SIMULTANEOUSLY with the order to restore slavery at Guadeloupe and St.
Domingo, Bonaparte directed his Minister of Marine to prepare plans
and estimates for the expedition which was to occupy Louisiana. “My
intention is to take possession of Louisiana with the shortest delay,
and that this expedition be made in the utmost secrecy, under the
appearance of being directed on St. Domingo.”[141] The First Consul
had allowed Godoy to postpone for a year the delivery of Louisiana,
but he would wait no longer. His Minister at Madrid, General Gouvion
St.-Cyr, obtained at length a promise that the order for the delivery
of Louisiana should be given by Charles IV. to the First Consul on two
conditions: first, that Austria, England, and the dethroned Grand Duke
of Tuscany should be made to recognize the new King of Etruria; second,
that France should pledge herself “not to alienate the property and
usufruct of Louisiana, and to restore it to Spain in case the King of
Tuscany should lose the whole or the greater part of his estates.”
To these demands Talleyrand immediately replied in a letter of
instructions to Gouvion St.-Cyr, which was destined to a painful
celebrity.[142] After soothing and reassuring Spain on the subject of
the King of Etruria, this letter came at last to the required pledge in
regard to Louisiana:--
“Spain wishes that France should engage herself not to sell or
alienate in any manner the property or enjoyment of Louisiana. Her
wish in this respect perfectly conforms with the intentions of the
French government, which parted with it in 1762 only in favor of
Spain, and has wished to recover it only because France holds to a
possession which once made part of French territory. You can declare
in the name of the First Consul that France will never alienate it.”
St.-Cyr accordingly gave a formal written pledge in the name of the
First Consul that France would never alienate Louisiana.[143]
Even yet the formal act of delivery was delayed. Bonaparte gave
orders[144] that the expedition should be ready to sail in the last
week of September; but the time passed, and delays were multiplied. For
once the First Consul failed to act with energy. His resources were
drained to St. Domingo as fast as he could collect them,[145] and the
demands of the colonies on his means of transportation exceeded his
supply of transports. The expedition to Louisiana was postponed, but,
as he hoped, only to give it more scope.
From the time of Berthier’s treaty of retrocession, Bonaparte had tried
to induce the King of Spain to part with the Floridas; but Charles
IV. refused to talk of another bargain. In vain Bonaparte wrote to
the young King of Etruria, offering to give him Parma, Piacenza, and
Guastalla, if Don Carlos would add Florida to Louisiana.[146] When
at length the King signed at Barcelona, October 15, the order which
delivered Louisiana to France, Bonaparte pressed more earnestly than
ever for the Floridas. Talleyrand made a report on the subject,
dissuading him from acquiring more than West Florida.[147]
“West Florida,” he wrote, “suffices for the desired enlargement of
Louisiana; it completes the retrocession of the French colony, such
as it was given to Spain; it carries the eastern boundary back to
the river Appalachicola; it gives us the port of Pensacola, and a
population which forms more than half that of the two Floridas. By
leaving East Florida to Spain we much diminish the difficulties of
our relative position in regard to the United States,--difficulties
little felt to-day, but which some day may become of the gravest
importance.”
Bonaparte did not follow this advice. On the death of the Duke of Parma
he wrote with his own hand to the King of Spain, offering the old
family estate of Parma as a gift for the King of Tuscany, in return for
which France was to receive the Floridas.[148] The Queen, as before,
favored the exchange, and all her influence was exerted to effect it;
but Godoy was obstinate in evading or declining the offer, and after
months of diplomatic effort Bonaparte received at last, toward the
end of January, 1803, a despatch from General Beurnonville, his new
representative at Madrid, announcing that the Prince of Peace, with
the aid of the British Minister John Hookham Frere, had succeeded in
defeating the scheme.[149]
“The Prince told me that the British Minister had declared to him, in
the name of his Government, that his Britannic Majesty, being informed
of the projects of exchange which existed between France and Spain,
could never consent that the two Floridas should become an acquisition
of the Republic; that the United States of America were in this
respect of one mind with the Court of London; and that Russia equally
objected to France disposing of the estates of Parma in favor of
Spain, since the Emperor Alexander intended to have them granted as
indemnity to the King of Sardinia. In imparting to me this proceeding
of the British Minister, the Prince had a satisfied air, which showed
how much he wished that the exchange, almost agreed upon and so warmly
desired by the Queen, may not take place.”
