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runninghead •  • Introduction With the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, Thomas Jefferson and the government of the United States faced a new problem: how to transform a territory dominated by a foreign population into a state. “Previous American territories had been inhabited by people who spoke the English language, who were Protestant, and who had experience in representative government. The people of Louisiana were predominantly French in culture; they were Catholic ; and nothing in their history had given them experience in representative government.” 1 In 1804 Congress divided the Louisiana Purchase into two parts, at the thirty-third parallel. The sparsely populated northern section became the Louisiana District, and the southern portion that included New Orleans, an established Atlantic port connected to European markets, became the territory of Orleans. Through an analysis of territorial newspapers and government records, and of the correspondence of American government officials within the territory of Orleans as well as that of those who led the protest against territorial government , it is possible to gain an understanding of the issues that concerned Louisianans about their new government. Such an analysis is also useful in tracing the evolution of the protest movement and the efforts of Governor William Charles Cole Claiborne to deal with it. Possibly the greatest concern to Louisianans was whether Congress would allow slavery and the slave trade in the new territory. Many of the wealthiest French, Spanish, and American Louisianans owned plantations. By the 1790s approximately 19,000 slaves inhabited Louisiana and outnumbered the white population of the province by 3,000. Sugar, first successfully cultivated in Louisiana in 1795, fueled a rapid expansion of the plantation economy. Fifty sugar mills were constructed by 1797, and 550,000 pounds of sugar were exported from New Orleans. In 1802, the year before France sold Louisiana, seventyfive sugar plantations operated in the colony and produced 5 million pounds of sugar. 2 In addition to fears of restrictions on the slave trade, many Louisianans were anxious that the government of the United States might invalidate titles to land obtained under the Spanish and French governments. Titles obtained from Spanish government officials in Louisiana between 1801 and 1803 were Introduction •  • dubious because Spain had ceded the colony to France in 1800. Invalidation of such titles would mean the ruin of many of Louisiana’s planters. Louisianans recognized that that they might be forced to defend what they considered to be their rights to property, in government or in the courts. Those who did not speak English considered that they would be at a disadvantage to do this under an American administration that would most likely establish a territorial government and a court system that conducted all business in the English language. Anxieties over the future of slavery, land, and government prompted some Louisianans to present petitions to the French representative assigned to oversee the transfer of Louisiana to the United States, Pierre Clément de Laussat, and to the American commissioners assigned to receive the colony on behalf of the United States, William Claiborne and James Wilkinson. These petitions requested that Louisianans’ property rights in slaves and land be protected, that the French language be used in government business, and that Louisiana be granted immediate statehood in order that these rights would be guaranteed. 3 It must be recognized, however, that 1803 did not mark the first occasion that Louisianans had faced anxieties about possible threats to their commerce and property under a new regime. A brief examination of Louisianans’ concerns after France ceded their home to Spain in 1762 provides some important context for Louisianans’ actions to protect their economic interests in 1803. Furthermore, a brief comparison of French Louisianans’ experiences to those of French origin who lived under British rule in neighboring West Florida after 1763 reveals a pattern of petition and imperial adjustment that is remarkably similar to that which occurred in American Louisiana after 1803. Louisiana began its existence as a French colony but was ceded to the Spanish in 1762. Then, in 1800, France assumed control of the colony once again until Napoleon Bonaparte sold it to the United States. Each of these regime changes took place without consultation of Louisiana’s inhabitants, who naturally had concerns about the future of their commercial and property interests . After his arrival in Louisiana in March 1766, Spanish governor Antonio de Ulloa worked to implement colonial policy for the assimilation of Louisiana into Spain’s imperial mercantilist system. As John Preston Moore humorously concludes, however, it...

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