The Diplomatic Contest for the Mississippi Valley

II.

AFTER Jay’s treaty with England, in November, 1794, the whole diplomatic situation in respect to the Mississippi Valley changed. It is necessary to observe how the United States sacrificed the friendship of France in gaining that of England; how Spain, irate at the conduct of her English ally, made the peace of Bâle with France, thus restoring a concert between these two powers for the first time since the rupture of the Family Compact; and how France, seeking for means to injure England and to render the United States more subservient to French policy, turned her attention again to the acquisition of Louisiana.

The representative of France in the United States at that time was Fauchet. As the successor of Genet, he was characterized by Alexander Hamilton as “ a meteor following a comet; ” but he appreciated the profound significance of the new relations of this country with England, and as soon as he was fairly well informed of the purport of Jay’s treaty, in February, 1795, he proposed a radical programme for meeting the situation. He reminded his government that at the commencement of his mission the pressing need of France, then threatened with famine, was American provisions, and that political interests were subordinated to the single consideration of keeping this country from alliance with other powers while it served as the granary for France and her islands. He had energetically protested against our failure to enforce the rights of neutral commerce vigorously against England ; but now Jay’s treaty threatened even more unfavorable conditions by its concessions to Great Britain in the matter of neutral rights, and the

alliance of 1778 was worse than useless. Yet, as he pointed out, France had no means of intimidating the United States. The ocean separated the two powers, and the French West Indies, far from threatening the United States, were actually in danger of starvation in time of war if American trade were cut off. He quoted Jefferson’s remark : “ France enjoys their sovereignty and we their profit.” A war to compel the Union to follow French policy would deprive the Republic of the indispensable trade of America. Some other means must be found, and the solution of the problem, in Fauchet’s opinion, was the acquisition of a continental colony in America : “ Louisiana opens her arms to us.” This province would furnish France the best entrepôt in North America for her commerce, raw material, and a market for her manufactures, a monopoly of the products of the American states on the Mississippi, and a means of pressure upon the United States. He predicted that, unless a revolution occurred in Spanish policy, the force of events would unite Louisiana to the United States, and in the course of time would bring about a new confederation between this province and the Western states, which would not remain within the United States fifty years. In this new union the superior institutions and power of the American element would give to it the sovereignty. But if France or any power less feeble than Spain possessed Louisiana, it would establish there the sovereignty over all the countries on the Mississippi. If a nation with adequate resources, said he, understood how to manage the control of the river, it could hold in dependence the Western states of America, and might at pleasure advance or retard the rate of their growth. What, then, he asks, might not France do with so many warm friends among the Western settlers? The leaven of insurrection had been recently manifested in the whiskey rebellion; it would depend upon France to decide the question of dismemberment. In this way, by pressure on our borders, she could bend the United States to her will, or in the possession of the Mississippi Valley find a means of freeing herself and her islands from their economic dependence upon the United States. Such was the line of thought presented by Fauchet to the French authorities; he preferred diplomatic negotiation to war or the filibustering system of Genet.

The possibility of a secession of the people beyond the Alleghanies from the Union was no new conception : settlers had threatened it; Federalists had calculated the value and the feasibility of the union between the interior and the coast, and after the acquisition of Louisiana the leaders of New England threatened secession ; travelers like Brissot had foretold the withdrawal of the West ; Washington had feared it; Western leaders like Wilkinson, Sevier, and Robertson had been ready to bring it about; and Spain and England, as we have seen, had initiated negotiations to this end. There can be little doubt that if the United States had proved unwilling or unable to secure free navigation for the West, it would have withdrawn, and by reason of the lack of sea power to defend its commerce passing from the mouth of the Mississippi through the Gulf, it must have sought protection from a foreign state. Fauchet cited a dispatch by De Moustier, the French minister to this country at the close of the Confederation, in which he reached conclusions similar to his own.

