A Wilderness So Immense (70 page)

10.
Ibid.

11.
Adams,
History,
291–92; Malone,
Jefferson the President: First Term,
270–71; Harry Ammon, James
Monroe: The Quest for National Identity
(Charlottesville, 1971), 204.

12.
David Holmes to Senator James Allen, January 12, 1803, Mss2 AL 548 b 2, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond; Howard P. Hildreth, “David Holmes,”
Virginia Cavalcade
16 (Spring 1967): 38–40.

13.
Joanne B. Freeman,
Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic
(New Haven, 2001), 174–76; Stuart Gerry Brown, ed.,
The Autobiography of James Monroe
(Syracuse, 1959), 156.

14.
Thomas Jefferson to Robert R. Livingston, April 18, 1802,
State Papers and Correspondence,
16–17.

15.
Jefferson to Randolph, December 1, 1803, Jefferson Papers, 1st ser, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., quoted in Jon Kukla, “Order and Chaos in Early America: Political and Social Stability in Pre-Restoration Virginia,” AHR 90(1985):298.

16.
James Monroe to Thomas Monteagle Bailey [i.e., Bayly], March 6, 1803, Mss2 M7576 a 18, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond;
Autobiography of James Monroe,
154–56. Ammon follows Monroe’s letter of April 9 in describing the voyage as “29 days from the Hook,” but the entire voyage took thirty-one days; Ammon,
Monroe,
207; James Monroe to James Madison, April 9, 1803,
Madison Papers: State,
4: 497.

17.
Ammon,
Monroe,
207;
Autobiography of James Monroe,
154–56. The first significant message conveyed by Chappe’s optical telegraph was of a French victory against Austria on November 30, 1794.

18.
Robert Livingston to James Monroe, April 10, 1803, quoted in Danger-field,
Livingston,
358. The quotation from this letter in Ammon,
Monroe,
208, has six transcription errors.

19.
Autobiography of James Monroe,
158. On April 15, 1803, Monroe vented his feelings in a private letter addressed to Madison but “not sent”
(State Papers and Correspondence,
164–65; Ammon, Monroe, 617n0), although Monroe allowed John Mercer to make a copy
(Madison Papers: State,
4: 522–23n3).

20.
Lyon,
Louisiana in French Diplomacy,
214; Dangerfield,
Livingston,
358. The entire debate was published on June 1, 1803, in William Duane,
Mississippi
Question: Report of a Debate in the Senate of the United States … on Certain Resolutions Concerning the Violation of the Right of Deposit in the Island of New Orleans
(Philadelphia, 1803). E. B. Williston, comp.,
Eloquence of the United States
(Middleton, Conn., 1827) reprinted Ross’s resolutions (2: 236), John Breckinridge’s Republican substitute resolutions (2: 282), and major speeches by De Witt Clinton, James Ross, and Gouverneur Morris, February 23–25, 1803 (2: 236–319). The resolutions and debates were extensively reported in contemporary American newspapers as well.

21.
Lowell H. Harrison, “John Breckinridge and the Acquisition of Louisiana,”
Louisiana Studies
7 (1968): 20–22; Duane,
Mississippi Question,
34–35; Williston,
Eloquence of the United States,
2: 282.

22.
Speech of James Ross, February 24, 1803, in Duane,
Mississippi Question,
97–98.

23.
Ibid., 111; Lyon,
Louisiana in French Diplomacy,
202–3.

24.
Pichón to Talleyrand, February 18, 1803, Lyon,
Louisiana in French Diplomacy,
202–3.

25.
Talleyrand to Decrès, May 24, 1803, ibid., 203.

26.
“Many years later,” wrote E. Wilson Lyon in reference to Monroe’s letter to the marquis de Lafayette on May 2, 1829, “Monroe contended that Napoleon’s sudden action was due to the news of [Monroe’s] arrival at Havre, but, if this were true, it is difficult to see why Bonaparte did not delay the whole matter until Monroe joined Livingston”; Lyon,
Louisiana in French Diplomacy,
214n.

27.
Dangerfield,
Livingston,
361.

28.
Quotations from this conversation are from Livingston’s detailed letter to James Madison, April 11, 1803;
Madison Papers: State,
4: 500–2.

29.
Ibid., Francois Barbé-Marbois,
History of Louisiana; Particularly of the Cession of That Colony to the United States of America
(Philadelphia, 1830; rpt., Baton Rouge, 1977), 278.

