A Wilderness So Immense (48 page)

Recalling his service in the United States during and after the American Revolution, Barbé-Marbois noted in his
History of Louisiana
that

“Deliberation succeeded to astonishment,” the French minister recalled. The Americans, “without asking an opportunity for concerting measures out of the presence of the French negotiator,” accomplished their purpose in a matter of days—“the conferences rapidly succeed [ing] one another.”
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“The negotiations had three objects,” wrote Barbé-Marbois, which corresponded precisely with the three issues that he and Livingston had explored at midnight in his office on April 13.

Each was discussed separately, and in time each became the focus of a separate document.
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After Livingston had introduced Monroe to Talleyrand on Thursday, the Americans conferred about their strategy for negotiating the price in the formal negotiations that commenced the next day. Neither American was aware that Bonaparte had named 50 million francs as his price when he had “renounced” his interest in Louisiana to Barbé-Marbois. Based on Livingston’s midnight conversation with the treasury minister, however, the Americans set their upper limit at 50 million, “including our debts,” but decided “only to mention forty in the first instance.” Livingston communicated this opening bid to Barbé-Marbois on Friday, April 15. For the next week the treasury minister shuttled back and forth between Paris and St. Cloud, taking full advantage of his role as intermediary between the Americans and Bonaparte to squeeze as much as he could out of the deal.
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The first round of the formal negotiations was typical of what followed. Barbé-Marbois expressed great sympathy for the Americans and their “situation,” but worried aloud that 40 million was such a low offer “that perhaps the whole business would be defeated.” Nevertheless, he volunteered to carry the offer “that very day to St Cloud, and let [them] know the result.” On Saturday, after hearing Barbé-Marbois’s story that Bonaparte had received the American offer “very coldly,” Livingston and Monroe offered 50 million and then resolved “to rest for a few days upon our oars.”
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By April 27, after two weeks of intermittent formal negotiations, Livingston, Monroe, and Barbé-Marbois settled upon the basic terms that Livingston had discussed at the treasury minister’s office on the evening of the 13th: 60 million francs for Louisiana and 20 million to settle the American claims.

Despite the back injury that confined him to his apartments for a week or so, Monroe worked in close partnership with Livingston even on the days that the Chancellor had to meet alone with Barbé-Marbois. After formally covering the same ground that Livingston and Barbé-Marbois had explored in their midnight meeting (a circumstance that bolstered Monroe’s impression that his colleague had made little progress prior to his arrival in France), at last the moment arrived to get the deal onto paper.

On Wednesday afternoon, April 27, at two o’clock, Barbé-Marbois and Livingston met at Monroe’s apartment, where the Virginian, still “indisposed” by his back injury, “might repose as it suited [him]” on a sofa. Barbé-Marbois arrived with two draft treaties, or “projects” (from
projet de lot,
the French term for draft legislation), as Monroe described them in his journal. The first project, which set the price at 100 million francs plus 20 million for the American claims, was “a treaty given him by the gov[ernmen]t to be presented to us.” Immediately Barbé-Marbois dismissed his government’s demands as “hard and unreasonable,” and asked the Americans to consider instead

Barbé-Marbois’s draft “reduced that demand to 80, including the debt.” The rest of the afternoon was spent discussing the American claims, which had almost become an obsession to Livingston during his months in Paris.
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By Thursday morning, April 28, Livingston had prepared, and he and Monroe had discussed, a revised draft based on Barbé-Marbois’s second project. “We called on Mr. Marbois the 29th and gave him our project,” Monroe wrote in his journal, “which proposed to offer 50 millions to France and 20 on acc[oun]t of her debts to the citizens of the United States.” Barbé-Marbois responded that “it would be useless” for him to accept a treaty offering less than a total of 80 million francs, “as the consul had been sufficiently explicit on that point.”
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“After explaining to him the motives which led us to open that sum,” Monroe wrote, “we agreed to accede to his idea and give 80 millions.” When Barbé-Marbois “asked us if we would not advance something immediately,” the Americans outlined a plan to finance the Louisiana Purchase through European bankers, sweetening their offer with a twelve-year preferential trading privilege for French merchants at the port of New Orleans.
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Trading privileges did not interest Barbé-Marbois or his government, but they were concerned for the citizens of Louisiana. “He seemed desirous,” Monroe wrote in his journal, “to secure by some strong provisions the incorporation of the inhabitants of the entire country with our union.” To this the Americans voiced no objection. “We told him that we would try to modify the article to meet his ideas as fully as we could.”
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In the final treaty, perhaps it is fitting that the forthright promises of Article III, the most controversial and democratic element in the entire document—

—were instigated by a moderate but incorruptible republican serving as treasury minister to the virtual dictator of France.

