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The Great Republic by the Master Historians
The Purchase of Louisiana
by Bancroft, Hubert H.
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[Before considering the subject indicated in the title of this article, a brief
review of the political events which followed the adoption of the Constitution
is advisable. The reign of party spirit in the United States began with the
adoption of this instrument by the Convention. Between this date and that of its
ratification by the States the Federal and Anti-Federal parties struggled for
supremacy, the former being in favor of a strong central government, the latter
favoring the practical independence of the States. The ratification of the
Constitution by the States ended this contest. The prominent Anti-Federalists
announced their intention of supporting the Constitution, and for several years
there was practically but one party in the country. George Washington was the
first President elected, the electoral vote in his favor being unanimous. John
Adams was chosen for Vice-President. Until about 1824-28, electors were
generally chosen by the State legislatures, not by the direct vote of the
people, as since that period. The two persons receiving the highest electoral
vote became respectively President and Vice-President.
Opposition to the Federal party began in 1790, when Hamilton broached a project
for the assumption of State debts by the central government. It grew stronger in
1791, when he proposed to establish a national bank. Jefferson, who had been the
first Secretary of State, was now found at the head of a party in open
opposition to the administration. This party, though adopting the name of
Republicans, advocated the principles of the older Anti-Federalists, claiming
that there was a scheme to subvert the State governments and establish a strong
central government, and denouncing the Hamilton party as monarchists. Democratic
clubs soon after arose, instigated by, and imitating many of the follies of, the
Jacobin revolutionists of France. They had the one good effect of introducing
political discussion among the masses of the people, and in a few years the
Democrats coalesced with the Republicans as a single national party. The
Federalists, however, continued in the majority, and in 1792 Washington and
Adams were again elected President and Vice-President.
During this second term the power of the Republican party rapidly increased. The
acts of the administration were fiercely attacked, and when, at the approach of
a new election, Washington announced his intention to retire, a hot political
contest arose, which nearly resulted in a Republican victory. Of the electoral
votes Adams received seventy-one, and Jefferson sixty-eight, the latter
receiving all but two of the Southern votes. The new administration was
therefore organized with Adams for President and Jefferson for Vice-President.
The financial condition of the country had now greatly improved. A sound credit
was established, funds were provided for the payment of the national debt, and
treaties were concluded with the Indians and with several of the European
powers, while a very rapid increase in population and in agricultural and
commercial wealth had taken place. During the summer of 1800 the seat of
government was removed from Philadelphia to Washington, as at that time the
centre of the country. The Republican party continued to develop in strength,
mainly on account of the passage of laws which tended to strengthen the central
government, and which were unfavorably received by the people. The "Alien Law,"
which empowered the President to order from the country any foreigner whose
presence he deemed dangerous to the public safety, and the "Sedition Law," which
visited with fine and imprisonment "any false, scandalous, or malicious writing
against the government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or the
President," were deemed tyrannical measures; while the effort to pass an act
establishing a standing army added to the unpopularity of the Federalists. In
the election of 1800, therefore, the Republicans were victorious. Jefferson
became President, and Aaron Burr, who had prominent control of the Democratic
party, was made Vice-President. Jefferson and Burr, indeed, received an equal
number of votes, and Congress had to decide between them. With this election the
power of the Federal party ceased, and for many years thereafter the "State
Rights" Democratic-Republican party continued in the supremacy. The effort to
strengthen the central government unduly at the expense of the power of the
States had failed, and the Federalists, as a distinct party, gradually vanished
from existence.
With the accession of this new party to power the principal governmental offices
were placed in the hands of the Republicans, the system of internal duties was
abolished, and several unpopular laws were repealed. In 1802 Ohio was admitted
as a State, and in the succeeding year the Territory of Louisiana was purchased
from France. This important purchase added so enormously to the domain of the
United States as to demand here a more extended notice.
The United States was at that period surrounded by alien territory. On the
north, Canada remained in the hands of the English. On the south, Florida, which
had been ceded to England in 1763, captured in part by the Spanish allies of the
United States in 1781, and re-ceded to Spain in 1783, bounded the States from
the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Louisiana, embracing the whole Mississippi
Valley, and extending indefinitely westward, remained French territory after the
close of the French and Indian War. In 1762 it was secretly transferred to
Spain, though open possession was not given till 1769. Meanwhile, in 1763, Great
Britain obtained by treaty that portion lying east of the Mississippi, from its
source to the river Iberville. In 1783 this territory was ceded to the United
States by the treaty of peace with England. All the territory west of the
Mississippi, and on the east from the 31st parallel of latitude to the Gulf,
remained in the hands of Spain.