But properly to appreciate how deeply rooted was the desire of France for the whole Mississippi Valley, it must be understood that she had made the recovery of this province a cardinal point in her connections with the United States during our Revolutionary War. If we may accept as authentic a memoir¹ attributed to him, Vergennes, who conducted French foreign relations at that time, apprehended that when the United States obtained its independence it would prove able to give the law to France and Spain in America. In this memoir, written prior to the alliance of 1778, he considered means for averting this outcome, and advised the king to insist, in the treaty which France expected to dictate to England at the conclusion of the war, upon the recovery of the territory beyond the Alleghanies. He regarded much of this territory as rightly a part of the old French Louisiana, and did not accept the view of the Americans that it was a part of their chartered possessions. He even drafted a treaty providing in detail for the cession of this western region by England to France, and for such a division of Canada as would prevent an English attack upon Louisiana by way of the Great Lakes. He further proposed to procure the retrocession of Louisiana from Spain, and to restore it to its old French limits, with the Alleghanies as the eastern boundary. He pointed out to the king that if the United States passed from the colonial condition and secured a place among independent nations, having fought to defend its hearth fires, it would next desire to extend itself over Louisiana, Florida, and Mexico in order to master all the approaches to the sea. France, on the other hand, by possessing the Mississippi Valley, the Great Lakes, and the entrance to the St. Lawrence, and by allying herself with the Indians of the interior, could restrain the ambitions of the Americans. By the treaty of 1778, however, France renounced the possession of territories in North America that had belonged to England, but Vergennes supported the Spanish contention that our own rights stopped with the Alleghanies, and he tried to acquire Louisiana from Spain. He could evade the renunciation of territory by making the region between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi Indian country. Instructing his minister to the United States that France did not intend to raise this nation to a position where she would be independent of French support, he made earnest efforts to dissuade the Americans from insisting on the Mississippi as their boundary in the terms of peace. Indeed, so successful was he, that in the dark days of 1781 Congress voted to rescind its ultimatum, and instructed its representatives to be guided by the advice of France. Fortunately, the commissioners broke their instructions. We know what this advice would have been from a plan which Vergennes’ confidential secretary showed to Jay. This provided that the land south of the Ohio, between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, should be Indian country, divided by the Cumberland River into two spheres of influence, — the northern to fall to the United States, and the southern to Spain. Vergennes’ effort to induce Spain to cede Louisiana to France would have succeeded, if the latter power could have furnished the funds to reimburse Spain for the expenses incurred in defending and administering that province.

The apprehensions of the far-sighted French statesman were now proving only too well-founded. France had lost the fruits of the war which she had waged as our ally, England was once more in favor, and Louisiana was in danger. It was with energy, therefore, that France recurred to the policy of recovering her former province.

In May, 1795, the French government instructed Barth^lemy, her negotiator with Spain at Bâle, to demand cessions as the price of peace. The Spanish portion of San Domingo, the Basque province of Guipuscoa, and Louisiana were desired, but upon Louisiana he was ordered to insist; “ the rest would be easy.” In support of her demand, France argued that it would be a great gain to Spain to place a strong power between her American possessions and those of the United States, particularly since England had by Jay’s treaty guaranteed to the United States the freedom of navigation of the Mississippi, and it was to be feared that these new allies would seize Louisiana.

At this juncture Godoy, the Duke of Alcudia, was in control of the foreign policy of Spain. Alarmed by conditions in Europe, and chagrined at England’s arrangements with the United States at a moment when Spain trembled for the fate of Louisiana, he made peace with France at Bâle (July, 1795) ; but he refused to yield Louisiana, preferring to abandon the Spanish portion of San Domingo. This only rendered France the more determined to secure the continental colony needed to support her West Indian possessions ; and in the negotiations later over the terms of alliance, she pressed hard for the additional cession. It is this situation which explains the treaty that Godoy made with the United States not long after.

He was most reluctant to give up Louisiana, but France demanded it as a condition of her alliance. Threatened thus with isolation, and confronted by the prospect of a war with England, he was disposed to conciliate the United States, lest she join England and take Louisiana by force. When, therefore, Pinckney’s threat to leave for London was made, Godoy quickly came to terms, and in the treaty of San Lorenzo (October 27, 1795) conceded the navigation of the Mississippi, and our boundary on that river, and agreed to give up the Spanish posts north of New Orleans within the disputed territory. Thus relieved of the danger of an American invasion, Godoy was in a better position to resist tbe efforts of France to force him to cede Louisiana.