30.
Livingston to Madison, April 11, 1803;
Madison Papers: State,
4: 500–2.

31.
Ibid.

32.
Ibid.

33.
Ammon,
Monroe,
212; Monroe to Madison,
Madison Papers: State,
5: 297.

34.
Dangerfield,
Livingston,
376–80; Ammon,
Monroe,
215–18; and
Madison Papers: State,
passim.

35.
The events of April 12 and 13 are recounted in Livingston’s famous letter to Madison, dated “Paris 13 April 1803 (Midnight).” The Historic New Orleans Collection displays the recipient’s copy (19MSS132) in its History Galleries at 533 Royal Street. Quotations are from the definitive transcription in
Madison Papers: State,
4: 511–15, except that Livingston’s disconcerting capitalization of ordinary words beginning with
s
has been suppressed. Harry Ammon makes the case that “although it does not materially affect the sequence of events,” Livingston penned this letter in the wee hours of April 14th, describing events that occurred on the 12th and 13th; Ammon,
Monroe,
616n28. In the same note,
however, Ammon apparently conflates Livingston’s two meetings with Talleyrand on the 11th and 12th into one on the 11th; ibid.

36.
Livingston to Madison, midnight, April 13
[sic,
14], 1803,
Madison Papers: State,
4: 512; Dangerfield,
Livingston,
361, 363. Livingston’s house stood near 72 rue Auber.

37.
Livingston to Madison, midnight, April 13
[sic,
14], 1803; Monroe to Madison, September 17, 1803;
Madison Papers: State,
4: 512, 5: 440.

38.
Livingston to Madison, midnight, April 13
[sic,
14], 1803,
Madison Papers: State,
4: 512.

39.
Livingston to Madison, midnight, April 13
[sic,
14], 1803; Monroe to Madison, September 17, 1803;
Madison Papers: State,
4: 512, 5: 440; Danger-field,
Livingston,
313.

40.
Monroe to Madison, September 17, 1803;
Madison Papers: State,
5: 440. This account of conversations on the evening of April 13 was written
after
adherents of Monroe and Livingston had begun squabbling in the newspapers over which minister had done more to bring about the Louisiana Purchase. John Mercer and Fulwar Skipwith were present at the dinner and walked home with Monroe. If Monroe’s memory was accurate, on the walk home Skipwith made disparaging remarks about Livingston having “complained of his misfortune” in respect to Monroe’s arrival just as the deal was coming together. The present narrative affords less credence to Monroe’s report of Skipwith’s alleged remarks than does Ammon,
Monroe,
210–11, and none to the assertion that “a rupture” between Livingston and Monroe was imminent at that time. For his part, Livingston strove to keep Monroe in the loop, meeting with him the next morning to inform him “in substance what Mr. Marbois afterwards told me himself”; Monroe to Madison, April 19, 1803; Monroe to Madison, September 17, 1803,
Madison Papers: State,
4: 538–39; 5: 440.

41.
Livingston to Madison, midnight, April 13
[sic,
14], 1803,
Madison Papers: State,
4: 512.

42.
Livingston to Madison, midnight, April 13
[sic,
14], 1803,
Madison Papers: State,
4: 513; Livingston’s run-on sentence has been corrected by the insertion of a period after “treasury.”

43.
James Monroe to James Madison, April 15, 1803;
Madison Papers: State,
4: 520–21.

44.
Ibid; Ammon,
Monroe,
212–13.

45.
Barbé-Marbois,
History of Louisiana,
280–81.

46.
Ibid., 281.

47.
Livingston to Madison, April 18, 1803,
Madison Papers: State,
4: 525–26.

48.
Ibid.

49.
Photographs of Monroe’s twelve-page journal of the treaty negotiations, April 27-ca. May 10, 1803, are reproduced in Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed.,
Papers of James Monroe Listed in Chronological Order from the Original Manuscripts in the Library of Congress
(Washington, D.C., 1904). Ford’s calendar has been supplanted by Daniel Preston, ed.,
A Comprehensive Catalogue of the Correspondence and Papers of James Monroe
(Westport, Conn., 2001).