Europe would have acted more wisely in its own interest by offering
Bonaparte every inducement to waste his strength on America. Had
England, Spain, and Russia united to give him Florida on his own
terms, they would have done only what was best for themselves. A
slight impulse given to the First Consul would have plunged him into
difficulties with the United States from which neither France nor the
United States could have easily escaped. Both Godoy and the Emperor
Alexander would have done well to let French blood flow without
restraint in St. Domingo and on the Mississippi, rather than drown with
it the plains of Castile and Smolensk.
Although the retrocession of Louisiana to France had been settled in
principle by Berthier’s treaty of Oct. 1, 1800, six months before
Jefferson came into office, the secret was so well kept that Jefferson
hardly suspected it. He began his administration by anticipating a
long period of intimate relations with Spain and France. In sending
instructions to Claiborne as governor of the Mississippi Territory,--a
post of importance, because of its relations with the Spanish authority
at New Orleans,--President Jefferson wrote privately,[150]--
“With respect to Spain, our disposition is sincerely amicable, and
even affectionate. We consider her possession of the adjacent country
as most favorable to our interests, and should see with an extreme
pain any other nation substituted for them.”
Disposed to be affectionate toward Spain, he assumed that he
should stand in cordial relations with Spain’s ally, the First
Consul. Convinced that the quarrels of America with France had been
artificially created by the monarchical Federalists, he believed that
a policy of open confidence would prevent such dangers in the future.
The First Consul would naturally cultivate his friendship, for every
Federalist newspaper had for years proclaimed Jefferson as the head of
French influence in America, and every Republican newspaper had branded
his predecessors as tools of Great Britain. In spite of the 18th
Brumaire, Jefferson had not entirely lost faith in Bonaparte, and knew
almost nothing of his character or schemes. At the moment when national
interest depended on prompt and exact information, the President
withdrew half his ministers from Europe, and paid little attention to
the agents he retained. He took diplomatic matters into his own hands,
and meant to conduct them at Washington with diplomatists under his
personal influence,--a practice well suited to a power superior in will
and force to that with which it dealt, but one which might work badly
in dealing with Bonaparte. When Chancellor Livingston, the new minister
to Paris, sailed for France, Jefferson wrote him a private letter[151]
in regard to the appointment of a new French minister at Washington.
Two names had been suggested,--La Forest and Otto. Neither of these was
quite satisfactory; some man would be preferred whose sympathies should
be so entire as to make reticences and restraints unnecessary. The idea
that Jefferson could put himself in Bonaparte’s hands without reticence
or restraint belonged to old theories of opposition,--a few months
dispelled it; and when he had been a year in office, he wrote again to
Livingston, withdrawing the objection to La Forest and Otto. “When I
wrote that letter,” said he,[152] “I did not harbor a doubt that the
disposition on that side the water was as cordial as I knew ours to
be.” He had discovered his mistake,--“the dispositions now understood
to exist there impose of themselves limits to the openness of our
communications.”
Even before Livingston sailed, the rumors of the retrocession of
Louisiana had taken such definite shape[153] that, in June, 1801,
Secretary Madison instructed the ministers at London, Paris, and
Madrid on the subject. These instructions were remarkable for their
mildness.[154] No protest was officially ordered against a scheme so
hostile to the interests of the Union. On the contrary, Livingston was
told, in September, 1801, that if he could obtain West Florida from
France, or by means of French influence, “such a proof on the part
of France of good-will toward the United States would contribute to
reconcile the latter” to seeing Bonaparte at New Orleans. Even after
Rufus King, the United States minister at London, sent home a copy
of Lucien Bonaparte’s treaty of Madrid, in which the whole story was
told,[155] this revelation, probably managed by Godoy in order to put
the United States and England on their guard, produced no immediate
effect. Jefferson yielded with reluctance to the conviction that he
must quarrel with Bonaparte. Had not Godoy’s delays and Toussaint’s
resistance intervened, ten thousand French soldiers, trained in the
school of Hoche and Moreau, and commanded by a future marshal of
France, might have occupied New Orleans and St. Louis before Jefferson
could have collected a brigade of militia at Nashville.
By the spring of 1802 Jefferson became alive to the danger. He then saw
what was meant by the French expedition against Toussaint. Leclerc had
scarcely succeeded, Feb. 5, 1802, in taking possession of the little
that Christophe left at Cap Français, when his difficulties of supply
began. St. Domingo drew its supplies chiefly from the United States.
