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Jefferson and his Colleagues, A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty
Chapter IV. The Shadow of the First Consul
by Johnson, Allen
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Bainbridge in forlorn captivity at Tripoli, Preble and Barron
keeping anxious watch off the stormy coast of Africa, Eaton
marching through the windswept desert, are picturesque figures
that arrest the attention of the historian; but they seemed like
shadowy actors in a remote drama to the American at home,
absorbed in the humdrum activities of trade and commerce. Through
all these dreary years of intermittent war, other matters
engrossed the President and Congress and caught the attention of
the public. Not the rapacious Pasha of Tripoli but the First
Consul of France held the center of the stage. At the same time
that news arrived of the encounter of the Enterprise with the
Corsairs came also the confirmation of rumors current all winter
in Europe. Bonaparte had secured from Spain the retrocession of
the province of Louisiana. From every point of view, as the
President remarked, the transfer of this vast province to a new
master was "an inauspicious circumstance." The shadow of the
Corsican, already a menace to the peace of Europe, fell across
the seas.
A strange chain of circumstances linked Bonaparte with the New
World. When he became master of France by the coup d'etat of the
18th Brumaire (November 9, 1799), he fell heir to many policies
which the republic had inherited from the old regime. Frenchmen
had never ceased to lament the loss of colonial possessions in
North America. From time to time the hope of reviving the
colonial empire sprang up in the hearts of the rulers of France.
It was this hope that had inspired Genet's mission to the United
States and more than one intrigue among the pioneers of the
Mississippi Valley, during Washington's second Administration.
The connecting link between the old regime and the new was the
statesman Talleyrand. He had gone into exile in America when the
French Revolution entered upon its last frantic phase and had
brought back to France the plan and purpose which gave
consistency to his diplomacy in the office of Minister of Foreign
Affairs, first under the Directory, then under the First Consul.
Had Talleyrand alone nursed this plan, it would have had little
significance in history; but it was eagerly taken up by a group
of Frenchmen who believed that France, having set her house in
order and secured peace in Europe, should now strive for orderly
commercial development. The road to prosperity, they believed,
lay through the acquisition of colonial possessions. The recovery
of the province of Louisiana was an integral part of their
programme.
While the Directory was still in power and Bonaparte was pursuing
his ill-fated expedition in Egypt, Talleyrand had tried to
persuade the Spanish Court to cede Louisiana and the Floridas.
The only way for Spain to put a limit to the ambitions of the
Americans, he had argued speciously, was to shut them up within
their natural limits. Only so could Spain preserve the rest of
her immense domain. But since Spain was confessedly unequal to
the task, why not let France shoulder the responsibility? "The
French Republic, mistress of these two provinces, will be a wall
of brass forever impenetrable to the combined efforts of England
and America," he assured the Spaniards. But the time was not
ripe.
Such, then, was the policy which Bonaparte inherited when he
became First Consul and master of the destinies of his adopted
country. A dazzling future opened before him. Within a year he
had pacified Europe, crushing the armies of Austria by a
succession of brilliant victories, and laying prostrate the petty
states of the Italian peninsula. Peace with England was also in
sight. Six weeks after his victory at Marengo, Bonaparte sent a
special courier to Spain to demand--the word is hardly too
strong--the retrocession of Louisiana.
It was an odd whim of Fate that left the destiny of half the
American continent to Don Carlos IV, whom Henry Adams calls "a
kind of Spanish George III "--virtuous, to be sure, but heavy,
obtuse, inconsequential, and incompetent. With incredible
fatuousness the King gave his consent to a bargain by which he
was to yield Louisiana in return for Tuscany or other Italian
provinces which Bonaparte had just overrun with his armies.
"Congratulate me," cried Don Carlos to his Prime Minister, his
eyes sparkling, "on this brilliant beginning of Bonaparte's
relations with Spain. The Prince-presumptive of Parma, my
son-in-law and nephew, a Bourbon, is invited by France to reign,
on the delightful banks of the Arno, over a people who once
spread their commerce through the known world, and who were the
controlling power of Italy,--a people mild, civilized, full of
humanity; the classical land of science and art." A few
war-ridden Italian provinces for an imperial domain that
stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Superior and that
extended westward no one knew how far!