In the spring of 1796, the Directors sent General Perignon to Madrid to arrange terms of a formal alliance. He was instructed to warn Spain that French influence in America was nearing its end. War with the United States promised France no satisfactory results, and to punish the Americans by restrictions on their commerce would deprive France of a resource which the European wars rendered necessary to her. These, however, were merely temporary difficulties. “ Who,” asked the Directors, “ can answer that England and the United States together will not divide up the northern part of the New World ? What prevents them?” The instructions went on to give a forceful presentation of the rapidity with which settlers were pouring into Kentucky and Tennessee, and of the danger to Louisiana from filibustering expeditions. Conceding the navigation of the Mississippi, in the opinion of France, only prepared the ruin and invasion of Louisiana whenever the Federal government, in concert with Great Britain, should “ give the reins to those fierce inhabitants of the West.” The English-speaking people would then overrun Mexico and all North America, and the commerce of the islands of the Gulf would be dependent upon this Anglo-American power. Only France, in alliance with Spain, argued the Directors, can oppose a counterpoise by the use of her old influence among the Indians. “ We alone can trace with strong and respected hand the bounds of the power of the United States and the limits of their territory.” All that France demanded was Louisiana, a province that, so far from serving the purpose of its original cession as a barrier against England, was now a dangerous possession to Spain, ever ready to join with her neighbors. It had remained in a condition of infancy while the United States had acquired irresistible strength on its borders. This country was now daily preparing the subjects of Spain for insurrection by intrigues and by the spectacle of its prosperity. “ On the other hand,” continued the Directors, “ if this possession were once in our hands, it would be beyond insult by Great Britain, to whom we can oppose not only the Western settlements of the United States, who are as friendly to us as they could possibly be, but also the inhabitants of Louisiana, who have given clear evidence of their indestructible attachment to their former mother country. It gives us the means to balance the marked predilection of the Federal government for our enemy, and to retain it in the line of duty by the fear of dismemberment which we can bring about.” “ We shall affright England by the sudden development of an actual power in the New World, and shall be in a position to oppose a perfect harmony to her attacks and her intrigues.” They therefore urged Spain to act at once, in order that the political and military campaigns might begin in America that very year.

As we shall presently see, the apprehension that England contemplated an attack upon Louisiana was well founded. But Godoy resolutely refused to give up Louisiana, and Perignon was obliged to content himself with a treaty of alliance without this important concession. France thereupon recalled him, and sent a successor with the particular purpose of persuading Spain to yield Louisiana by the offer to join her in the conquest of Portugal; but the Prince of Peace remained immovable ; nor did he consent even when, in 1797, after Napoleon’s victories in Italy had given the Papal legations to France, she offered them to the royal house of Spain as an equivalent for Louisiana. Had religious scruples not prevented, however, Spain would probably have accepted this proposition.

While France negotiated with Spain, she prepared the ground in America. In the winter of 1795, Colonel Fulton, one of George Rogers Clark’s officers in the Genet expedition, was sent to conciliate the Southwestern Indians, and at the same time information regarding these Indians was procured from Milfort, a French adventurer who, after passing twenty years among the Creeks as an agent of Spain, went to offer his services to France. He had married a sister of McGillivray, and claimed to be the principal war chief of the Creeks. His Mémoire ou coup d’œil rapide sur mes différens voyages et mon séjour dans la nation Crëek is one of the sources for our knowledge of these Indians; but he was a hopeless liar, one of his most interesting concoctions being a statement to the French government that he had defeated 10,000 regulars under George Rogers Clark near Detroit by a force of 6000 Northern Indians under his command. Nevertheless, the French listened with respect to his assertions that he could bring about the cession of a large portion of Creek territory to France, that the Creeks would form an independent nation in alliance with that power, and that 10,000 men would suffice for the occupation of Louisiana. He was made general of brigade in the spring of 1796, and his plans were later taken up by Talleyrand.

Before a final breach with the United States, France determined to send a new minister to effect a change in our policy. Mangourit, the former consul at Charleston, who had been recalled because of the fact that he had organized the frontiersmen of the Carolinas and Georgia to cooperate with Genet’s proposed attack on Louisiana and Florida, was picked out as the representative. He was an apt choice, if France expected to tamper with the West; but the protests of Monroe resulted in the decision of the Directors to withhold him, and to break off all diplomatic connection with the United States. In August, 1796, Monroe reported from Paris that it was rumored that France was to make an attempt upon Canada, which was to be united with Louisiana and Florida, taking in such parts of our Western people as were willing to unite. A little later, Fulton, who had recently returned from the United States, was furnishing the Directors information as to the best time for occupying Louisiana, and was assuring them that Clark’s old soldiers were loyal to France, and asked only arms, ammunition, and uniforms, and “ their country will find itself in the vast regions which the Republic will possess.” Toward the end of the year, France sent a new commission to George Rogers Clark, as brigadier-general, on the theory (as Delacroix, the Minister of Foreign Relations, declared) that it was to the interest of France to foster a favorable disposition among the Westerners. “ In case we shall be put in possession of Louisiana,” he wrote, “ the affection of those regions will serve us in our political plans toward the United States.”

