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI.]
Kentucky was made a State in 1792, and Tennessee in 1796. All south of
Tennessee and west of Georgia was formed (1798) into the Mississippi
Territory. On the east, or American, shore of the Mississippi,
settlement was mostly confined to the places mentioned in "The Founding
of Louisiana" as villages. None had outgrown this condition. Most were
simply plantations. Population had increased (1785) to thirty-eight
thousand persons, chiefly by the coming-in of refugees from Nova Scotia
and St. Domingo. And blacks were already numerous enough to cause
uneasiness among the planters. The cultivation of cotton and sugar was
growing to importance; but the Spaniards at New Orleans wanted all the
water to their own mill, as the proverb has it, which meant nearly the
same thing as closing the river to American trade altogether.
The Falls of the Ohio had already begun to assume importance both as
a depot and shipping-point. They were a natural stopping-place for
all boats going up or down the river. Hence Louisville had grown up
above the falls as the port of a remarkably thrifty cluster of inland
settlements which had taken the place of the primitive stations of the
first settlers.
On both sides of the Ohio the Indians made a determined stand against
the coming in of white settlers. But bravely as they fought, their
power was so broken in many bloody conflicts, that they were, at length
(1794), glad to sue for peace. Shorn of power, they were now confined
within narrower limits. England gave up (1795) the lake fortresses. All
roads to the West being now open, they were speedily thronged by an army
of settlers.
FOOTNOTES
[1] THE SOURCES OF THE MISSOURI. About the time Mackenzie
crossed the mountains (see chapter "Hudson's Bay to the
Pacific"), an employee of the North-west Company, named
Fidler, is reported to have gone from Fort Buckingham to the
head of the Missouri. Traders from St. Louis ascended the
river at this period, but how far is uncertain.
[2] FRANCE PLAYED HER OWN GAME. It is notorious that
the French minister, Vergennes, intrigued with the British
minister, Shelburne, outside the knowledge of the United
States Commissioners. See "Life of Lord Shelburne."
[3] NORTH-WEST TERRITORY was ceded to the General Government
by the States to provide a means for paying off the debt
incurred during the war. In thirty years it had half a million
people. Connecticut reserved a strip along Lake Erie to
herself.
GROUP II.
BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN IDEA.
AMERICA FOR AMERICANS.
"_America, is therefore the land of the future._"—HEGEL.
I.
AMERICA FOR AMERICANS.
ACQUISITION OF LOUISIANA.
"_I have given England a rival that will humble her
pride._"—_Napoleon._
We have now done with that part of French Louisiana lying east of the
Mississippi. It is now blossoming all over with incipient civilization
in the form of log cabins, trading-posts, cross-roads, hamlets, and
schoolhouses.
From 1793 to 1799 our old ally France, now become a republic, was
trying first to cajole, then to bully us into taking up her quarrel with
England. She even went to the length of demanding tribute-money from us
as the price of peace, and, upon a refusal, of ordering our minister out
of her territory. Our remonstrances were treated with disdain, our ships
captured, and our flag fired upon at sea, without even the formality of
a declaration of war. This conduct drove us into making reprisal. After
one or two of her frigates had been beaten in fight by ours, France grew
more pacific toward us, and again cultivated friendly relations with a
power she had seemed to despise, until the reply "Millions for defence,
but not a cent for tribute,"[1] warned her that America would never
yield a principle to threats.
Let us now turn to Spain. In 1795 this power had made a treaty which
secured to us the right of storing[2] American goods at New Orleans,
pending shipment abroad, thus making the river so far free for our
commerce.
In 1800 Napoleon had come to the head of the French nation. Ambition
to restore the ancient sovereignty of France over Louisiana led him
to propose to Spain the exchange of Tuscany for it. Spain accepted the
offer, and in 1800-1801 treaties of cession were signed, but not made
public, because war with England was probable, and Napoleon wished
to make his title good on the spot with the bayonets of his soldiers,
before England could know of it. Therefore for the present Spain kept
possession of Louisiana in trust for France.
