Bonapartists in the Borderlands: French Exiles and Refugees on the Gulf Coast, 1815-1835

5. The Vine and Olive Colony [Includes Image Plates]

5 The Vine and Olive Colony While Lallemand had been engaged in his fool’s mission, the Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and Olive persisted with its plans. By 1822 close to 70 of the original grantees had spent some time on the grant—a ¤gure nowhere near the 347 who had received allotments. Conditions there also fell short of the settlers’ expectations. The dif¤culty of clearing the forested terrain , shortage of labor, lack of infrastructure, oppressively hot climate, and diseases that ravaged the area all conspired against them. By the mid-1820s many had abandoned their grants. To a great extent, Anglo-American settlers purchased the allotments of those who left, consolidated them into contiguous holdings, and established cotton plantations. But some of the wealthier and better-connected French grantees also pro¤ted from their compatriots’ failures to found their own estates. With two nationally distinct groups of large-scale planters precipitating out of the original mass of French grantees, the Vine and Olive colony had by the mid-1830s evolved into something quite different from what its founders had envisioned. From Optimism to Abandonment As the drama of the Champ d’Asile moved toward its tragicomic denouement , the remaining members of the Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and Olive moved ahead with their settlement plans. The ¤rst two contingents of grantees—those who had come in the spring of 1817 with Parmentier and those who had arrived that fall with Generals Clausel and LefebvreDesnouettes —were reinforced the following year by a steady trickle of settlers. By the end of 1818 the society informed the secretary of the treasury that 34 grantees and 7 other individuals (most of whom would receive forty-acre reserve allotments the following year) were established on the grant.1 Popular accounts of the Vine and Olive colony describe the settlers as Bonapartist or Napoleonic of¤cers, but these are inaccurate labels.2 In fact, relatively few soldiers came to Alabama. Of the 65 imperial veterans whose names appear on the membership lists of the Vine and Olive Association, 33 (51 percent) sold their allotments and followed Lallemand to Texas. Others retained their allot- ments, but remained on the East Coast while awaiting Bourbon clemency. Among these were Galabert, Grouchy, Vandamme, and Taillade. Thus, many of the Napoleonic veterans never set foot on the Vine and Olive colony, and even those who did—only 12—had little desire to make the United States their permanent home. Like their comrades on the East Coast, what they really wanted were pardons from the French government. Lefebvre-Desnouettes, the highest-ranking of¤cer to settle on the grant, was no exception.3 Until he obtained clemency, he wrote in mid-1821, he had no choice but to “vegetate in this country and make myself the least miserable possible.”4 His reiterated invitations to Clausel, who had settled temporarily in Mobile but refused to visit the grant, are eloquent testimony to Lefebvre-Desnouettes’s loneliness on the Tombigbee .5 Although their correspondence has not survived, it is likely that the other military men on the grant felt the same way about their sojourn in the Alabama wilderness; by 1830, every one of them had departed.6 In exaggerating the military and Napoleonic character of the settlers, existing works on Vine and Olive tend to overlook the civilian expatriates from France and Saint-Domingue who actually formed the backbone of the Alabama settlement. Even so, most civilian members of the Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and Olive never came to Alabama. In fact, only 61 of the 285 civilian grantees inscribed on the society’s original membership list of 1818 (21 percent ) ever set foot on the grant. This is not to say, however, that the absentees were indifferent to the fate of the colony in general or their own holdings in particular. Many, especially the Philadelphia-based Domingan merchants, treated their land as an investment and employed agents to improve it and meet the conditions (such as vine cultivation) required by the society’s contract with Congress. Not all the civilian absentees, however, had the same degree of business acumen, deep pockets, and patience, and instead they sought to sell their 118 / Chapter Five allotments at the ¤rst opportunity—usually for nominal sums. Among these were Laurent Astolphi and Victor Hamel, French immigrants who had been working together as confectioners...