On
March 10, 1804 the final official
transfer of vast lands stretching north from the mouth of the Mississippi River and
far into the interior of North America was conducted at St.
Louis. A small French Army detachment
brought down the Tricolors 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 rivers, 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 million—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 ensure
continued use of the critical port of New Orleans to ship their produce and to obtain 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 their Spanish ally 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 had been 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 on,
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 instructions 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, only $5
million 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.
Livingston
wrote Jefferson, “We have lived long but this is the noblest work of our whole lives...The United States take rank this day among the first powers of the
world.”
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 Northeast 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 1804 the new 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 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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