In the meantime Adet, the French minister to the United States, exerted every effort to prevent Congress from voting the appropriations to carry out Jay’s treaty. In fact, as it turned out, the vote was a close one, but Adet, foreseeing defeat, and acting in accordance with the desire of his government, in March, 1796, commissioned General Victor Collot, formerly governor of Guadeloupe, to travel in the West, and to make a military survey of the defenses and lines of communication west of the Alleghanies, along the Ohio and the Mississippi. Collot was gone about ten months, and as he passed down the rivers, he pointed out to men whom he trusted the advantages of accepting French jurisdiction. He made detailed and accurate plans of the river courses and the Spanish posts, which may still be seen in the atlas that accompanies his Journey in America, published long afterwards. As the military expert on whose judgment the French government had to rely, his conclusions have a peculiar interest, and may be given in his own words: —

“ All the positions on the left bank of the river [Mississippi], in whatever point of view they may be considered, or in whatever mode they may be occupied, without the alliance of the Western states are far from covering Louisiana: they are, on the contrary, highly injurious to this colony ; and the money and men which might be employed for this purpose would be ineffectual.” In other words, a Louisiana bounded by the Mississippi could not be protected against the neighboring settlements of the United States. He emphasizes the same idea, in another connection, as follows : “ When two nations possess, one the coasts and the other the plains, the former must inevitably embark or submit. From thence I conclude that the Western states of the North American republic must unite themselves with Louisiana and form in the future one single compact nation ; else that colony, to whatever power it shall belong, will be conquered or devoured.” As the logical accompaniment of this conclusion that Louisiana must embrace the Western states, Collot drew up a plan for the defense of the passes of the Alleghanies, which were to constitute the frontier of this interior dependency of France to protect it against the United States. The Louisiana that Collot contemplated, therefore, stretched from the Alleghanies to the Rockies. The importance of his report is made clearer by the facts that the minister Adet, and the consul-general who remained after he left, continually refer to Collot’s work as the basis for their views on Louisiana, and that Livingston reported in 1802 that it was expected that Napoleon would make Collot second in command in the province of Louisiana, and that Adet was to be prefect.

In view of these designs, there is a peculiar significance in the Farewell Address which Washington issued while Collot was making his investigations. Washington informed the West that “it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of the indispensable outlets for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interests as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.” He added that the treaties with Spain and England had given the Western people all that they could desire in respect to foreign relations, and asked : “ Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation of these advantages on the Union by which they were procured ? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their brethren and connect them with aliens ? ”

As he descended the Mississippi, Collot learned of a plot for an attack under the English flag upon the Spanish dependencies, and on his return, early in 1797, he notified the Spanish minister to the United States, who promptly informed the Secretary of State. In the investigation that followed, it was ascertained that the British minister had been privy to the plans, and United States Senator Blount, of Tennessee, lost his seat as a result of the revelations, which involved him. The incident revealed how widespread were the forces of intrigue for the Mississippi Valley, and it gave grounds for the refusal of the Spanish authorities to carry out the agreement to yield their posts on the right bank of the river while New Orleans was threatened by an attack down the Mississippi.

It is possible to trace the outlines of this affair, although it is difficult to fix the exact measure of England’s connection with it. On October 25, 1795, the English government had charged Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe, of Canada, to cultivate such intercourse with the leading men of the Western settlements of the United States as would enable England to utilize the services of the frontiersmen against the Spanish settlements, if war broke out between England and Spain, and to report what assistance might be afforded by the Southern and Western Indians in such an event. Information was also desired with regard to the communications between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, with the evident idea of using Canadian forces in the operations. These “ most private and secret ” instructions cast light upon England’s policy at this time; and the explicit injunctions of caution, lest the government should be compromised with Spain and the United States while matters were preparing, help us to understand that whatever was to be done must be managed secretly.