Toussaint’s dependence on the American continent had been so complete
as to form one of the chief complaints of French merchants. General
Leclerc disliked the United States,--not without reason, since the
Government of that country, as was notorious, had done its utmost to
punish France, and had succeeded beyond expectation. Leclerc was a
soldier,--severe, impatient, quick to take offence, and also quick to
forget it. He knew that he could expect no sympathy from Americans, and
he found that all the supplies in St. Domingo were American property.
Of course the owners asked extortionate prices; and had Leclerc paid
them, he would within six weeks have seen his harbors glutted with
goods from Baltimore and New York. Instead of doing this, he seized
them, and insulted the American shipmasters and merchants. By the month
of March the newspapers of the United States were filled with stories
of Leclerc’s arbitrary and violent conduct. He was reported as saying
that the Americans were no better than Arabs; and one of his general
officers was said to have told Lear, the American consul-general, that
they were the scum of nations. Cargoes were taken without payment,
American shipmasters were seized and imprisoned for offences unknown
to the law; while Lear was notified that no consul could be received
in St. Domingo as a colony of France, and that he must quit the island
within a fortnight. No protest availed against such summary discipline.
Lear obeyed; and returning to Madison at Washington, told him of
American property confiscated and American citizens in prison.
Madison sent for Pichon, then in charge of the French legation at
Washington pending the appointment of a minister. Pichon was a relic
of the French republic; he had been long in the United States, and
felt little apparent sympathy with the consular _régime_ or its plans.
At Madison’s request, Pichon undertook to interfere, and wrote to
Leclerc letter upon letter of remonstrance.[156] America, he said,
could either feed or famish the French army: “Experience proves it; our
colonies were brought into revolt only by our unlucky misunderstanding
with her; through her alone can we raise them up again.” Leclerc
resented the tone of these letters, and wrote to Bonaparte that Pichon
was a scoundrel and a wretch, with whom he would hold no further
relations;[157] but before Leclerc’s letter could have arrived, the
First Consul had already ordered[158] Talleyrand to rebuke the _chargé_
at Washington for his American officiousness. Pichon’s diplomatic
career was closed; he retired into private life as soon as the new
minister arrived, but meanwhile his remonstrances were not without
effect upon Leclerc, whose anger rarely became vindictive.
The conduct of Leclerc in expelling Lear and imprisoning American
shipmasters because munitions of war were found among the cargoes
lying in the ports of Toussaint, first opened President Jefferson’s
eyes to the situation into which he was drifting; but other evidences
were not wanting that Bonaparte was no friend of the United States.
Talleyrand’s conduct was almost as exasperating as when he provoked
reprisals four years before. Chancellor Livingston reached France
about Nov. 10, 1801, just in time to see Leclerc’s expedition sail.
He was met by private assurances that Louisiana and the Floridas had
been bought by France, and he went to Talleyrand with inquiries.[159]
The imperturbable Talleyrand looked him in the face and denied the
fact. “It had been a subject of conversation,” he said, “but nothing
concluded.” At that moment Rufus King was sending from London the
text of Lucien Bonaparte’s treaty, dated eight months before, which
fixed the details of the retrocession. President Jefferson received at
the same instant Talleyrand’s explicit denial and the explicit proof
that Talleyrand was trying to deceive him. Jefferson soon satisfied
himself that Talleyrand’s conduct rested on a system; and he became
angrier with every act of the French foreign minister. Livingston,
naturally somewhat suspicious and fretful, soon became restive under
the treatment he received; for his notes and remonstrances were left
equally without answer or attention, whether they related to Louisiana
or to the debts due by the Government of France to American citizens.
As Livingston grew hot, and Leclerc’s temper burst into violence,
Madison became irritable, and by the month of May had reached the point
of saying that if such conduct should continue, “the worst events are
to be apprehended.”[160]
The President himself then intervened. A French gentleman, Dupont de
Nemours, happened to be in the United States on the point of returning
to France. Dupont’s name was then as well and honorably known in France
as that of his descendants was to become in the annals of the United
States. To him Jefferson turned as a medium of unofficial communication
with the First Consul. He enclosed to Dupont a letter addressed to
Livingston on the Louisiana affair, which he requested Dupont to read,
and, after reading, to seal.
“I wish you to be possessed of the subject,” he wrote,[161] “because
you may be able to impress on the Government of France the inevitable
consequences of their taking possession of Louisiana; and though, as
I here mention, the cession of New Orleans and the Floridas to us
would be a palliation, yet I believe it would be no more, and that
this measure will cost France, and perhaps not very long hence, a war
which will annihilate her on the ocean, and place that element under
the despotism of two nations,--which I am not reconciled to the more
because my own would be one of them.”