The bargain was closed by a preliminary treaty signed at San
Ildefonso on October 1, 1800. Just one year later to a day, the
preliminaries of the Peace of Amiens were signed, removing the
menace of England on the seas. The First Consul was now free to
pursue his colonial policy, and the destiny of the Mississippi
Valley hung in the balance. Between the First Consul and his
goal, however, loomed up the gigantic figure of Toussaint
L'Ouverture, a full-blooded negro, who had made himself master of
Santo Domingo and had thus planted himself squarely in the
searoad to Louisiana. The story of this "gilded African," as
Bonaparte contemptuously dubbed him, cannot be told in these
pages, because it involves no less a theme than the history of
the French Revolution in this island, once the most thriving
among the colonial possessions of France in the West Indies. The
great plantations of French Santo Domingo (the western part of
the island) had supplied half of Europe with sugar, coffee, and
cotton; three-fourths of the imports from French-American
colonies were shipped from Santo Domingo. As the result of class
struggles between whites and mulattoes for political power, the
most terrific slave insurrection in the Western Hemisphere had
deluged the island in blood. Political convulsions followed which
wrecked the prosperity of the island. Out of this chaos emerged
the one man who seemed able to restore a semblance of order--the
Napoleon of Santo Domingo, whose character, thinks Henry Adams,
had a curious resemblance to that of the Corsican. The negro was,
however, a ferocious brute without the redeeming qualities of the
Corsican, though, as a leader of his race, his intelligence
cannot be denied. Though professing allegiance to the French
Republic, Toussaint was driven by circumstances toward
independence. While his Corsican counterpart was executing his
coup d'etat and pacifying Europe, he threw off the mask,
imprisoned the agent of the French Directory, seized the Spanish
part of the island, and proclaimed a new constitution for Santo
Domingo, assuming all power for himself for life and the right of
naming his successor. The negro defied the Corsican.
The First Consul was now prepared to accept the challenge. Santo
Domingo must be recovered and restored to its former
prosperity--even if slavery had to be reestablished--before
Louisiana could be made the center of colonial empire in the
West. He summoned Leclerc, a general of excellent reputation and
husband of his beautiful sister Pauline, and gave to him the
command of an immense expedition which was already preparing at
Brest. In the latter part of November, Leclerc set sail with a
large fleet bearing an army of ten thousand men and on January
29, 1802, arrived off the eastern cape of Santo Domingo. A legend
says that Toussaint looking down on the huge armada exclaimed,
"We must perish. All France is coming to Santo Domingo. It has
been deceived; it comes to take vengeance and enslave the
blacks." The negro leader made a formidable resistance,
nevertheless, annihilating one French army and seriously
endangering the expedition. But he was betrayed by his generals,
lured within the French lines, made prisoner, and finally sent to
France. He was incarcerated in a French fortress in the Jura
Mountains and there perished miserably in 1803.
The significance of these events in the French West Indies was
not lost upon President Jefferson. The conquest of Santo Domingo
was the prelude to the occupation of Louisiana. It would be only
a change of European proprietors, of absentee landlords, to be
sure; but there was a world of difference between France, bent
upon acquiring a colonial empire and quiescent Spain, resting on
her past achievements. The difference was personified by
Bonaparte and Don Carlos. The sovereignty of the lower
Mississippi country could never be a matter of indifference to
those settlers of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio who in the year
1799 sent down the Mississippi in barges, keel-boats, and
flatboats one hundred and twenty thousand pounds of tobacco, ten
thousand barrels of flour, twenty-two thousand pounds of hemp,
five hundred barrels of cider, and as many more of whiskey, for
transshipment and export. The right of navigation of the
Mississippi was a diplomatic problem bequeathed by the
Confederation. The treaty with Spain in 1795 had not solved the
question, though it had established a modus vivendi. Spain had
conceded to Americans the so-called right of deposit for three
years--that is, the right to deposit goods at New Orleans free of
duty and to transship them to ocean-going vessels; and the
concession, though never definitely renewed, was tacitly
continued. No; the people of the trans-Alleghany country could
not remain silent and unprotesting witnesses to the retrocession
of Louisiana.
Nor was Jefferson's interest in the Mississippi problem of recent
origin. Ten years earlier as Secretary of State, while England
and Spain seemed about to come to blows over the Nootka Sound
affair, he had approached both France and Spain to see whether
the United States might not acquire the island of New Orleans or
at least a port near the mouth of the river "with a
circum-adjacent territory, sufficient for its support,
well-defined, and extraterritorial to Spain." In case of war,
England would in all probability conquer Spanish Louisiana. How
much better for Spain to cede territory on the eastern side of
the Mississippi to a safe neighbor like the United States and
thereby make sure of her possessions on the western waters of
that river. It was "not our interest," wrote Mr. Jefferson, "to
cross the Mississippi for ages!"