War was declared by Spain against England in the fall of 1796. The rumors that France was to acquire Louisiana alarmed land speculators on the western waters, who feared the effect of the power of France to close the river, and even to secure the territory along its eastern bank. Among these men was Senator Blount, who owned some 73,000 acres. He was the most important figure in his own section, having held the position of governor of the Southwest territory, and the management of Indian affairs in that quarter. Thus his influence extended among all the Indian agents and traders of that turbulent region. The loyalists at Natchez also were struck with alarm at the prospect of French sovereignty. In the course of the fall and winter of 1796—97, a plan was concerted between Blount, Dr. Romayne, a land speculator, who had just returned from Great Britain, Captain Chisholm (who had served Blount in Tennessee, and who was in Philadelphia in the interests of the Natchez Tories), and Indians and British Indian agents from New York and Canada. The plan was submitted to the English minister by Chisholm, for Blount did not deal directly with Liston, and, indeed, the minister assured his government later that, while he was aware that important men in the West would be concerned in the expedition, he did not know that Blount himself was involved in it.

The outlines of the proposition were as follows : a force of Pennsylvania and New York frontiersmen, with Brant and his Indians, was to attack New Madrid on the Mississippi, and proceed by the head of the Red River to the Spanish silver mines. Tennessee, Kentucky, and Natchez settlers, with the Choctaw Indians, led by Blount, were to capture New Orleans ; while the Cherokees, Creeks, and white settlers in Florida, under the direction of Chisholm, were to take West Florida. Great Britain was to furnish a fleet to block the mouth of the Mississippi while the attack was in progress, and was to become the mistress of Louisiana and Florida.

The British minister was sanguine enough to believe that the United States itself would be glad to see this plan carried into execution, if it could be effected with rapid success. He corresponded with the Governor of Canada, to ascertain the practicability of furnishing supplies from that quarter, and in the spring of 1797 he paid the passage money of Chisholm to England, in order to allow the government to pass upon the project. At the same time George Rogers Clark wrote to his friends in France that English agents from Canada were enrolling volunteers in Kentucky for the conquest of Louisiana and Santa Fé, and asserted that he had received propositions from the Governor of Canada to march at the head of 2000 men against New Mexico, — an offer which he says he declined because of his loyalty to French interests. General Elijah Clarke, of Georgia, the seasoned filibusterer of the Oconee River and Amelia Island, also came forward with allegations of English attempts to buy his services. Certain it is that the frontier was in ferment. But the exposure came when, in July, President Adams submitted to Congress evidence that Senator Blount had made efforts to engage the Indian agents of the United States in the Southwest in his unlawful schemes. He was expelled from the Senate, and the investigation, which Liston vainly endeavored to prevent, gave such publicity to the plot that, if the English government ever had actively engaged in it, it was obliged to abandon the project. Liston made denial for his government of complicity, although he admitted accepting and transmitting information. Indeed, he went farther, and denied that England intended, or had intended, any attack upon Upper Louisiana, adding, on the authority of his government, that the impropriety of violating our neutral territory, and the inhumanity of the use of Indians, would induce the king’s ministers to reject any such plan. These assertions are interesting in view of the instructions previously given to Simcoe.

It is only fair to assume that the activity of the individuals engaged in promoting the undertaking may have given reason to the frontier leaders to believe that the men who made propositions to them acted with a direct authority which they did not possess; but the policy of the British government permitted the use or disavowal of just such attempts according as they met its needs.

From the point of view of the larger diplomatic problem, the most tangible result of the affair was the retention of Natchez and the other posts east of the Mississippi by Spain, under the sincere apprehension that if they were evacuated, in accordance with the treaty of 1795, a clear road would be opened for the British into Louisiana. Not until the spring of 1798 did Spain actually evacuate these forts.

After the rupture of diplomatic relations with France the Federalists proceeded in the early summer of 1797 to enact laws for raising an army and providing a fleet, and for the necessary loans and taxes in preparation for war with the Republic. But, less radical than some of his advisers, and ready to make another effort to adjust our affairs with France, President Adams sent a commission to reopen negotiations, in spite of his chagrin that the previous minister, C. C. Pinckney, had been summarily refused and ordered out of France.