Just here some grave international questions arose. Our rapid growth in
the West gave Spain uneasiness. It certainly was putting her possessions
in peril. In consequence she showed such an unfriendly spirit toward
us as to keep the West in a state of chronic irritation.[3] It even
disposed the West to listen to plans for separating her from the East,
which Spain would gladly have aided in, and so was fast breaking up the
feeling of national unity so essential to keep alive in the Republic.
Suddenly, without previous notice, the Spanish intendant at New Orleans
revoked the right of deposit. The act shut the only door by which
the people of Ohio, Kentucky, and Illinois could get to the sea. It
exasperated them to such a point that they begged the General Government
to drive the Spaniards out of the Mississippi for good and all.
In Thomas Jefferson the people of the West found a more sagacious
advocate. The cession could not long remain a secret. It was soon known
in the United States; but instead of calming the people, the change
of masters revived their fears, since it was felt that Napoleon, whose
exploits filled Europe with alarm, would prove more difficult to deal
with than Spain, whom nobody feared.
Such was the situation presented to Mr. Jefferson. Fortunately for its
solution, national pride and national policy do not always go hand in
hand.
Our minister, Livingston,[4] a very able man, was told to bring the
Louisiana question to Napoleon's attention, and to do it in such a
way as to leave no doubt in his mind that the United States could not
remain an idle looker-on while New Orleans was being bought and sold.
She had too much at stake. Napoleon's army was getting ready to sail
for Louisiana. There was no time to lose.
Mr. Livingston did not stop with the suggestion to sell New Orleans to
us. He went further, and proposed the cession of all Louisiana above
the Arkansas and east of the Mississippi. He did it with true republican
frankness, never hesitating to press home upon Napoleon's advisers the
dilemma which the possession of Louisiana must offer to their choice.
"What will you do with Louisiana? Would you have England wrest it from
you? Her navies have driven yours from the seas. Do you wish to force
the United States into joining with England, against you? England would
gladly give us what we ask, as the price of our help."
France was on the eve of war with England. But for this we should
hardly have had Louisiana so easily. There was no assurance felt that
the fleet Napoleon destined for Louisiana would ever reach the Balize.
Napoleon wanted money. It was true, national pride might be hurt by
the sacrifice, but it was most important, at this crisis, not to make
an enemy of the United States; and Napoleon foresaw that no foreign
power could long hold the mouth of the Mississippi, and have peace with
those States. That conviction was decisive in its effects. He declared
for the sale of Louisiana, outright, in these words: "I will not keep
a possession which would not be safe in our hands, which would embroil
our people with the Americans, or produce a coldness between us. I will
make use of it, on the contrary, to attach them to me, and embroil them
with the English, and raise up against the latter, enemies who will some
day avenge us."
Napoleon would not even wait for Mr. Monroe to arrive, after making up
his mind, but sent at once for Mr. Livingston, and opened the matter
with him on the spot. So little had our ablest statesmen, Mr. Livingston
excepted, touched the root of the matter, that, when Mr. Monroe did
come, with powers from Congress to treat for the cession of New Orleans
and the Floridas only, Napoleon surprised him with this master-stroke of
policy which not even Mr. Jefferson had foreseen. And thus a treaty[5]
for the whole of Louisiana was concluded on our part without adequate
powers.
The price agreed upon was eighty million francs, the equivalent of
twenty million dollars. Of this sum sixty were to be paid in money. The
remaining twenty were to be retained by the United States as indemnity
for damage done to our commerce under the orders of the Directory. In
this way the nation became the trustee for what is known as the French
Spoliation Fund. The principle was now laid down, that free ships make
free goods. When they had signed the treaty, the commissioners arose
and shook each other's hands. "We have lived long," said Livingston,
"but this is the noblest work of our lives." Mr. Jefferson's efforts to
bring about the geographical and political unity of the United States
were thus far completely successful.
FOOTNOTES
[1] "MILLIONS FOR DEFENCE." This celebrated sentiment,
uttered by our minister, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, was
echoed throughout the Union.
[2] THE RIGHT OF DEPOSIT allowed the landing and storing of
merchandise, going to foreign markets, until such time as it
could be put on board ship. Without it, the tobacco, corn,
flour and lumber of the West would have been excluded from
the markets of the world.