No sooner had American settlements extended to the region of the Mississippi and
its eastern affluents than the importance of having free use of this river as a
channel of transportation to the sea was strongly felt. This sentiment
intensified as the settlements increased and the Spanish authorities manifested
a hostile policy. That a foreign power should restrict the use of the mouth of
such a river as the Mississippi was intolerable, and had it not been ceded
peacefully it must eventually have been taken by force. From McMaster's
admirable "History of the People of the United States" we select an account of
the acquisition of this vast and valuable territory.]
On October first, 1800, by the secret treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain gave back
to France that province of Louisiana which, in 1762, France had given to her. It
was long before the existence of this treaty was known; but the moment it was
known Jefferson saw most clearly that trouble with France was not at an end.
There was, he said, one spot on the face of the earth so important to the United
States that whoever held it was, for that very reason, naturally and forever our
enemy; and that spot was New Orleans. He could not, therefore, see it
transferred to France but with deep regret. The day she took possession of the
city the ancient friendship between her and the United States ended; alliance
with Great Britain became necessary, and the sentence that was to keep France
below low-water mark became fixed. This day seemed near at hand, for in
November, 1802, word came that an expedition was making all haste to cross the
ocean and occupy Louisiana.
Meanwhile, the Spanish intendant of the province put forth a proclamation,
closed the navigation of the Mississippi to American citizens, forbade all
trade, and took away the right of deposit at New Orleans. Protected by this
right, the inhabitants of Kentucky and Ohio had for seven years past been
floating tobacco and flour, bacon and hams, down the Mississippi in rude arks,
and depositing them in the warehouses of New Orleans, there to await the arrival
of the sloops and scows to carry them to the West Indies, or to points along the
Atlantic coast. The intendant could, at any time, shift the place of deposit;
but, by the terms of the treaty of 1795, some convenient port near the mouth of
the river must always be open for the deposit of goods and produce. In this
respect, therefore, the treaty had been violated; for, when New Orleans was
shut, no other town was opened.
[The state of affairs here indicated was earnestly debated in Congress, and a
resolution passed which, while not accusing Spain, declared that the rights of
navigation and deposit should be maintained.]
Jefferson was now free to act without fear of meddling from the House, and he
speedily did so. The Senate, in a special message, was informed that he had not
been idle; that such measures had been promptly taken as seemed likely to bring
a friendly settlement about, and that the purpose of these measures was the
buying of so much territory on the east bank of the river as would put at rest
forever the vexed question of the use of its mouth. His confidence in the
ability of the minister at the court of France to accomplish this was unlimited.
Yet he could not but believe that the end would be hastened by sending to his
aid a man fresh from the United States and bearing with him a just and lively
sense of the feeling late events had aroused in the great mass of the people. He
therefore nominated James Monroe to be minister extraordinary and
plenipotentiary to France, and minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary to
Spain; for, Louisiana not having been actually transferred to France, it seemed
proper that his Catholic majesty should also be consulted. The Senate confirmed
the nomination, and gave Monroe full power, in conjunction with Livingston in
France and Pinckney in Spain, to frame any treaty or convention that extended
and secured the rights of the United States on the Mississippi, and set apart
two millions of dollars to be used, it was understood, for the purchase of the
island of New Orleans.
[The Federalists in Congress strongly opposed these measures, and offered
resolutions tending towards war with Spain. They declared that the free
navigation of the river was a clear right of the United States, and that
interference with it by Spain was a hostile aggression. They demanded that the
President should take possession of some fit place of deposit, and that, if
necessary, fifty thousand militia should be called out, and five millions of
dollars appropriated for this purpose. These resolutions were opposed and voted
down by the Republican party, but in their place a bill was passed authorizing
the President to call out a provisional army of eighty thousand militia, and to
spend twenty-five thousand dollars in building arsenals in the West.]
For the troops the President had no need. The Republicans were right, and, in a
few months, far more was secured by negotiation than the Federalists had ever
expected to obtain by violence and the use of arms. For months past Livingston
had been trying to persuade the First Consul to sell a part of Louisiana to the
United States. He begged the Spanish minister to hinder the transfer of the
district to France; for, till the transfer was made, the colonists Napoleon was
bent on sending to America were not likely to sail. Again and again he demanded
a speedy settlement of the debt due to American merchants, and urged the
benefits France would derive by parting with a piece of her ancient soil. Not a
word came in reply. The man through whose hands his notes all passed was
Talleyrand, who still held under Napoleon the same place he once held under the
five Directors. Change of master was the only change that able and unprincipled
minister had undergone. He was still the treacherous, grasping, ambitious knave
of 1797. To Livingston he was all graciousness, but not a word of the American
minister's notes reached the First Consul that Talleyrand did not approve. To
sell Louisiana was not the wish of Talleyrand. He would see France once more in
possession of her old domain, firmly planted on American soil, controlling the
Mississippi, setting bounds to the United States, threatening Canada, and, it
might be in the near future, planting the tricolor on the walls of that great
fortress from which England had pulled down the lilies of France.