When this commission sailed, Talleyrand had just become the master of the foreign policy of his country. He had returned from his sojourn in the United States, convinced that Americans were hopelessly attached to England, and that France must have Louisiana. In a memoir to the Institute he pointed out that Louisiana would serve the commercial needs of France, would prove a granary for a great West Indian colonial power, and would be a useful outlet for the discontented revolutionists, who could find room for their energies in building up the New World. It was his policy to play with the American representatives, refusing to deal with them except informally through agents, and while detaining them, to negotiate with Spain for Louisiana. These so-called X. Y. Z. negotiations extended till the spring of 1798, when Marshall and Pinckney, outraged by demands for bribes, and hopeless of results, left Paris. Gerry, deluded by Talleyrand, remained to keep the peace, and while the adroit diplomat deceived Gerry, he instructed Guillemardet, his minister at Madrid, to make Spain realize that that government had been blind to its interests in putting the United States into possession of the Mississippi forts ; they meant, he declared, to rule alone in America, and to influence Europe. No other means existed for putting an end to their ambition than that of “ shutting them up within the limits which nature seems to have traced for them.” There can be little doubt that Talleyrand intended the Alleghanies by this expression. France, he argued, if placed in possession of Louisiana and Florida, would be a “ wall of brass forever impenetrable to the combined efforts of England and America.”

Foreseeing the tendency of France to carry her influence over Spain to the point of absolute domination, Godoy had resigned in March, 1798, after a vain effort to induce the king to break with France. But although the latter power greatly gained in influence after Godoy’s retirement, Spain was not yet weak enough to yield Louisiana, and France was forced to wait for the energy of Napoleon to wring this province from its reluctant owner.

In the meantime the publication of the X. Y. Z. correspondence brought the United States to the verge of declaring war against France. Indeed, hostilities were authorized at sea, the aged Washington was made titular head of the army, while Hamilton and Knox were rivals for the position of second in command.

Here was an opportunity made to hand for Miranda, the old-time friend and correspondent of these men. Alarmed lest Spain should drift completely under French domination and yield her empire in the New World, in the beginning of 1798 Pitt summoned Miranda to London, and discussed with him the project of revolutionizing Spanish America. Miranda proposed an alliance between England, the United States, and South America, which should give independence to Spanish America and open its commerce. The passage of the Isthmus of Panama was to be “ forthwith completed,” and the control of the waterway to be given to England for a certain number of years. There were to be mutual arrangements with regard to division of territory. In return, England was to furnish 8000 foot and 2000 horse, together with her Pacific squadron ; while from the United States were expected 5000 woodsmen who understood new countries, officered by Revolutionary veterans.

These proposals Pitt held under advisement. If the Spanish government were overthrown and the resources and colonies of Spain placed at the disposal of France, England was prepared to set Spanish America free, and would negotiate for joint action to this end with the United States. Rufus King, our minister in England, eagerly accepted this idea of coöperation, and by January, 1799, he was urging upon Hamilton that the time had come to settle the system of the American nations, while England was ready to assist us in accomplishing in South America what we had accomplished in North America. “ For God’s sake give attention to it,” he begged.

Hamilton was not averse to engaging in the enterprise, but he believed that the United States should furnish the entire land forces. This would have given to him the military leadership. But President Adams, hard-headed and devoid of dreams of conquests in the South, saw that in such an alliance England would be the gainer. He regarded Miranda’s plan as absurd, and rightly believed he had no effective force in America. Doubting whether Pitt had been bewitched by this Venezuelan agitator, or whether he was trying to dupe us into war with France, the President firmly declined to answer Miranda’s letters, or to open negotiations for the proposed conquest of Spanish America. As soon as Napoleon’s overtures paved the way he sent a new embassy to Paris, and on September 30, 1800, a treaty was made which restored France and America to friendly relations. The next day the subtle and forceful Corsican secured the secret retrocession of Louisiana to France. His material power, and the tempting offer of the beautiful land of Tuscany, rich in art and literature, to the royal house of Spain, proved effective.

The rest of the story is a familiar one. Napoleon made the peace of Amiens with England, and in the lull prepared to erect a colonial empire in America.

