Chapter I: America for Americans

ACQUISITION OF LOUISIANA.

"_I have given England a rival that will humble her
pride._"—_Napoleon._

We have now done with that part of French Louisiana lying east of the Mississippi. It is now blossoming all over with incipient civilization in the form of log cabins, trading-posts, cross-roads, hamlets, and schoolhouses.

From 1793 to 1799 our old ally France, now become a republic, was trying first to cajole, then to bully us into taking up her quarrel with England. She even went to the length of demanding tribute-money from us as the price of peace, and, upon a refusal, of ordering our minister out of her territory. Our remonstrances were treated with disdain, our ships captured, and our flag fired upon at sea, without even the formality of a declaration of war. This conduct drove us into making reprisal. After one or two of her frigates had been beaten in fight by ours, France grew more pacific toward us, and again cultivated friendly relations with a power she had seemed to despise, until the reply "Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute,"[1] warned her that America would never yield a principle to threats.

Let us now turn to Spain. In 1795 this power had made a treaty which secured to us the right of storing[2] American goods at New Orleans, pending shipment abroad, thus making the river so far free for our commerce.

In 1800 Napoleon had come to the head of the French nation. Ambition to restore the ancient sovereignty of France over Louisiana led him to propose to Spain the exchange of Tuscany for it. Spain accepted the offer, and in 1800-1801 treaties of cession were signed, but not made public, because war with England was probable, and Napoleon wished to make his title good on the spot with the bayonets of his soldiers, before England could know of it. Therefore for the present Spain kept possession of Louisiana in trust for France.

Just here some grave international questions arose. Our rapid growth in the West gave Spain uneasiness. It certainly was putting her possessions in peril. In consequence she showed such an unfriendly spirit toward us as to keep the West in a state of chronic irritation.[3] It even disposed the West to listen to plans for separating her from the East, which Spain would gladly have aided in, and so was fast breaking up the feeling of national unity so essential to keep alive in the Republic.

Suddenly, without previous notice, the Spanish intendant at New Orleans revoked the right of deposit. The act shut the only door by which the people of Ohio, Kentucky, and Illinois could get to the sea. It exasperated them to such a point that they begged the General Government to drive the Spaniards out of the Mississippi for good and all.

In Thomas Jefferson the people of the West found a more sagacious advocate. The cession could not long remain a secret. It was soon known in the United States; but instead of calming the people, the change of masters revived their fears, since it was felt that Napoleon, whose exploits filled Europe with alarm, would prove more difficult to deal with than Spain, whom nobody feared.

Such was the situation presented to Mr. Jefferson. Fortunately for its solution, national pride and national policy do not always go hand in hand.

Our minister, Livingston,[4] a very able man, was told to bring the Louisiana question to Napoleon's attention, and to do it in such a way as to leave no doubt in his mind that the United States could not remain an idle looker-on while New Orleans was being bought and sold. She had too much at stake. Napoleon's army was getting ready to sail for Louisiana. There was no time to lose.

Mr. Livingston did not stop with the suggestion to sell New Orleans to us. He went further, and proposed the cession of all Louisiana above the Arkansas and east of the Mississippi. He did it with true republican frankness, never hesitating to press home upon Napoleon's advisers the dilemma which the possession of Louisiana must offer to their choice. "What will you do with Louisiana? Would you have England wrest it from you? Her navies have driven yours from the seas. Do you wish to force the United States into joining with England, against you? England would gladly give us what we ask, as the price of our help."

France was on the eve of war with England. But for this we should hardly have had Louisiana so easily. There was no assurance felt that the fleet Napoleon destined for Louisiana would ever reach the Balize. Napoleon wanted money. It was true, national pride might be hurt by the sacrifice, but it was most important, at this crisis, not to make an enemy of the United States; and Napoleon foresaw that no foreign power could long hold the mouth of the Mississippi, and have peace with those States. That conviction was decisive in its effects. He declared for the sale of Louisiana, outright, in these words: "I will not keep a possession which would not be safe in our hands, which would embroil our people with the Americans, or produce a coldness between us. I will make use of it, on the contrary, to attach them to me, and embroil them with the English, and raise up against the latter, enemies who will some day avenge us."

