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| The French hand over St. Louis and Upper Louisiana |
Note: This
was extensively adapted from an entry posted on April 30, 2010.
On March 10, 1804 the
final official transfer of vast lands stretching north from the mouth of the
Mississippi River deep and far into
the interior of North America was
conducted at St. Louis. A small French Army detachment brought down the
Tri-Colors and a not much larger
contingent of U.S. Army regulars ran
up the Stars and Stripes in the
muddy streets of the settlement. A few
score civilians, mostly French with a sprinkling of early bird American land
speculators, trappers, and Native
Americans watched. After shaking
hands all around, everyone went to celebrate with plenty of good stiff
drinks. With that the whole vast region
of Upper Louisiana became U.S.
property—if the infant nation could protect it from the British and their Indian
allies.
A few months earlier,
on December 20, 1803 the French had turned over the real seat of their power, New Orleans, the city through which the
riches of all of the drainages of the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri river
drainages would have to pass to gain the markets of the world. New Orleans had been the real prize in the delicate
negotiations between American diplomats in Paris
and Napoleon Bonaparte. The empire transferred at St. Louis was a
surprising bonus.
On April 30, 1803 American envoys Robert Livingston and James
Monroe agreed to a Treaty with the French
Republic which upon ratification would transfer the port of New Orleans and all of France’s vast North American holdings to the United States for a purchase price of
$15,000,000—about 3 cents an acre. The Louisiana Purchase has been called the
greatest real estate deal in the history of the world.
In 1801 newly elected President Thomas Jefferson, whose long
residency in Paris as American
Minister and his known sympathy for Republican France, gave him excellent
intelligence connections, learned that Napoleon
Bonaparte had concluded the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso with Spain which
returned New Orleans and the vast territory of Louisiana to the
French. Spanish authorities would
continue to govern in place until a formal transfer in 1803.
This was both good and alarming news for the
United States. On the plus side, it
would deflate a movement among some trans-Appalachian settlers to detach
from the U.S. and join the Spanish territories to insure continued use of the
critical port of New Orleans to ship their produce and to obtain vast land
grants west of the Mississippi.
On the other hand, Jefferson, by now alarmed by
the turn the Republic had taken under the military dictatorship of Napoleon,
learned from his French sources that the General had big plans for restoring
the French North American Empire. The British
had forced France to cede Louisiana to the Spanish in 1763 after the Seven
Years War (known in America as the French and Indian Wars.)
The President dispatched Livingston as his
special representative with instructions to negotiate the purchase of the port
of New Orleans and its immediate environs.
Livingston was on the committee to draft the Declaration of
Independence with Jefferson back in 1776 (although his contributions to the
document were nil), had served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the
Articles of Confederation, was the long time Chancellor of New
York, and was Jefferson’s most important Republican ally in that
state against Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists.
As negotiations dragged, Jefferson turned to back
channel talks with Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours as his agent. Du
Pont had been President of the Constituent
Assembly in the early years of the French Republic but had run afoul of Robespierre and had been sentenced to
death during the Reign of Terror. Spared when Robespierre fell, he came to
America with his family to try to establish a colony for fellow exiles. He was close to Jefferson and still had good
contacts in France under the new regime of Napoleon.
After his first secret consultations, he proposed to Jefferson that it
would be possible and advantageous to purchase the whole of Louisiana and not
just the port city. At first Jefferson
was cool to the idea, largely because he did not believe he had the authority
to make the purchase and fretted that it would expand Federal power at the
expense of the states.
Still, he was wary of French power as a neighbor and knew that war would
likely be inevitable should Napoleon establish a powerful presence. He signaled a willingness to consider an
offer.
Although powerful French Foreign
Minister Talleyrand was known to be opposed, du Pont communicated with
individuals close to Napoleon himself.
Yet the President sent conflicting instruction to his official
negotiator Livingston.
In 1803 he beefed up the official delegation by sending one of his closest
associates, James Monroe, himself a
former Minister to France under Washington and politically supportive
of the Republic during the naval Quasi
War of 1798-80.
Meanwhile, Napoleon’s fortunes in the New World had dwindled as tensions
with Britain were on the rise.
Napoleon’s plans to reassert control over Santo Domingo (now the Republic
of Haiti) after the successful slave rebellion of Toussaint l'Ouverture lay in tatters. A huge French army under the command of his
brother-in-law General Charles Leclerc
was wracked with Yellow Fever and
beaten in battle. Without the income
from the rich sugar plantations of the island and without a strong naval base
in the Caribbean, grandiose plans of
restoring the North American Empire were impossible.
Before Monroe even
arrived Napoleon told his negotiators to conclude a sale of all of
Louisiana. The French Minister of the Treasury informed
Livingston that the whole territory was for sale for $15 million Dollars, only
$5 over what he had been authorized to pay for New Orleans alone.
When Monroe arrived
both men were fearful of exceeding their authority—and were unaware of du
Pont’s secret talks with the President’s approval. When the French threatened to break off
negotiations for New Orleans and to strongly garrison the city, the envoys felt they had to act on the whole
offer. They agreed to the proposed terms
on April 30 and signed the document on May 4.
The treaty reached Washington, ironically enough, on Bastille Day, July 14, 1803. It caused a domestic furor. Federalists,
who were pushing for closer relations if not an out-right alliance with
Britain, were fiercely opposed. But so
were “Old School” Republicans like House
of Representatives Speaker John Randolph,
leery of the extension of Federal Power—an issue Jefferson himself continued to
anguish over.
New
Englanders were particularly alarmed fearing that
the addition of vast agrarian areas in the West would inevitably lead to loss
of power in the mercantile North East and that new slave states eventually
carved out would tilt the balance of power in the nation to the South. They also resented assisting France and
possibly becoming entangled with her in a war with Britain. The most radical New England Federalists
began to talk of secession and even hatched a plot to offer Vice President Aaron Burr the
Presidency of a break-away state if he could convince Republican leaning New York to join.
The intrigue led to
nothing but greater antipathy between Burr and his New York political rival Alexander Hamilton, which would
contribute to the duel in which the Burr killed Hamilton the next year.
Despite all of this,
Jefferson concluded that he had to proceed with the purchase and marshaled all
of his political ability to secure ratification of the Treaty in the Senate which voted 24 to 7 in favor on
October 31.
In October 1904 the
news land was organized into the Territory
of Orleans (most of the current state of Louisiana) and the District of Louisiana to be
administered from St. Louis under the authority of the governor of the Indiana Territory. By this time Jefferson was eagerly
planning the exploration of his vast new acquisition which would result in the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
In all, the United
States acquired 828,800 square
miles, more than doubling the size of the nation. The purchase included all or parts of 14
current states and stretched from the Gulf
of Mexico to British North America (Canada) and from the Mississippi River
to the Rocky Mountains.
For his part, Napoleon was pleased.
He got an infusion of cash to arm in preparation for war with Britain
and because, “This accession of territory affirms forever the power of the
United States, and I have given England a maritime rival who sooner or later
will humble her pride.”
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