This idea was still more strongly expressed in the enclosure to
Livingston, which Dupont was to read, in order that he might
communicate its sense to Bonaparte:[162]--
“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.... Will not the
amalgamation of a young and thriving nation continue to that enemy the
health and force which are at present so evidently on the decline?
And will a few years’ possession of New Orleans add equally to the
strength of France?”
Dupont was to impress on the First Consul the idea that if he should
occupy Louisiana, the United States would wait “a few years,” until the
next war between France and England, but would then make common cause
with England. Even a present cession of New Orleans and the Floridas to
the United States, though it would remove the necessity of an immediate
advance to England, would not prevent the risk of a quarrel with
France, so long as France should hold the west bank of the Mississippi.
To obviate such a quarrel was the object of Dupont’s unofficial
mission. “If you can be the means of informing the wisdom of Bonaparte
of all its consequences, you have deserved well of both countries.”
As though to alarm Bonaparte were not task enough for any one man,
Jefferson suggested that it would be well to hoodwink Talleyrand.
“There is another service you can render. I am told that Talleyrand is
personally hostile to us. This, I suppose, has been occasioned by the
X. Y. Z. history; but he should consider that that was the artifice of
a party willing to sacrifice him to the consolidation of their power.
This nation has done him justice by dismissing them.”
To do Talleyrand justice was impossible; but his reflections on the
letter which Dupont was tacitly authorized to show him could hardly
have been just to Jefferson. With the X. Y. Z. history, as Jefferson
called it, fresh in Talleyrand’s mind,--an instance of his venality
so notorious that it had cost him his office, and so outrageous that
even his associates of the 18th Brumaire had not at first ventured to
reappoint him,--hostility to the United States had become with him a
personal as well as a political passion. Accustomed to the penetrating
candor of his own untroubled avowals, he read these words of Jefferson,
announcing that an American President had been dismissed from office in
order to do him justice:--
“This nation has done him justice by dismissing them; those in power
are precisely those who disbelieved that story, and saw in it nothing
but an attempt to deceive our country. We entertain toward him
personally the most friendly dispositions. As to the government of
France, we know too little of the state of things there to understand
what it is, and have no inclination to meddle in their settlement.
Whatever government they establish, we wish to be well with it.”
Talleyrand must have known enough of the American character to feel
that a Republican President could not seriously mean to represent
his own election as an act of national justice to a venal French
politician; in his eyes, the letter could have seemed to show only
simple-mindedness. One point needed no analysis of character. Jefferson
said that he did not know what sort of government the 18th Brumaire
created, or care to meddle in its affairs; he wished to be well with
it, and in any case should not go to war until England did so. Dupont
remonstrated against the nature of the message. “A young soldier,”
he wrote back,[163] “whose ministers can keep their places only by
perpetually flattering his military pride, will be much more offended
than touched by this reasoning; and if this be all that is advanced, we
may regard the negotiation as a failure.” To make its chances worse,
it crossed the ocean at the same time with the news that Toussaint
had submitted, and that no obstacle to the immediate occupation of
Louisiana remained. Dupont talked in vain. Bonaparte answered only
by pressing Spain for the Floridas, and demanding possession of New
Orleans.
Thus far American diplomacy was not successful; Jefferson’s efforts
were no more effective than Madison’s more cautious suggestions. As the
summer began, the President watched anxiously the course of events at
St. Domingo, and found consolation there for the baseness of Callender
and the assaults on Paine at home. “Though I take for granted,” he
wrote to Governor McKean,[164] “that the colonization of Louisiana is a
settled point, yet I suspect they must be much stronger in St. Domingo
before they can spare troops to go there. What has been called a
surrender of Toussaint to Leclerc, I suspect was in reality a surrender
of Leclerc to Toussaint.”