It was, then, a revival of an earlier idea when President
Jefferson, officially through Robert R. Livingston, Minister to
France, and unofficially through a French gentleman, Dupont de
Nemours, sought to impress upon the First Consul the unwisdom of
his taking possession of Louisiana, without ceding to the United
States at least New Orleans and the Floridas as a "palliation."
Even so, France would become an object of suspicion, a neighbor
with whom Americans were bound to quarrel.
Undeterred by this naive threat, doubtless considering its
source, the First Consul pressed Don Carlos for the delivery of
Louisiana. The King procrastinated but at length gave his promise
on condition that France should pledge herself not to alienate
the province. Of course, replied the obliging Talleyrand. The
King's wishes were identical with the intentions of the French
government. France would never alienate Louisiana. The First
Consul pledged his word. On October 15, 1802, Don Carlos signed
the order that delivered Louisiana to France.
While the President was anxiously awaiting the results of his
diplomacy, news came from Santo Domingo that Leclerc and his army
had triumphed over Toussaint and his faithless generals, only to
succumb to a far more insidious foe. Yellow fever had appeared in
the summer of 1802 and had swept away the second army dispatched
by Bonaparte to take the place of the first which had been
consumed in the conquest of the island. Twenty-four thousand men
had been sacrificed at the very threshold of colonial empire, and
the skies of Europe were not so clear as they had been. And then
came the news of Leclerc's death (November 2, 1802). Exhausted
by incessant worry, he too had succumbed to the pestilence; and
with him, as events proved, passed Bonaparte's dream of colonial
empire in the New World.
Almost at the same time with these tidings a report reached the
settlers of Kentucky and Tennessee that the Spanish intendant at
New Orleans had suspended the right of deposit. The Mississippi
was therefore closed to western commerce. Here was the hand of
the Corsican.[*] Now they knew what they had to expect from France.
Why not seize the opportunity and strike before the French
legions occupied the country? The Spanish garrisons were weak; a
few hundred resolute frontiersmen would speedily overpower them.
[* It is now clear enough that Bonaparte was not directly
responsible for this act of the Spanish intendant. See Channing,
"History of the United States," vol. IV, p. 312, and Note,
326-327.]
Convinced that he must resort to stiffer measures if he would not
be hurried into hostilities, President Jefferson appointed James
Monroe as Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to
France and Spain. He was to act with Robert Livingston at Paris
and with Charles Pinckney, Minister to Spain, "in enlarging and
more effectually securing our rights and interests in the river
Mississippi and in the territories eastward thereof"--whatever
these vague terms might mean. The President evidently read much
into them, for he assured Monroe that on the event of his mission
depended the future destinies of the Republic.
Two months passed before Monroe sailed with his instructions. He
had ample time to study them, for he was thirty days in reaching
the coast of France. The first aim of the envoys was to procure
New Orleans and the Floridas, bidding as high as ten million
dollars if necessary. Failing in this object, they were then to
secure the right of deposit and such other desirable concessions
as they could. To secure New Orleans, they might even offer to
guarantee the integrity of Spanish possessions on the west bank
of the Mississippi. Throughout the instructions ran the
assumption that the Floridas had either passed with Louisiana
into the hands of France or had since been acquired.
While the packet bearing Monroe was buffeting stormy seas, the
policy of Bonaparte underwent a transformation--an abrupt
transformation it seemed to Livingston. On the 12th of March the
American Minister witnessed an extraordinary scene in Madame
Bonaparte's drawing-room. Bonaparte and Lord Whitworth, the
British Ambassador, were in conversation, when the First Consul
remarked, "I find, my Lord, your nation want war again." "No,
Sir," replied the Ambassador, "we are very desirous of peace." "I
must either have Malta or war," snapped Bonaparte. The amazed
onlookers soon spread the rumor that Europe was again to be
plunged into war; but, viewed in the light of subsequent events,
this incident had even greater significance; it marked the end of
Bonaparte's colonial scheme. Though the motives for this change
of front will always be a matter of conjecture, they are somewhat
clarified by the failure of the Santo Domingo expedition. Leclerc
was dead; the negroes were again in control; the industries of
the island were ruined; Rochambeau, Leclerc's successor, was
clamoring for thirty-five thousand more men to reconquer the
island; the expense was alarming--and how meager the returns for
this colonial venture! Without Santo Domingo, Louisiana would be
of little use; and to restore prosperity to the West India
island--even granting that its immediate conquest were
possible--would demand many years and large disbursements. The
path to glory did not lie in this direction. In Europe, as Henry
Adams observes, "war could be made to support war; in Santo
Domingo peace alone could but slowly repair some part of this
frightful waste."