It is idle to speculate what might have been the destiny of our country had
Louisiana become permanently a possession of France. The thing was not to be
Convinced that Talleyrand was tricky, Livingston passed him by and wrote
directly to the man whose will was the will of France. Citizen First Consul was
asked if the French did not intend to pay their just debts. He was reminded that
the Board of Accounts had liquidated and given certificates for about one-
quarter of the debt, that on these certificates the American merchants had
raised small sums to enable them to live, and that, on a sudden, while the Board
went on liquidating, the certificates ceased to be given. He was told of the
feeling aroused in the United States by the change about to take place in the
ownership of Louisiana. He was asked to sell so much of the territory as lay
south of latitude thirty-one, from the Mississippi to the Perdido, and so much
as, west of the Mississippi, lay north of the Arkansas River. Thus would the
United States secure the mouths of the rivers flowing from her territory to the
Mexican gulf. Thus would France have a barrier placed between her and the
possessions of her most ancient foe Was not this to be considered? The cupodity
of Britain knew no bounds. The Cape, Malta, Egypt, had already awakened her
avarice. Should she turn her arms westward, a struggle for Louisiana would at
once begin. Of what use could the province be to France? To enable her to
command the gulf, supply her islands, and give an outlet to her surplus
population. To scatter population over a boundless region was, therefore, bad
policy: the true policy was to concentrate and keep it near the sea. The country
south of the Arkansas could well maintain a colony of fifteen millions of souls.
Could France keep more in subjection? Ought not faraway colonies to be moderate
in size? Would rich and prosperous settlements up the Missouri River always be
content to pay allegiance to the distant ruler of France?
These memorials brought a speedy reply. Livingston was assured that the First
Consul would see to it that the debts were paid, and would send a minister to
the United States with full power to act. The minister was to have been General
Bernadotte; but on this mission he was destined never to depart. In March the
quarrel with England concerning Malta grew serious. "I must," said Napoleon to
Lord Whitworth, in the presence of the assembled ministers of Europe, "I must
either have Malta or war." New combinations were forming against him in Europe;
all England was loudly demanding that Louisiana should be attacked, and, lest it
should be taken from him, he determined to sell it to the United States.
April eleventh Talleyrand asked Livingston for an offer for Louisiana entire.
The island of New Orleans and West Florida, he was told, were wanted, and no
more. This much sold, what remained would, he asserted, be of small value. He
would therefore like to know what price the United States would give for all.
Livingston thought twenty millions of francs, and Talleyrand departed,
protesting the sum was far too small.
The next day Monroe reached Paris, and the day after Barbe-Marbois, Minister of
the Treasury, called. Marbois astonished Livingston by declaring that one
hundred millions of francs and the payment of the debts due American citizens
was the price of Louisiana. This would bring the cost to one hundred and twenty-
five millions, for at twenty-five millions of francs Livingston estimated the
debts. He pronounced the price exorbitant; Marbois admitted that it was, and
asked to take back to St. Cloud an offer of eighty millions of francs, including
twenty millions for the debts. Some higgling now took place; but on these terms
the purchase was effected by the three instruments dated April thirtieth, 1803.
[These were, a treaty of cession, an instrument arranging the mode of payment,
and one treating of the debts, their character, and the method of their
settlement.]
Jefferson was greatly puzzled when these three documents reached his hand. He
had offered to buy an island for a dock-yard and the place of deposit; he was
offered a magnificent domain. He had been authorized to expend two millions of
dollars; the sum demanded was fifteen. As a strict constructionist he could not,
and for a while he did not, consider the purchase of foreign territory as a
constitutional act. But when he thought of the evils that would follow if
Louisiana remained with France, and of the blessings that would follow if
Louisiana came to the United States, his common sense got the better of his
narrow political scruples, and he soon found a way of escape. He would accept
the treaty, summon Congress, urge the House and Senate to perfect the purchase,
and trust to the Constitution being amended so as to make the purchase legal.
[A sharp debate in Congress, ensued, the old Federal party strongly opposing the
consummation of the purchase. The enormous increase the purchase would make in
the national debt became a favorite theme, and every effort was made by writers
and printers to show the people what a stupendous sum fifteen millions of
dollars was.]