The seizure of Toussaint and his disappearance from the island,
which occurred as Jefferson wrote this letter, overthrew its hopeful
theories; but before long, reports began to arrive in the United States
that Leclerc had met with a new disaster, so terrible as to surpass
the horrors even of St. Domingo history. The first French army, of
seventeen thousand men, had been consumed in the task of subjecting
the negroes. A second army was next swept away by yellow fever. In
the middle of September, 1802, Leclerc wrote to the First Consul that
of twenty-eight thousand three hundred men sent to St. Domingo, four
thousand remained fit for service.[165] “Add to our losses that of
five thousand sailors, and the occupation of St. Domingo has cost
us till now twenty-four thousand men, and we are not yet definitely
masters of it.” He was depending on Toussaint’s generals and army for
his support against an insurrection of the laborers, who were maddened
by the rumor that slavery had been restored at Guadeloupe, and was soon
to be re-established at St. Domingo. Nothing could be more discouraging
than Leclerc’s letters:[166]--
“I have no false measure to reproach myself with, Citizen Consul;
and if my position, from being a very good one, has become very bad,
it is necessary to blame here only the malady which has destroyed my
army, the premature re-establishment of slavery at Guadeloupe, and the
newspapers and letters from France, which speak only of slavery. Here
is my opinion on this country. We must destroy all the negroes in the
mountains, men and women, keeping only infants less than twelve years
old; we must also destroy half those of the plain, and leave in the
colony not a single man of color who has worn an epaulette. Without
this the colony will never be quiet; and at the beginning of every
year, especially after murderous seasons like this, you will have a
civil war, which will shake your hold on the country. In order to be
master of St. Domingo, you must send me twelve thousand men without
losing a single day.”
Besides these twelve thousand men and twelve hundred thousand dollars
in specie, Leclerc required five thousand more men in the following
summer. “If you cannot send the troops I demand, and for the season I
point out, St. Domingo will be forever lost to France.”
Long afterward, at St. Helena, Napoleon wrote comments[167] on
the causes of his disaster at St. Domingo, severely blaming his
brother-in-law Leclerc for failing to carry out his orders to arrest
and send to Europe all the black generals, as he sent Toussaint.
Napoleon’s rule in politics, and one which cost him dear, was to
disregard masses and reckon only on leaders. Toussaint came within
a step of achieving the greatest triumph of his age. Had he been
true to himself and his color, and had he hidden himself for a few
months in the mountains, he need not have struck a blow in order to
drive Bonaparte’s generals back to Europe; the yellow fever and the
blind despair of the negro laborers would have done the work alone.
Bonaparte’s theory in regard to the negro chiefs was an illusion.
Christophe, Dessalines, Maurepas, and all Toussaint’s chief officers
served Leclerc faithfully till they saw his case to be hopeless.
“Dessalines is at this moment the butcher of the blacks,” wrote Leclerc
Sept. 16, 1802, in the midst of insurrections; “Christophe has so
maltreated them as to be execrated by them.” The negro chiefs were
traitors to both sides; and if not arrested by Leclerc, they deserved
to be shot by their own people. While they helped to exterminate the
black laboring class, Leclerc sent home reports that might have frozen
the blood of any man less callous than Bonaparte:[168]--
“The decrees of General Richepanse [at Guadeloupe] circulate here, and
do much harm. The one which restores slavery, in consequence of being
published three months too soon, will cost many men to the army and
colony of St. Domingo.... I get news of a bloody combat sustained by
General Boyer at the Gros Morne. The rebels were exterminated; fifty
prisoners were hung. These men die with incredible fanaticism,--they
laugh at death; it is the same with the women. The rebels of Moustique
have attacked and carried Jean Rabel; it should have been retaken by
this time. This fury is the work of General Richepanse’s proclamation
and of the inconsiderate talk of the colonists.”
As the insurrection spread, and the fever reduced Leclerc’s European
force, the black generals and troops began to desert. Shooting was
useless; drowning had no effect. No form of terror touched them. “Few
colonial troops remain with me,” wrote Leclerc in almost his last
letter. “A battalion of the Eleventh Colonial, which had been joined
with the Legion of the Cape, having furnished a number of deserters,
176 men of this battalion were embarked at Jacmel for Port Republican.
Of this number 173 strangled themselves on the way, the Chef de
Bataillon at their head. There you see the men we have to fight!”[169]
At length the report came that Leclerc himself had succumbed. Worn by
anxieties, exertions, and incessant fever, he followed his army to the
grave.