There may well have been other reasons for Bonaparte's change of
front. If he read between the lines of a memoir which Pontalba, a
wealthy and well-informed resident of Louisiana, sent to him, he
must have realized that this province, too, while it might become
an inexhaustible source of wealth for France, might not be easy
to hold. There was here, it is true, no Toussaint L'Ouverture to
lead the blacks in insurrection; but there was a white menace
from the north which was far more serious. These Kentuckians,
said Pontalba trenchantly, must be watched, cajoled, and brought
constantly under French influence through agents. There were men
among them who thought of Louisiana "as the highroad to the
conquest of Mexico." Twenty or thirty thousand of these
westerners on flatboats could come down the river and sweep
everything before them. To be sure, they were an undisciplined
horde with slender Military equipment--a striking contrast to the
French legions; but, added the Frenchman, "a great deal of skill
in shooting, the habit of being in the woods and of enduring
fatigue--this is what makes up for every deficiency."
And if Bonaparte had ever read a remarkable report of the Spanish
Governor Carondelet, he must have divined that there was
something elemental and irresistible in this
down-the-river-pressure of the people of the West. "A carbine and
a little maize in a sack are enough for an American to wander
about in the forests alone for a whole month. With his carbine,
he kills the wild cattle and deer for food and defends himself
from the savages. The maize dampened serves him in lieu of bread
. . . . The cold does not affright him. When a family tires of
one location, it moves to another, and there it settles with the
same ease. Thus in about eight years the settlement of Cumberland
has been formed, which is now about to be created into a state."
On Easter Sunday, 1803, Bonaparte revealed his purpose, which had
doubtless been slowly maturing, to two of his ministers, one of
whom, Barbs Marbois, was attached to the United States through
residence, his devotion to republican principles, and marriage to
an American wife. The First Consul proposed to cede Louisiana to
the United States: he considered the colony as entirely lost.
What did they think of the proposal? Marbois, with an eye to the
needs of the Treasury of which he was the head, favored the sale
of the province; and next day he was directed to interview
Livingston at once. Before he could do so, Talleyrand, perhaps
surmising in his crafty way the drift of the First Consul's
thoughts, startled Livingston by asking what the United States
would give for the whole of Louisiana. Livingston, who was in
truth hard of hearing, could not believe his ears. For months he
had talked, written, and argued in vain for a bit of territory
near the mouth of the Mississippi, and here was an imperial
domain tossed into his lap, as it were. Livingston recovered from
his surprise sufficiently to name a trifling sum which Talleyrand
declared too low. Would Mr. Livingston think it over? He,
Talleyrand, really did not speak from authority. The idea had
struck him, that was all.
Some days later in a chance conversation with Marbois, Livingston
spoke of his extraordinary interview with Talleyrand. Marbois
intimated that he was not ignorant of the affair and invited
Livingston to a further conversation. Although Monroe had already
arrived in Paris and was now apprised of this sudden turn of
affairs, Livingston went alone to the Treasury Office and there
in conversation, which was prolonged until midnight, he fenced
with Marbois over a fair price for Louisiana. The First Consul,
said Marbois, demanded one hundred million francs. Livingston
demurred at this huge sum. The United States did not want
Louisiana but was willing to give ten million dollars for New
Orleans and the Floridas. What would the United States give then?
asked Marbois. Livingston replied that he would have to confer
with Monroe. Finally Marbois suggested that if they would name
sixty million francs, (less than $12,000,000) and assume claims
which Americans had against the French Treasury for twenty
million more, he would take the offer under advisement.
Livingston would not commit himself, again insisting that he must
consult Monroe.
So important did this interview seem to Livingston that he
returned to his apartment and wrote a long report to Madison
without waiting to confer with Monroe. It was three o'clock in
the morning when he was done. "We shall do all we can to cheapen
the purchase," he wrote, "but my present sentiment is that we
shall buy."
History does not record what Monroe said when his colleague
revealed these midnight secrets. But in the prolonged
negotiations which followed Monroe, though ill, took his part,
and in the end, on April 30, 1803, set his hand to the treaty
which ceded Louisiana to the United States on the terms set by
Marbois. In two conventions bearing the same date, the
commissioners bound the United States to pay directly to France
the sum of sixty million francs ($11,250,000) and to assume debts
owed by France to American citizens, estimated at not more than
twenty million francs ($3,750,000). Tradition says that after
Marbois, Monroe, and Livingston had signed their names,
Livingston remarked: "We have lived long, but this is the noblest
work of our lives . . . . From this day the United States take
their place among the powers of the first rank."
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