-
A Tornado on the Horizon: The Jefferson Administration, the Retrocession Crisis, and the Louisiana Purchase
- University of Virginia Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
M James E. Lewis Jr. A Tornado on the Horizon The Jefferson Administration, the Retrocession Crisis, and the Louisiana Purchase In the spring of 1801, during the first months of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, news began to reach the United States of a recent, secret agreement between France and Spain. Newspapers, private letters, reports by merchants and other travelers, and, in time, official dispatches from American diplomats abroad all carried the disturbing rumors. The most reliable, and the most worrisome, of these reports came from Rufus King, the American minister in London. In a letter that arrived in Washington in late May, King provided further evidence that Spain had “ceded Louisiana and the Floridas to France.” What seemed most alarming about this transaction to King was that “certain influential Persons in France” were known to consider the Appalachians a natural “line of Separation between the People of the United States living upon the two sides of the . . . Mountains.” As such, he feared “that this cession is intended to have, and may actually produce, Effects injurious to the Union and consequent happiness of the People of the United States.”1 Other American diplomats in Europe were neither so confident that a retrocession had taken place nor so alarmist about its implications. But the new president and his cabinet—Secretary of State James Madison, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, and Secretary of War Henry Dearborn, in particular—understood the danger of a French return to Louisiana in precisely the way suggested by King—as a threat to the union of the Atlantic and trans-Appalachian states and, thus, to the “happiness” of the American people. Just one day after reading King’s letter, Jefferson described the cession as “very ominous to us.”2 MostaccountsoftheLouisianaPurchasehavemisunderstoodthefears 118 james e. lewis jr. that drove the administration and shaped its policies. Over a century after Henry Adams first explored how the retrocession unleashed fears of disunion, most historians have generally forgotten the implications of his work.3 They have suggested that the administration’s great concern was—or, at least, should have been—the threat of Napoleonic France to American security. Or they have argued that Jefferson and his cabinet worried that a French Louisiana would prevent American expansion beyondtheMississippi .Ortheyhavesuggestedthatanagrarian-mindedJefferson feared that, without the vast acreage of Louisiana, men who might have become virtuous farmers would be forced to live in cities and work in factories. But Jefferson, his cabinet members, and many of his contemporaries worried about something very different—the impact of French control over the mouth of the Mississippi River on the permanence of the Americanunion.Fewerthanfiftyyearsafterindependenceandfewerthan fifteen years after the Constitution, the outcome of the American experiment in self-rule, republican government, and federal union still seemed veryuncertain.Theyunderstoodandacceptedthatwesternerswouldnot remain loyal to a government that could not protect and promote their economicinterests.AndnowhereintheUnitedStatesweresuchinterests as focused upon one spot as in the West. As Madison explained at the height of the crisis, the Mississippi was “every thing” to westerners: “It is the Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac and all the navigable rivers of the atlantic States formed into one stream.”4 If the federal government could not secure them the use of the river, westerners would break from the union. They might accept some form of dependency upon France that protected their trade. More likely, they would erect a separate confederacy in the West that could promote their interests. If they did, the United States would lose nearly half of its territory and would gain a potentially hostile neighbor. Spanning the Appalachians and ending at the Mississippi, the United States was an unnatural empire with unnatural boundaries. French control over the river might end in a redivision of the North American continent into two more natural empires—one east of the Appalachians, the other on both sides of the vast Mississippi watershed between the Appalachians and the Rockies. Whether controlled by France or by Americans, this vast empire would inevitablybecomemorepowerfulthanitseasternneighbor.Disputesover borders, commerce, and other issues would lead to conflict and war; the internalpeacethatseemedessentialforindependence,republicangovernment , and prosperity would be lost forever. As Jefferson, Madison, and [54.173.214.79] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:56 GMT) A Tornado on the Horizon 119 their contemporaries understood, the retrocession crisis, if mishandled, could result in a separate American nation beyond the Appalachians that would be much more threatening than a weak French colony beyond the Mississippi.5 Even before the administration knew the precise terms of the Treaty of San Ildefonso...