In three days, the treaty negotiations were effectively complete. As the Americans left Barbé-Marbois’s office on the 29th, he kept a copy of the American draft, “as he said he would see the consul the next morning on the subject.” Barbé-Marbois then said that Talleyrand had inquired about Monroe’s health, asking specifically whether he “was in health to
be presented to the first consul.” The next morning, Saturday, April 30, Livingston called on Talleyrand to assure him that Monroe “had recovered.” Then he stopped at Monroe’s apartment and “informed me,” as the Virginian wrote in his journal, “that it was arranged that I should be presented next day, that is on the first of May”
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“May 1st Sunday,” Monroe noted in his journal. “I accompanied my colleague to the Palace of the Louvre where I was presented by him to the Consul.” Bonaparte greeted the Americans warmly.

“I am glad to see you,” he said to Monroe. “You have been here 19 days?” Monroe told him he had.

“You speak French.”

Monroe replied, “A little.”

“You had a good voyage?”

“Yes.”

“You came in a frigate?”

“No, in a merchant vessel chartered for the purpose.”

Addressing Livingston, the first consul inquired about his family’s health. Then, Monroe wrote, Bonaparte “turned to Mr. Livingston and myself and observed that our aff[ai]rs stood as settled.” Bonaparte was quietly focusing his attention on the resumption of his war against Great Britain. “This accession of territory,” he told Barbé-Marbois, “strengthens for ever the power of the United States; and I have just given to England a maritime rival that will sooner or later humble her pride.”
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The Louisiana Purchase treaty and its two conventions were dated April 30, 1803, but it took as long to prepare the official documents in French and English as it had taken Barbé-Marbois, Livingston, and Monroe to agree on their provisions. Monroe and Livingston signed the original treaty and first convention on Monday, May 2. Recognizing “that it was impossible to have two original texts in two languages,” the negotiators adopted the Franco-American Treaty of 1778 as their precedent and determined “that the original had been agreed on and written in the French language.” As the three negotiators shook hands, Livingston voiced the sentiment they all shared. “We have lived long,” he said,

Three days later, on Thursday May 5, the negotiators signed the English translation of the treaty and finally they signed the remaining conventions “about May 8 or 9th.”
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Precisely a month had passed since the convergence of Louis Andre Pichon’s warning, James Ross’s resolutions, and James Monroe’s arrival at Le Havre had finally convinced Bonaparte and Talleyrand that they had no real choice but to adopt Robert Livingston’s arguments as their own and sell Louisiana to the United States.

While Robert Livingston and James Monroe were waiting to sign the English language copies of the conventions that accompanied the Louisiana Purchase treaty, news of their success began its eight-week-long transit across the Atlantic. In Washington, however, the impending outbreak of war had already prompted President Thomas Jefferson to summon his cabinet to the new White House at midday on Saturday afternoon, May 7, 1803. (They generally met at noon so Jefferson had time to exercise his horse with a ride before dinner.) On this important occasion—meeting “on the supposition that war between England and France is commenced”—Attorney General Levi Lincoln and all four department secretaries were present to consider several questions of Louisiana policy: James Madison from State, Albert Gallatin from the Treasury, General Henry Dearborn from the War Department, and Robert Smith from the Navy. The postmaster general, Gideon Granger, was absent, for he did not participate in these policymaking sessions.
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The first decision was on the question of whether to issue a proclamation of neutrality, as Presidents Washington and Adams had done in the 1790s. Jefferson and his cabinet unanimously agreed that proclaiming American neutrality was unwise and unnecessary because it would reassure “foreign nations … of our neutrality without price, whereas France may be willing to give N[ew] Orleans for it, and England to engage a just and respectful conduct.”
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The second item for discussion was New Orleans. Thinking it “premature till we hear from our ministers,” and until he could gauge the “probable course and duration of the war,” Jefferson did not press the cabinet for a “specific opinion.” He noted that their general sentiment was “that we must avail ourselves of this war to get it.” If Monroe’s mission failed, Jefferson concluded, “we shall take it directly, or encourage a declaration of independence and then enter into alliance.” Under no circumstances would the United States permit “Gr[eat] Br[itain]’s taking possession of it.”

Everyone agreed that the United States needed more than the restoration of “merely our right of deposit.” By closing the river, Carlos IV and Juan Ventura Morales had upped the stakes for everyone. Jefferson and his cabinet were determined to accept nothing “short of the sovereignty of the island of N[ew] Orleans, or a [site] sufficient for a town to be located by ourselves.” For the moment, however, they could await the result of Monroe’s and Livingston’s diplomacy. “We have,” Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin reminded the president, “time enough to consider.”
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B
OSTON’S
Independent Chronicle
and the
New-York Evening Post
broke the news of the Louisiana Purchase on Thursday, June 30, 1803. “The wise, seasonable and politic negociation,” crowed the Boston editor, a friend of the administration,

That same day Rufus King landed in New York City, back from his post as minister to Great Britain, carrying notes to the president from Monroe and Livingston confirming their success.
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During the last weeks of their negotiations, as France and Great Britain slid toward war, Livingston and Monroe had kept King apprised of their progress. “In case of war,” King had warned them on Saturday, May 7,