[3] STATE OF CHRONIC IRRITATION. Increased by Spain's
dilatory action in settling our southern boundary, her refusal
to give up Natchez, etc., as provided for under the treaty of
1795. In view of this attitude, the United States concentrated
troops on the Mississippi with the intention of seizing New
Orleans. England stood ready to do the same thing in case of
a rupture with Spain.
[4] LIVINGSTON, ROBERT R., one of the signers of the
"Declaration," deserves the name of the author of the
Louisiana purchase.
[5] TREATY SIGNED April 30, 1803; sent to the United States
May 13; ratified Oct. 21, seven senators voting against it on
the ground that the question should be first submitted to the
whole people.
A GLANCE AT OUR PURCHASE.
Hitherto Louisiana has played the part of a football in European
politics. The curtain is now to rise upon a far different scene.
For fifteen millions the United States obtained more territory than the
original thirteen had started out with.
As we have shown in a previous chapter, our people had more than enough
land already, and few men were wise enough, in that day, to forecast
our national greatness in the future; but at last the Mississippi in
all its course was ours, and the one question of highest moment to the
West was settled in our favor,—settled definitely and forever.
With what actual materials for progress, in nation-building, did the
United States set up her rule over Louisiana? The answer will show
what the French and Spaniards had done in two centuries or more of
intermittent effort.
[Illustration: A LOUISIANA SUGAR PLANTATION.]
Two rather large towns, twelve hundred miles apart, held about one-third
its whole population, and controlled all its trade. The first, New
Orleans, was the commercial port for the Mississippi Valley and its
products. The second, St. Louis, was a fur-trading post with its chief
outlet in Canada. One had a mixed population of from eight thousand to
ten thousand, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Americans and blacks; the other
did not have more than twelve hundred people, all told, many of whom
were boatmen, who passed much of their lives afloat on the rivers
or domesticated among roving tribes. In both, the French were most
numerous, but taking all Louisiana together, there were nearly, if
not quite, as many slaves as white people, although, as compared with
the Indians then occupying this vast territory, the whites were only a
handful.
[Illustration: FRENCH SETTLEMENTS: GERM OF ST. LOUIS.]
At the date of cession to the United States, New Orleans had perhaps
fourteen hundred houses, mostly built of wood and uniformly homely. Two
hours would have laid the whole of it in ashes. In the best part, a few
houses were built of brick, some one, some two stories high, with the
open galleries running round the outside, one is accustomed to see in
the tropics; yet though it had been burned over so recently as 1794,
New Orleans was little bettered in the rebuilding, showing, as before,
a collection of hurriedly built barracks and dwellings, among which the
Hotel de Ville and Parochial Church, alone, gave a certain metropolitan
character to this city of wood and shingles.
Though spacious, the streets were unpaved, dirty, and ill-kept. No
drainage could be had, and every thing was thrown into the street.
Summer heats quickly developed epidemic fevers. It followed that New
Orleans had the name of being the most unhealthy city in the United
States.
Besides the church and Hotel de Ville, or City Hall, there were
a military hospital, charity hospital, and nunnery,—all equally
inconspicuous in point of architectural design. There was also a theatre
in which a company, whom the revolt had driven from St. Domingo, acted
plays for the gratification of the Creole population.
Going north, Natchitoches on Red River, and Arkansas Post on the
Arkansas, may be considered outposts of the country immediately
dependent upon New Orleans. Each tapped the Indian trade of its river.
The first was a thriving, the second a poor village. We next come upon
a group of settlements, constituting what was known, under French and
Spanish rule, as Upper Louisiana, with St. Louis for its emporium.
Chief among these were New Madrid,[1] Cape Girardeau, St. Genevieve,
Carondelet, and St. Charles. The population, all told, counting from the
Arkansas to the Missouri, and including St. Louis, numbered about six
thousand, of whom at least a thousand were slaves, with a sprinkling of
half-breed French-Indian trappers besides.