His army would first occupy San Domingo, and then Louisiana, the continental feeder to the West Indies. He would acquire the Floridas, and in time make of the Gulf of Mexico a French lake. His agents should establish friendly relations among the settlers beyond the Alleghanies, while alliances with the Southwestern Indians within our borders should serve to defend Louisiana and Florida from attack. There can be no doubt that once in control of the Mississippi and the Gulf he would have set himself to the task of extending his province to the Alleghanies. Lord Hawkesbury, the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, warned Rufus King in 1801 that “ the acquisition might enable France to extend her influence and perhaps her dominion up the Mississippi and through the Great Lakes, even to Canada. This would be realizing the plan, to prevent the accomplishment of which the Seven Years’ War took place.”

But before he occupied Louisiana, Napoleon undertook to subdue the negro insurrection in San Domingo, and fever and slaughter ruined his armies of occupation. He had founded his system on restoring this island to its once proud position as the centre of West Indian commerce, and he delayed taking possession of Louisiana until the interval of peace was at an end. But the strength of English sea power, and the danger of a union of the forces of England and the United States in time of war, would make the transfer of a large army to occupy Louisiana under hostile conditions a hazardous enterprise. Was it, after all, worth the cost, since its value was not so much immediate, as in that remote future which lay before the power that dominated the Mississippi ?

If considerations like these engaged Napoleon’s thought, the vigorous representations of Jefferson would have reinforced them. When it became clear that Louisiana had passed to France, he wrote our minister, Livingston, a letter, intended also for the perusal of Napoleon, which showed that the lessons of the long and tortuous intrigues for the possession of the mouth of the Mississippi had sunk deeply into his mind. Confronted with the danger of French occupation of the mouth of the Mississippi, he saw that he must throw aside his old antipathy to England, navies, alliances, and conquests, and grasp at that policy of an English alliance for the domination of North and South America, which so vigorous a Federalist as John Adams had rejected. “ The day that France takes possession of New Orleans,” he wrote, fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her low-water mark. It seals the union of two nations who, in conjunction, can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation. We must turn all our attention to a maritime force, for which our resources place us on very high ground ; and having formed and connected together a power which may render reënforcement of her settlements here impossible to France, make the first cannon which shall be fired in Europe the signal for the tearing up of any settlement she may have made, and for holding the two continents of America in sequestration for the common purposes of the united British and American nations.” Jefferson perceived clearly that European possession of the mouth of the Mississippi would necessarily involve North America in the system of the Old World.

When the French minister Adet was striving to secure the election of Jefferson to the Presidency in 1796, he reported to his government an estimate of the great Virginian’s character which strikingly illustrates this letter. He said: “ I do not know whether, as I am told, we will always find in him a man entirely devoted to our interests. Mr. Jefferson likes us because he detests England ; he seeks to unite with us because he suspects us less than Great Britain, but he would change his sentiments toward us to-morrow, perhaps, if to-morrow Great Britain ceased to inspire him with fear. Jefferson, although a friend of liberty and the sciences, although an admirer of the efforts which we have made to break our chains and dissipate the cloud of ignorance which weighs upon mankind, Jefferson, I say, is an American, and, by that title, it is impossible for him to be sincerely our friend. An American is the born enemy of European peoples.”

But with his passion for peace, Jefferson was in no haste to apply the rigorous programme of hostility. He preferred to put off the day of contention till our population in the valley increased so that “ it could do its own business.” In the instructions which he gave to Monroe in March, 1803, on sending him as a special envoy to France, he set the maximum desire of the United States at New Orleans and the Floridas. To secure them he was even ready to give to France an absolute guarantee of the west bank of the Mississippi. But his minimum demand was simply for the continuation of the right of deposit, to insure the freedom of navigation of the river. It was the “ barren sand, . . . formed by the Gulf Stream in its circular course round the Mexican Gulf,” and lying at the mouth of the Mississippi, that he coveted, for it controlled the destiny of the Great Valley.

Impetuous and swift in his decisions, Napoleon, while Monroe was still at sea, abandoned his hopes of a great colonial empire on the Gulf of Mexico, resolved on war with England, and ordered that all of Louisiana should be offered to the Union. On April 30, 1803, the treaty was dated which brought to an end these years of intrigue between European powers for the control over the interior of North America, and for the domination of the desintegrating empire of Spain. From that cession dates the emancipation of North America from the state systems of Europe, and the rise of the United States into the position of a world power, the arbiter of America.

Frederick J. Turner.