Napoleon would not even wait for Mr. Monroe to arrive, after making up his mind, but sent at once for Mr. Livingston, and opened the matter with him on the spot. So little had our ablest statesmen, Mr. Livingston excepted, touched the root of the matter, that, when Mr. Monroe did come, with powers from Congress to treat for the cession of New Orleans and the Floridas only, Napoleon surprised him with this master-stroke of policy which not even Mr. Jefferson had foreseen. And thus a treaty[5] for the whole of Louisiana was concluded on our part without adequate powers.

The price agreed upon was eighty million francs, the equivalent of twenty million dollars. Of this sum sixty were to be paid in money. The remaining twenty were to be retained by the United States as indemnity for damage done to our commerce under the orders of the Directory. In this way the nation became the trustee for what is known as the French Spoliation Fund. The principle was now laid down, that free ships make free goods. When they had signed the treaty, the commissioners arose and shook each other's hands. "We have lived long," said Livingston, "but this is the noblest work of our lives." Mr. Jefferson's efforts to bring about the geographical and political unity of the United States were thus far completely successful.

FOOTNOTES

[1] "MILLIONS FOR DEFENCE." This celebrated sentiment,
uttered by our minister, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, was
echoed throughout the Union.

[2] THE RIGHT OF DEPOSIT allowed the landing and storing of
merchandise, going to foreign markets, until such time as it
could be put on board ship. Without it, the tobacco, corn,
flour and lumber of the West would have been excluded from
the markets of the world.

[3] STATE OF CHRONIC IRRITATION. Increased by Spain's
dilatory action in settling our southern boundary, her refusal
to give up Natchez, etc., as provided for under the treaty of
1795. In view of this attitude, the United States concentrated
troops on the Mississippi with the intention of seizing New
Orleans. England stood ready to do the same thing in case of
a rupture with Spain.

[4] LIVINGSTON, ROBERT R., one of the signers of the
"Declaration," deserves the name of the author of the
Louisiana purchase.

[5] TREATY SIGNED April 30, 1803; sent to the United States
May 13; ratified Oct. 21, seven senators voting against it on
the ground that the question should be first submitted to the
whole people.

A GLANCE AT OUR PURCHASE.

Hitherto Louisiana has played the part of a football in European politics. The curtain is now to rise upon a far different scene.

For fifteen millions the United States obtained more territory than the original thirteen had started out with.

As we have shown in a previous chapter, our people had more than enough land already, and few men were wise enough, in that day, to forecast our national greatness in the future; but at last the Mississippi in all its course was ours, and the one question of highest moment to the West was settled in our favor,—settled definitely and forever.

With what actual materials for progress, in nation-building, did the United States set up her rule over Louisiana? The answer will show what the French and Spaniards had done in two centuries or more of intermittent effort.

Two rather large towns, twelve hundred miles apart, held about one-third its whole population, and controlled all its trade. The first, New Orleans, was the commercial port for the Mississippi Valley and its products. The second, St. Louis, was a fur-trading post with its chief outlet in Canada. One had a mixed population of from eight thousand to ten thousand, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Americans and blacks; the other did not have more than twelve hundred people, all told, many of whom were boatmen, who passed much of their lives afloat on the rivers or domesticated among roving tribes. In both, the French were most numerous, but taking all Louisiana together, there were nearly, if not quite, as many slaves as white people, although, as compared with the Indians then occupying this vast territory, the whites were only a handful.

At the date of cession to the United States, New Orleans had perhaps fourteen hundred houses, mostly built of wood and uniformly homely. Two hours would have laid the whole of it in ashes. In the best part, a few houses were built of brick, some one, some two stories high, with the open galleries running round the outside, one is accustomed to see in the tropics; yet though it had been burned over so recently as 1794, New Orleans was little bettered in the rebuilding, showing, as before, a collection of hurriedly built barracks and dwellings, among which the Hotel de Ville and Parochial Church, alone, gave a certain metropolitan character to this city of wood and shingles.

Though spacious, the streets were unpaved, dirty, and ill-kept. No drainage could be had, and every thing was thrown into the street. Summer heats quickly developed epidemic fevers. It followed that New Orleans had the name of being the most unhealthy city in the United States.

Besides the church and Hotel de Ville, or City Hall, there were a military hospital, charity hospital, and nunnery,—all equally inconspicuous in point of architectural design. There was also a theatre in which a company, whom the revolt had driven from St. Domingo, acted plays for the gratification of the Creole population.