St. Louis had arisen out of the transfer of the east bank of the
Mississippi to Great Britain. Rather than live as aliens, under English
laws, many French settlers went with Pierre Laclede,[2] across the
Mississippi, to a place already nicknamed by them Pain Court, where, in
February, 1764, they founded a new town with the name of St. Louis, in
honor of Louis XV.
[Illustration: OLD CONVENT, NEW ORLEANS.]
These people were mostly French Canadians,—either traders, trappers,
or voyageurs, who still kept up their trading connection with
Canada,—though a sprinkling of Spaniards and Americans became
incorporated with them, so making St. Louis a city of many tongues
like New Orleans. In both, an American could fancy himself in a foreign
country, among foreigners. But while New Orleans had grown up under the
worst conditions, in respect of situation and climate, St. Louis began
her career under the best of both. At New Orleans people lived, as it
were, on a floating island which the Mississippi might deluge with her
floods. St. Louis was laid out on a spacious terrace, elevated above
the united floods of the Missouri and Mississippi. Besides its high
and healthy situation, the spot chosen by the founders of St. Louis for
their future city was the best one to be found next south of the mouth
of the Missouri River. That the whole Indian trade of the upper country
was destined to be poured into the lap of the infant metropolis, was
early foreseen and soon realized by its sagacious founders.
[Illustration: ST. LOUIS AND VICINITY.]
Of St. Louis in its infancy we lack adequate description. It was a
palisaded village of the pattern so often described in these pages.
During the Revolutionary War (1780) it withstood the assault of a
marauding party sent against it from the Lakes, but lost some of its
inhabitants whom the enemy carried off into captivity. At this time it
had one hundred and twenty houses with eight hundred inhabitants, who
owned and bred many cattle. While a few houses were of stone, the major
part were mean, and the streets narrow and dirty. With the cession it
began to grow apace.
[Illustration: CHOUTEAU'S POND, ST. LOUIS.]
When Father Charlevoix, the Jesuit historian of New France, descended
the Mississippi in 1721, he found some miners at work on the Meramec,
under authority of Law's Company. While searching for silver the miners
struck galena ore which from that time began to be a source of wealth
to the province, the lead product mostly going down the river to New
Orleans.
[Illustration: ROCK TOWERS NEAR DUBUQUE.]
In that part of the Louisiana purchase comprised within the States of
Iowa and Minnesota, the North-west Company[3] of Montreal continued
to monopolize the Indian trade till after the cession. It had posts
on Sandy Lake and Leech Lake. Prairie du Chien had grown to a hamlet.
Julien Dubuque, a French trader, who had first gone there from Canada,
obtained permission to work the lead-mines where the city of Dubuque
now stands, and had settled there.
FOOTNOTES
[1] NEW MADRID. Shortly after the Revolutionary War, Baron
Steuben and other officers of rank obtained from the Spanish
authorities of Louisiana a grant of land on which they
proposed founding a military colony. Under this authority
New Madrid was laid out on a great scale in 1790, by Colonel
George Morgan of New Jersey. The Spanish governor Miro,
however, disconcerted these plans by building a fort there.
The place was nearly destroyed by the earthquakes of 1811-12.
CAPE GIRARDEAU and ST. GENEVIEVE were ports of shipment for
the lead-mines of the interior. The latter is called the
oldest settlement in Missouri (1755). ST. CHARLES, twenty
miles up the Missouri, had been settled by Blanchette, 1769.
[2] PIERRE LACLEDE came up from Lower Louisiana in 1763 to
start a fur-trade west of the Mississippi, going first to St.
Genevieve, subsequently to Fort Chartres. The two brothers
Auguste and Pierre Chouteau were with him. He held a trading
license from the governor of Louisiana.—_Nicollet-Edwards._
[3] NORTH-WEST COMPANY, the great rival of the Hudson's
Bay Company; formed by the union (1784) of rival interests;
Frobisher and McTavish, managers; did business by the way of
the Grand Portage, Fond du Lac, Leech Lake, etc.
II.
THE PATHFINDERS.
LEWIS AND CLARKE ASCEND THE MISSOURI.
_"To lose themselves in the continuous woods_
_Where rolls the Oregon."_