5. Who besides the Federalists were opposed to radical changes in the government? 6. Give an abstract of the letter written by Bayard to Hamilton in 1802 and point out its significance. 7. What characteristic of the American people stood in the way of an attempt to realize the ideals of Jeffersonian Republicanism? 8. Why did Leib withdraw his motion to appoint a committee to consider the question of abolishing the navy? 9. What alliance was necessary to keep the Republican party in power? 10. Who is Von Holst? 11. What does he say of Jefferson? Mention some facts in Jefferson's life that may have led to the opinion? 12. Why was Jefferson so desirous of popularity? 13. Compare him and Hamilton and Washington in this respect. 14. What do you know of John Randolph ? TH CHAPTER XXVII. THE PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA. HE territory of Louisiana had been ceded to Spain by France in 1762. As the country on both sides of the mouth of the Mississippi was a part of it, Attempts to se cure the right to the free navi gation of the Mississippi. Spain claimed, and for a long time exercised, the right to exclude all foreign ships from that river. She would not make a treaty with the United States in 1780-2, because Jay, our foreign minister, insisted on her giving the United States a right to the free navigation of it. In 1784 another attempt was made to make a treaty with Spain. Her minister, Gardoqui, was willing enough to make a commercial treaty, provided the United States would give up all right to navigate the Mississippi below the Yazoo river, which was the northern boundary of the Louisiana territory on the east side of the river. After a year of unavailing arguments, Jay advised Congress to make a treaty giving up the navigation of the Mississippi for twenty-five years. This recommendation made the people of Kentucky very indignant. Separated from the Atlantic by the Alleghany mountains, the right to navigate the Mississippi was absolutely essential to their prosperity. Franklin's metaphor that the mouth of the Mississippi was the front door of the west did but represent the truth. When the people of Kentucky heard of the treaty which proposed to shut them out from their own front door for twentyfive years, they threatened to secede and ask the protec tion of Great Britain. Their threats and remonstrances prevented the ratification of the treaty and the question was left unsettled. In 1793 another unsuccessful attempt to secure the free navigation of the Mississippi was made. Genet was only prevented from sending an army of Kentuckians to capture New Orleans by the actual presence of United States troops. Sympathy with France and gratitude to her for her services were only half of the reason for the readiness of Kentuckians to engage in this enterprise. The other half was their determination to secure the right to the free navigation of the Mississippi. The perception of this probably had something to do with the treaty negotiated in 1795, in which Spain conceded the right which the people of the West were so obstinately determined to have. Louisiana. This brief sketch will make it easier to appreciate the effect of the news that Spain had retroceded the Louisiana territory to France. If it had Retrocession of been difficult to secure the right to navigate the Mississippi from weak Spain, how much more difficult it would be to obtain it from powerful France. April 18, 1802, Jefferson wrote to the American minister to France, Robert Livingston, as follows: The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France works most sorely on the United States. It completely reverses all the political relations of the United States, and will form a new epoch in our political course. *** 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. * * * France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. ***The day that France takes possession of New Orleans * * * 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."* The excitement caused by the retrocession increased when the news came that the Spanish governor at New Orleans, Morales, had withdrawn the right of navigation given by the treaty of 1795. A Senator from Pennsylvania, James Ross, introduced resolutions authorizing the President to call out 50,000 militia and take possession of New Orleans. These resolutions were not carried. But an appropriation of $2,000,000 was made for the purchase of New Orleans, and the Floridas†, and, in January, 1803, Monroe was sent as minister to France to co-operate with Livingston in effecting the purchase. For some inscrutable reason, Napoleon, who was *Works, IV, pp. 431-432. Purchase of then First Consul of France, was ready to sell to the United States not only New Orleans, but the whole of the vast province of Louisiana. Before Monroe reached France, one of Napoleon's ministers offered to sell it to Livingston. April 30, 1803, a few days after the arrival of Monroe, Livingston and Monroe, on behalf of the United States, and Barbè Marbois, on behalf of France, signed a treaty by which France ceded the territory to the United States, in consideration of the sum of $15,000,000, one-fourth of which was to consist of the assumption by the United States of $3,750,000 worth of claims, which American citizens had against France. Constitutional difficulties. As soon as the treaty reached Jefferson, he thought of his theories of the constitution. He at once drew up an amendment and submitted it to his cabinet. He explained his theory in a letter to Breckinridge written a month or two later. "They, (Congress) I presume, will see their duty to the country in ratifying (the treaty) and paying for it, so as to secure a good, which would otherwise probably never again be in their power. But I suppose they must then appeal to the nation for an additional article to the constitution, approving and confirming an act, which the nation had not previously authorized. The constitution has made no provision for our holding foreign territory, still less for incorporating foreign nations into our Union.* *Italics are mine. |