Fifteen millions of dollars! they would exclaim. The sale of a wilderness has
not usually commanded a price so high. Ferdinand Gorges received but twelve
hundred and fifty pounds sterling for the province of Maine. William Penn gave
for the wilderness that now bears his name but a trifle over five thousand
pounds. Fifteen millions of dollars! A breath will suffice to pronounce the
words. A few strokes of the pen will express the sum on paper. But not one man
in a thousand has any conception of the magnitude of the amount. Weight it, and
there will be four hundred and thirty-three tons of solid silver. Load it into
wagons, and there will be eight hundred and sixty-six of them. Place the wagons
in a line, giving two rods to each and they will cover a distance of five and
one-third miles. Hire a laborer to shovel it into the carts, and, though he load
sixteen each day, he will not finish the work in two months. Stack it up dollar
on dollar, and, supposing nine to make an inch, the pile will be more than three
miles high.. All the gold and all the silver coin in the United States would, if
collected, fall vastly short of such a sum. We must, therefore, create a stock,
and for fifteen years to come pay two thousand four hundred and sixty-five
dollars interest each day. Invest the principal as a school fund, and the
interest will support, forever, eighteen hundred free schools, allowing fifty
scholars and five hundred dollars to each school. For whose benefit is the
purchase made? The South and West. Will they pay a share of the debt? No, for
the tax on whiskey has been removed.
Statistics, most happily, were of no avail. The mass of the people pronounced
the purchase a bargain. The Senate, on October nineteenth, ratified the and
conventions; the ratification of Napoleon was already in the hands of the French
charge, and on October twenty-first Jefferson informed Congress that
ratifications had that day been exchanged. On November tenth the act creating
the eleven millions two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of stock called for
by the first convention was passed. On December twentieth, 1803, Louisiana was
peaceably taken possession of by the United States.
The Province of Louisiana, as the region came to be called, was to Americans of
that day an unknown land. Not a boundary was defined. Not a scrap of trust-
worthy information concerning the region was to be obtained. Meagre accounts of
what travellers had seen on the Missouri, of what hunters and trappers knew of
the upper Mississippi, of what the Indians said were the features of the great
plains that stretched away towards the setting sun, had indeed reached the
officials, and out of these was constructed the most remarkable document any
President has every transmitted to Congress. It told of a tribe of Indians of
gigantic stature; of tall bluffs faced with stone and carved by the had of
Nature into what seemed a multitude of antique towers; of land so fertile as to
yield the necessaries of life almost spontaneously; of an immense prairie
covered with buffalo, and producing nothing but grass because the soil was far
too rich for the growth of trees; and how, a thousand miles up the Missouri, was
a vast mountain of Salt! The length was one hundred and eighty miles; the
breadth was forty-five; not a tree, not so much as a shrub, was on it; but, all
glittering white, it rose from the earth a solid mountain of rock salt, with
streams of saline water flowing from the fissures and cavities at its base! The
story, the account admitted, might well seem incredible; but, unhappily for the
doubters, bushels of the salt had been shown by traders to the people at St.
Louis and Marietta..
The vexed question of the existence of the salt mountain was soon to be put at
rest. Many months before, while the country was excited over the closing of the
Mississippi, Jefferson urged Congress to send a party of explorers up the
Missouri to its source, and thence overland to the Pacific Ocean. The idea was a
happy one, was approved, an appropriation made, and Meriwether Lewis and William
Clark chosen to carry out the plan. Jefferson drew their instructions, and on
May fourteenth, 1804, the party entered the Missouri. In time thy crossed the
mountains, reached the Pacific, and wandered over that fine region which came
afterwards to be known as Oregon.
[In 1792 the mouth of the Columbia River had been discovered by Robert Gray, a
merchant-captain trading between Boston and China by way of Cape Horn, and the
first American to carry the flag of the United States around the world.
With the purchase of Louisiana is connected an important incident in the life of
the celebrated Aaron Burr, which may be mentioned here. This personage, after
serving a term as Vice-President of the United States, killed Alexander Hamilton
in a duel growing out of a political quarrel. Burr next, having lost his
property and having incensed the people against him, made his way to the West,
and while there organized what was supposed to be a scheme for making war on the
Spanish territories adjoining the newly-gained district of Louisiana. It is said
that the intended to make himself monarch of this region, and also that he
designed separating the Western Territories from the United States. His
suspicious movements alarmed the government, and a proclamation was issued,
warning the Western people against his illegal enterprises, and ordering the
arrest of Burr and his followers. He was eventually arrested in Mississippi
Territory, and sent to Richmond, where he was tried for treason, in a case that
excited wide-spread attention. No overt act was proved against him, and he was
acquitted. Upon his acquittal he went to Europe, where he lived for some time in
extreme poverty. Returning to America, he practised law in an obscure manner for
many years, and died in 1836.]
John Bach McMaster
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