Going north, Natchitoches on Red River, and Arkansas Post on the Arkansas, may be considered outposts of the country immediately dependent upon New Orleans. Each tapped the Indian trade of its river. The first was a thriving, the second a poor village. We next come upon a group of settlements, constituting what was known, under French and Spanish rule, as Upper Louisiana, with St. Louis for its emporium. Chief among these were New Madrid,[1] Cape Girardeau, St. Genevieve, Carondelet, and St. Charles. The population, all told, counting from the Arkansas to the Missouri, and including St. Louis, numbered about six thousand, of whom at least a thousand were slaves, with a sprinkling of half-breed French-Indian trappers besides.

St. Louis had arisen out of the transfer of the east bank of the Mississippi to Great Britain. Rather than live as aliens, under English laws, many French settlers went with Pierre Laclede,[2] across the Mississippi, to a place already nicknamed by them Pain Court, where, in February, 1764, they founded a new town with the name of St. Louis, in honor of Louis XV.

These people were mostly French Canadians,—either traders, trappers, or voyageurs, who still kept up their trading connection with Canada,—though a sprinkling of Spaniards and Americans became incorporated with them, so making St. Louis a city of many tongues like New Orleans. In both, an American could fancy himself in a foreign country, among foreigners. But while New Orleans had grown up under the worst conditions, in respect of situation and climate, St. Louis began her career under the best of both. At New Orleans people lived, as it were, on a floating island which the Mississippi might deluge with her floods. St. Louis was laid out on a spacious terrace, elevated above the united floods of the Missouri and Mississippi. Besides its high and healthy situation, the spot chosen by the founders of St. Louis for their future city was the best one to be found next south of the mouth of the Missouri River. That the whole Indian trade of the upper country was destined to be poured into the lap of the infant metropolis, was early foreseen and soon realized by its sagacious founders.

Of St. Louis in its infancy we lack adequate description. It was a palisaded village of the pattern so often described in these pages. During the Revolutionary War (1780) it withstood the assault of a marauding party sent against it from the Lakes, but lost some of its inhabitants whom the enemy carried off into captivity. At this time it had one hundred and twenty houses with eight hundred inhabitants, who owned and bred many cattle. While a few houses were of stone, the major part were mean, and the streets narrow and dirty. With the cession it began to grow apace.

When Father Charlevoix, the Jesuit historian of New France, descended the Mississippi in 1721, he found some miners at work on the Meramec, under authority of Law's Company. While searching for silver the miners struck galena ore which from that time began to be a source of wealth to the province, the lead product mostly going down the river to New Orleans.

In that part of the Louisiana purchase comprised within the States of Iowa and Minnesota, the North-west Company[3] of Montreal continued to monopolize the Indian trade till after the cession. It had posts on Sandy Lake and Leech Lake. Prairie du Chien had grown to a hamlet. Julien Dubuque, a French trader, who had first gone there from Canada, obtained permission to work the lead-mines where the city of Dubuque now stands, and had settled there.

FOOTNOTES

[1] NEW MADRID. Shortly after the Revolutionary War, Baron
Steuben and other officers of rank obtained from the Spanish
authorities of Louisiana a grant of land on which they
proposed founding a military colony. Under this authority
New Madrid was laid out on a great scale in 1790, by Colonel
George Morgan of New Jersey. The Spanish governor Miro,
however, disconcerted these plans by building a fort there.
The place was nearly destroyed by the earthquakes of 1811-12.
CAPE GIRARDEAU and ST. GENEVIEVE were ports of shipment for
the lead-mines of the interior. The latter is called the
oldest settlement in Missouri (1755). ST. CHARLES, twenty
miles up the Missouri, had been settled by Blanchette, 1769.

[2] PIERRE LACLEDE came up from Lower Louisiana in 1763 to
start a fur-trade west of the Mississippi, going first to St.
Genevieve, subsequently to Fort Chartres. The two brothers
Auguste and Pierre Chouteau were with him. He held a trading
license from the governor of Louisiana.—_Nicollet-Edwards._

[3] NORTH-WEST COMPANY, the great rival of the Hudson's
Bay Company; formed by the union (1784) of rival interests;
Frobisher and McTavish, managers; did business by the way of
the Grand Portage, Fond du Lac, Leech Lake, etc.