50.
Monroe’s journal, April 27-ca. May 10, 1803.

51.
Ibid.

52.
Ibid.

53.
Appendix B: Louisiana Purchase Treaty, Article III.

54.
Monroe’s journal, April 27-ca. May 10, 1803.

55.
Ibid; Barbé-Marbois,
History of Louisiana,
312.

56.
Barbé-Marbois,
History of Louisiana,
310; Monroe’s journal, April 27-ca. May 10, 1803.

57.
The importance that Jefferson attached to these cabinet deliberations about Louisiana is apparent from the way he recorded them. For more than two years Jefferson kept close at hand a single sheet of paper, docketed “Louisiana,” on which he recorded notes of nine cabinet meetings about the Mississippi crisis and the implications of the Louisiana Purchase during thirty months from May 1803 through November 1805. The document is found on Reel 29 of the Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress, filed with undated material at the end of the chronological sequence of 1803 documents. I am indebted to Barbara Oberg, of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University, and Sandra Gioia Treadway, at the Library of Virginia, for assistance in locating this document after I discovered that Caryn Cossé Bell’s otherwise valuable
Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868
(Baton Rouge, 1997), 31n47, cites the wrong date. The attorney general attended only three of these nine meetings, but except for Madison’s early departure from the meeting on July 16 and Robert Smith’s absence on October 4, 1803, the other four cabinet secretaries all participated. The membership and operation of Jefferson’s “executive council” is described in Dumas Malone,
Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801–1805
(Boston, 1970), 5–66, and more generally in James Sterling Young,
The Washington Community, 1800—1828
(New York, 1966), and Noble E. Cunningham,
The Process of Government Under Jefferson
(Princeton, 1978), 60–71.

58.
Notes of cabinet meetings, May 7, 1803-November 19, 1805, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.

59.
Ibid.

1.
Gates to Jefferson, July 7, 1803, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.

2.
Calculator VII,
The Balance and Columbian Repository
(Hudson, New York), September 20, 1803, quoted in Victor Adolfo Arriaga Weiss, “Domestic Opposition to the Louisiana Purchase: Anti-Expansionism and Republican Thought” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1993), 142.

3.
Boston Independent Chronicle,
June 30, 1803, quoted in Suzanne Van Meter, “A Noble Bargain: The Louisiana Purchase” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1977), 177. The three brief notices in the
New-York Evening Post
are quoted in [Douglass Adair], “Hamilton on the Louisiana Purchase: A Newly Identified Editorial from the
New-York Evening Post,” WMQ,
3d ser, 12 (1955):
273; Roy F. Nichols, “The Louisiana Purchase: Challenge and Stimulus to American Democracy,”
LHQ
38 (1955): 1–25.

4.
King to Monroe and Livingston, May 7, [May 11,] 1803, Edward Alexander Parsons, ed.,
Original Letters of Robert R. Livingston, 1801–1803
(New Orleans, 1953), 122–23; Hawkesbury to King,
State Papers and Correspondence,
197; personal conversations with Robert V. Remini and Tim Pickles. Monroe and Livingston’s letter of May 9 is misdated May 7 in
State Papers and Correspondence,
183. For the cooperation between King and Livingston to avert a British expedition see Robert Ernst,
Rufus King: American Federalist
(Chapel Hill, 1968), 270–77, and Parsons, ed.,
Original Letters of Robert R. Livingston,
passim.

5.
King to Madison, May 16, 1803, and enclosures,
Madison Papers: State,
5: 2–4; Van Meter, “A Noble Bargain,” 177. King’s July 2 letter to Madison from New York stated that “the Receipt of my dispatches will have apprized you of my arrival”;
Madison Papers: State,
5: 140, and see King to Madison, July 8, 1803, ibid., 5: 151–52. Two weeks later Madison wrote a Virginia neighbor that “our official information, which is indirect by a letter from our Envoys to Mr. King, amounts only to what you see in the Newspapers”; Madison to Isaac Hite, July 16, 1803, ibid., 5: 187.

6.
Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, July 5, 1803, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; Van Meter, “A Noble Bargain,” 177;
European Magazine,
July 1803.

7.
Gates to Jefferson, July 7, 1803, David Campbell to Jefferson, October 23, 1803, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; Pichón to Talleyrand, July 7, 1803, Van Meter, “A Noble Bargain,” 181–82.

8.
John Smith to Jefferson, August 9 and August 30, 1803, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; Pichón to Talleyrand, July 7, 1803, Van Meter, “A Noble Bargain,” 181–82.