Liberty and Order

The Louisiana Purchase

G&S Typesetters PDF proof The Louisiana Purchase 307 France had ceded Louisiana to Spain in 1762, but Napoleon envisioned a rebuilding of the French empire in North America. At his insistence, Spain returned the province by the Treaty of Madrid, 21 March 1801. News of the retrocession provoked intense alarm in the United States. Some of the Federalists in Congress urged an immediate recourse to force. But lacking both the means and the desire to initiate a conflict with France, Jefferson instead instructed Robert R. Livingston, the U.S. minister to France, to attempt to purchase a tract of land on the lower Mississippi, which could become an American port, or to obtain a guarantee of free navigation of the river with a right of deposit for American goods. On 12 January 1803, not long after the Spanish intendant at New Orleans (without instructions from his government) interdicted the American right of deposit at New Orleans, provoking more Federalist calls for a resort to force, the president nominated James Monroe as minister plenipotentiary to France. Monroe would join Livingston under instructions to offer up to $10 million for the purchase of New Orleans and West Florida. Two million dollars had already been appropriated by Congress. Even before Monroe arrived in France, Napoleon had abandoned his dream of a new American empire. A French army was hopelessly ensnarled in a slave revolt in Haiti, and Napoleon was beginning to prepare for a resumption of the war with Britain, in which event he would not be able to protect any of his North American possessions. On 11 April 1803, Foreign Minister Talleyrand offered Livingston the whole of Louisiana. Livingston and Monroe quickly decided to exceed their instructions and, on 2 May, signed a treaty. For roughly $15 million, the ministers acquired some 828,000 square miles of land between the Mississippi and the Rockies, doubling the national territory of the United States. The greatest coup of Jefferson’s administration , the Louisiana Purchase was nevertheless not free from problems. It was not entirely clear whether the boundaries of the province included West Florida, as Jefferson and his successor would both maintain. Moreover, the Constitution made no provision for the purchase of foreign territory and its eventual incorporation into the American Union, and the Jeffersonian Republicans had always insisted on a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Despite his reservations, Jefferson decided not to urge a constitutional amendment. The Senate ratified the treaty on 20 October by a vote of 24 to 7. On 20 December the United States took possession of New Orleans, and on 27 October 1812, after years of arguments with the Spanish and a local revolt led by American inhabitants, President Madison simply issued a proclamation insisting on American possession of West Florida from the Mississippi to the Perdido Rivers and ordering its military occupation. On 14 May 1812, Congress incorporated this area into the Mississippi Territory. Thomas Jefferson to Robert R. Livingston 18 April 1802 . . . The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France works most sorely on the U.S. On this subject the Secretary of State has written to you fully. Yet I cannot forbear recurring to it personally, so deep is the impression it makes in my mind. It completely reverses all the political relations of the U.S. and will form a new epoch in our political course. Of all nations of any consideration France is the one which hitherto has offered the fewest points on which we could have any conflict of right and the most points of a communion of interests. From these causes we have ever looked to her as our natural friend, as one with which we never could have an occasion of difference. Her growth therefore we viewed as our own, her misfortunes ours. There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce and contain more than half our inhabitants. France placing herself in that door assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific dispositions, her feeble state, would induce her to increase our facilities there, so that her possession of the The Louisiana Purchase 23-L2720 9/19/03 7:20 AM Page 307 G&S Typesetters PDF proof...