A Wilderness So Immense (53 page)

Beneath these hints about imperial rule lay the ethnic and racial prejudice that permeated Federalist newspaper commentary about the Louisiana Purchase. “Can it be conceived … that these people, bred up in the arms of despotism, will suddenly be fitted for self-government and republicanism?” jeered the
Gazette of the United States.

Similar words echoed through the next century. “Kings can have subjects,” but “it is a question whether a republic can,” statesman and diplomat George Kennan remarked about the xenophobic impulse in American westward expansion.

Jefferson had similar doubts about Louisiana’s foreign population and about the Indians on either side of the Mississippi. In both instances he
expected them to be supplanted or assimilated by sturdy American yeoman farmers.

As governor of Virginia in the last year of the Revolutionary War, Jefferson had coined the phrase “empire of liberty” in a letter directing George Rogers Clark to secure the American west by capturing Detroit. “Our confederacy,” he had written from Paris on that chilly January afternoon in 1786, “must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North and South is to be peopled.”
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Now, two decades later, as he prepared to ensure the expansion of his empire of liberty into the Louisiana territory, Jefferson’s embrace of imperial authority gave many congressmen pause.

T
HE UNRULY
debate in the House of Representatives over granting him the authority he wanted for the administration of Louisiana—and especially the reservations expressed by congressmen from his own party—startled Jefferson. “More difference of opinion seems to exist as to the manner of disposing of Louisiana, than I had imagined possible!” he exclaimed to New York senator De Witt Clinton. “Our leading friends are not yet sufficiently aware of the necessity of accommodation and mutual sacrifice of opinion,” he lamented, while “the opposition is drilled to act in phalanx on every question.”
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Jefferson felt that the inhabitants of Louisiana were “as yet as incapable of self-government as children”—the same characterization he later applied to slaves
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—“yet some [congressmen] cannot bring themselves to suspend [their democratic] principles for a single moment.” Even his floor leader
in the House, Virginia’s quick-tempered Republican John Randolph of Roanoke, got a presidential lecture on Aristotelian politics and “the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion [and] … the expediency of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish.”
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According to accepted international law, Louisiana’s existing laws remained in force until the United States altered them. Jefferson intended to “introduce the trial by jury in
criminal
cases, first,” followed by “habeas corpus, the freedom of the press, freedom of religion etc. as soon as can be.” Thereafter, as each passing year drew “their laws and organization to the mould of ours by degrees,” Jefferson expected the inhabitants of Louisiana to “ripen for receiving these first principles of freedom” so that “Congress may from session to session confirm their enjoiment of them.”
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On the premise that the inhabitants of Louisiana stood “in nearly the same relation to us as if they were a conquered country,” as Republican William Eustis put it, the administration proposed an interim government with all powers vested in a governor and legislative council appointed by the president. “The government laid down in this bill is certainly a new thing in the United States,” he admitted, “but the people of this country differ materially from the citizens of the United States.” Because they were accustomed to Spain’s authoritarian rule and unfamiliar with self-government, “the approach of such a people to liberty must be gradual.” Although many in Jefferson’s own party expressed serious misgivings, the administration was prepared to “countenance the principle of governing by despotic systems” until the inhabitants of Louisiana were ready, “in due time, [to] receive all the benefits of citizens.” Senator William Plumer, the separatist from New Hampshire, was appalled. Jefferson’s plan for the administration of Louisiana was “an act of practical tyranny,” he wrote. “It is a Colonial system of government—It is the first the United States have established—It is a bad precedent—The U. S. in time will have many colonies—precedents are therefore important.”
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Jefferson’s first choice as paternal despot for the children of Louisiana was South Carolina senator Thomas Sumter, a staunch Virginia-born Jeffersonian who had earned his reputation and the rank of general in the bitter guerrilla warfare in the Carolinas during the Revolution. Youthful at seventy—Sumter died a full twenty-eight years later just shy of his ninety-eighth birthday—the Palmetto State’s legendary Game-Cock was
“as perfect in all points as we can expect,” Jefferson confided to Madison. “Sound judgment, standing in society, knolege of the world, wealth, liberality, familiarity with the French language and having a French wife.”
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When General Sumter decided to remain in the Senate, Jefferson’s thoughts turned to his old friend the marquis de Lafayette and then to James Monroe—neither of whom could be enticed to take up residence in the isle of Orleans.