News of Leclerc’s death, Nov. 1, 1802, and of the hopelessness of
Bonaparte’s schemes against St. Domingo, reached the Government at
Washington nearly at the same time with other news which overshadowed
this. The people of the United States expected day by day to hear of
some sudden attack, from which as yet only the dexterity of Godoy and
the disasters of Leclerc had saved them. Although they could see only
indistinctly the meaning of what had taken place, they knew where to
look for the coming stroke, and in such a state of mind might easily
exaggerate its importance. A few days before Congress met, the Western
post brought a despatch from Governor Claiborne at Natchez announcing
that the Spanish Intendant, Don Juan Ventura Morales, had forbidden the
Americans to deposit their merchandise at New Orleans, as they had a
right to do under the treaty of 1795.[170]
No one doubted that although the attack might come from a Spanish
Intendant, the real party with whom America had to deal was not Spain,
but France. The secret papers of the French government show what
was said, but hardly believed at the time, that the First Consul was
not directly responsible for the act; but they also prove that the
act was a consequence of the retrocession. The colonial system of
Spain was clumsy and disconnected. Viceroys, governors, commandants,
intendants, acted in Mexico, Cuba, New Orleans, Peru, everywhere
without relation to each other. At New Orleans the Governor, Don Juan
de Salcedo, was powerless to control the Intendant, Don Juan Ventura
Morales, and no authority nearer than Madrid could decide between them.
The _entrepôt_, or right of deposit, not only prevented the Spanish
Intendant from imposing duties on American produce, but also covered
a large amount of smuggling which further diminished the revenue. The
Intendant, who had charge of the revenues, and was partly responsible
for the large deficit which every year drained the resources of Spain
to Louisiana, was forced to hear the complaints of the Treasury at
Madrid, continually asking him to find a remedy, and at last, in
one of its despatches, letting slip the remark that “after all, the
right of deposit was only for three years.” The treaty of 1795 had in
fact stipulated that the King of Spain would “permit the citizens of
the United States, for the space of three years from this time, to
deposit their merchandise and effects in the port of New Orleans, and
to export them from thence, without paying any other duty than a fair
price for the hire of the stores; and his Majesty promises either to
continue this permission if he finds during that time that it is not
prejudicial to the interests of Spain, or if he should not agree to
continue it there, he will assign to them on another part of the banks
of the Mississippi an equivalent establishment.”
According to the explanation given by Morales to Laussat,[171] the new
French prefect whom Bonaparte sent to receive possession of Louisiana,
the Spaniard acted on his own responsibility, in what he believed to
be the interests of the colony, and within the stipulations of the
treaty. Thinking that the retrocession offered a chance, which might
never recur, for reopening a question which had been wrongly decided,
Morales, defying the opposition and even the threats of Governor
Salcedo, proclaimed the right of deposit to be at an end. He reasoned
that Spain as a result of peace with England had shut her colonial
ports to strangers, and this measure, so far as it included Louisiana,
was illusory so long as the right of deposit should exist. The right
had been granted for three years from 1795; and if the practice had
been permitted to continue after these three years expired, it might
have been owing, not to the treaty, but to the general privileges
granted to neutrals during the war; and as for the Americans, it was
their own fault not to have looked more carefully to their rights
at the close of the three years, when they should have secured the
continuation or the promised substitute. As Spain was about to lose
Louisiana in any case, Morales remarked that she need not trouble
herself about the quarrel he was making with the United States; while
the French republic took Louisiana as it actually stood under the
treaties, and ought therefore to be glad of whatever improved the
actual situation, or opened the path to negotiations more advantageous.
This view of the matter, as Morales presented it, was the more
interesting because it was in the spirit of Talleyrand’s plans, and
reversed Godoy’s policy.
The rumor that Spain had closed the Mississippi roused varied
sensations as it spread eastward. Tennessee and Kentucky became eager
for war. They knew that Morales’s act was a foretaste of what they
were to expect from France; and they might well ask themselves how
many lives it would cost to dislodge a French army once fortified on
the lower Mississippi. The whole power of the United States could not
at that day, even if backed by the navy of England, have driven ten
thousand French troops out of Louisiana. On the contrary, a vigorous
French officer, with a small trained force and his Indian allies, could
make Claiborne uneasy for the safety of his villages at Natchez and
Vicksburg. No one could foresee what might be the effect of one or
two disastrous campaigns on the devotion of the Western people to the
Government at Washington. The existence of the Union and the sacrifice
of many thousand lives seemed, in the opinion of competent judges,
likely to be risked by allowing Bonaparte to make his position at New
Orleans impregnable.
The New England Federalists were satisfied that President Jefferson
must either adopt their own policy and make war on France, or risk a
dissolution of the Union. They had hardly dared hope that democracy
would so soon meet what might prove to be its crisis. They too cried
for war, and cared little whether their outcry produced or prevented
hostilities, for the horns of Jefferson’s dilemma were equally fatal to
him. All eyes were bent on the President, and watched eagerly for some
sign of his intentions.