William Charles Cole Claiborne by E. B. Savary. Born in Sussex County, in the heart of Southside Virginia, in
1775
and schooled at Richmond Academy and briefly at the College of William and Mary, W. C. C. Claiborne began his political apprenticeship at fifteen as a clerk in the office of John Beckley, clerk of the House of Representatives and Jeffersonian political organizer. As a congressman from Tennessee, Claiborne held the state’s vote for Jefferson in the contested presidential election of 1800 and was rewarded with the appointment as territorial governor of Mississippi in May 1801 and governor of the Orleans Territory after the Louisiana Purchase. Initially, Claiborne’s ignorance of French and conviction “that the people of Louisiana are not prepared for Representative Government” won him few friends. In time, however, his marriage to a Louisianian, his compassionate response to the Cuban refugees from St. Domingue in 1809–1810, and his prompt suppression of the Pointe Coupée slave revolt of 1811 won him a decisive victory over the native Jacques Villeré in the 1812 election for the first governor of the State of Louisiana. Ineligible for reelection, Governor Claiborne was named to the United States Senate in January 1817 but died on November
23
before taking his seat.
(Courtesy Louisiana State Museum)

In time, however, the president lowered his sights and found two men whose combined talents—and immediate availability—sufficed. For the civil administration of Louisiana, Jefferson turned to another scion of old Virginia, twenty-nine-year-old former congressman William Charles Cole Claiborne. Born in Virginia and trained by the Republican organizer and clerk of the House of Representatives John Beckley, young Claiborne’s political loyalty was equal to Sumter’s. As a congressman during the Burr-Jefferson presidential deadlock of 1801, Claiborne had held the Tennessee vote for Jefferson, and as the current governor of the Mississippi Territory he was close at hand and familiar with the situation in Louisiana. Only his youth, limited experience, and complete ignorance of French and Spanish were drawbacks. In case a show of force proved necessary, Jefferson backed Claiborne with forty-seven-year-old General James Wilkinson, who commanded American troops in the southwest and whose talents for intrigue were multilingual. Wilkinson’s assignment was temporary, and Claiborne’s post remained an interim appointment until January 17, 1806. Nevertheless, subject only to instructions from Jefferson and Congress, Claiborne held nearly dictatorial powers over the Louisiana territory and its populace, whose language he did not speak, and whose society he did not comprehend.
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“Two trees that the Mississippi River carried along with it down to the Gulf of Mexico brushed the sides of our ship this morning,” Pierre Clement Laussat noted in his journal on Wednesday, March 9, 1803, as the thirty-two-gun
Surveillant
crossed the Tropic of Cancer and carried him toward New Orleans—the sole remnant of Napoleon’s intended expedition for the subjugation of Louisiana. After weathering a fierce storm that drove them back out to sea for ten days, the brig finally crossed the bar of the Mississippi on Sunday, March 20. As the
Surveillant
made its way upriver, its frequent stops for meals or the occasional night spent ashore gave Laussat opportunities to talk with French residents. “I am patiently awaited in New Orleans,” Laussat wrote.

“We must,” he added ominously, “foster this diversity of feelings and interests.”

At three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, March 26, Laussat and his family landed a few miles below New Orleans, and within an hour they were “greeted with salvos by the artillery from the forts” as their carriage approached the governor’s gate. That evening Laussat met the aging Spanish governor, Manuel Juan de Salcedo, and they attended mass together the next morning. At Salcedo’s dinner Sunday afternoon, “toasts were raised to the respective governments” and “the rounds of drinks were endless.” Laussat was exuberant as he jotted down his thoughts at the close of his first full day in New Orleans. “Here we are in our new country, our new home, in the midst of new duties,” he beamed. “All Louisianans are Frenchmen at heart!”
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Endless rounds of drinks may have contributed a little, but Laussat’s good spirits on that Sunday evening late in March were possible only because he had been out of touch since December, when he had left General Claude Perrin Victor’s troops and ships behind at Hellevoetsluis. During his long carriage ride to the port of La Rochelle, his long wait for a break in the weather, and his long voyage across the Atlantic, Laussat “dreamed constantly of reform, improvement, and new establishment.” As Napoleon’s colonial prefect for Louisiana he

“Every day I congratulated myself,” Laussat wrote, “for having so well estimated the resources of the colony.” He was utterly enchanted by the city of New Orleans, its inhabitants, its air.
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Laussat enjoyed the luxury of wearing “merchandise of a superior quality … imported from India, England, and France.” He found society and culture “as developed here” as in Paris. The people were

Above all, “Louisianans are Frenchmen at heart!” Except that the first consul of France was experiencing a change of heart about Louisiana.

Throughout the spring and early summer of 1803, grumblings about Spain’s closing of the Mississippi receded as rumors of an American takeover gained currency. “The fluctuations of the political thermometer in this respect,” Laussat wrote in his memoirs, “were indicated by the greater or lesser eagerness with which people sought me—and that eagerness was on the decline.” Laussat kept up a brave front, however, assuring French inhabitants that the rumors were fabrications somehow linked to the end of Jefferson’s first term as president—all the while complaining in letters to French officials (as late as August 17) that he had heard nothing from France since March. Be careful what you wish for—the next day’s mail brought from Louis André Pichón in Washington official news of the sale of Louisiana, followed immediately by the letters from François Barbé-Marbois and Denis Decrès, minister of the marine and colonies. It was all true, Laussat finally admitted, “leaving me only the regret of a year of idleness, of a useless migration by my family to the New World, and of many expenses, troubles, and fruitless inconveniences.”
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