News Purchase news broke this week in 1803 Submitted by Smileson@aol.com October 2003 Source Times Picayune Friday July 04, 2003 ************************************************* Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ In 1803, the months leading up to the Fourth of July had been tense ones for the United States. The Louisiana Territory, the vast wild land beyond the young nation's western border, had been returned to France by Spain, a cause for concern among Americans because their new neighbors would be subjects and potential soldiers of Napoleon, the war-loving French military leader. Ratcheting international tensions even tighter, Spain, which was still governing the territory for France, the previous October had revoked the right of Americans to unload cargo in New Orleans. The United States was rife with talk of sending troops to seize the port of New Orleans so American settlers in "the West" -- the area between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic seaboard colonies -- would be able to use it again. But as Independence Day dawned 200 years ago, there was a different mood, one of joyous exultation over what the National Intelligencer newspaper that day called "an event which history will record among the most splendid in our annals." The negotiations to buy the Louisiana territory had concluded on April 30, 1803, but President Thomas Jefferson did not get word of the unexpected outcome until July 3. Though Jefferson had empowered special envoy James Monroe and ambassador Robert Livingston to negotiate to buy New Orleans, they came away with title to the vastly larger territory Napoleon was selling to pay for his military escapades in Europe. The young republic, just then celebrating its 27th birthday, had ballooned overnight to include the western half of the Mississippi River drainage basin, from Canada to the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. In the age before telephones and telegraphs, the American envoys in Paris did not have time to seek approval from Washington before snapping up Napoleon's offer, and word trickled back across the Atlantic slowly. Newspaper readers in Boston and New York got word of the purchase before Jefferson, said Clem Goldberger, an assistant director of the New Orleans Museum of Art. In late June, Rufus King, the U.S. ambassador to England, "returned to New York City, and he had letters for Jefferson from Monroe and Livingston" detailing the purchase, Goldberger said. But the Boston Independent and the New York Evening Post had gotten wind of the contents of those letters, perhaps through a leak from King himself, and published the news June 30, three days before the letters were delivered to Jefferson, she said. Jefferson, in turn, informed the Intelligencer, and it reported the news in Washington the next day. In New Orleans, news of the purchase was met "with surprised resignation," University of New Orleans history professor Raphael Cassimere Jr. said. Of those receiving the news in Louisiana, the "most surprised and most bitterly opposed" to the sale was Pierre Clément Laussat, Cassimere said. Laussat had been sent to Louisiana earlier that year to take possession of the territory once again for France. "He had gotten here in the spring, and he knew that Louisiana was literally on the verge of an economic explosion," Cassimere said. "But when he found out he was going to receive it from the Spanish and simply turn it over the Americans, he was bitterly displeased." Jefferson, by contrast, was elated, Goldberger said, though his joy was tempered by the realization of what lay ahead. "He knew he'd have to deal with some of the critics and the questions about the constitutionality of the purchase," Goldberger said. "The Constitution has made no provision for our holding foreign territory, still less for incorporating foreign nations into our Union," the president wrote in a letter that August to Kentucky Sen. John Breckinridge. The executive branch, he wrote, seized an opportunity "which so much advances the good of their country," and in the process has "done an act beyond the Constitution." He recommended that Congress cast aside "metaphysical subtleties" as it considered ratifying the purchase. In an Aug. 30 letter to Attorney General Levi Lincoln, Jefferson suggested Congress adopt a constitutional amendment ratifying the purchase after the fact. The amendment would say Louisiana is part of the United States, and "its white inhabitants shall be citizens and stand . . . on the same footing with other citizens of the United States." But the president also was concerned that Napoleon was having second thoughts about the sale and was looking for any chance to get out of the deal. He told Lincoln that Congress should act quickly and not dwell on "any constitutional difficulty" to avoid giving the French an opportunity to renege. "It will be desirable for Congress to do what is necessary, in silence," the president wrote. The idea for a constitutional amendment ultimately was abandoned, and Congress ratified the purchase on Oct. 20, 1803. On Nov. 30, Laussat did what he had been sent to Louisiana to do. At the Cabildo, he accepted the retrocession of the territory from Spain back to France. And then on Dec. 20, at the same location, Laussat did what he never expected he would have to do. He signed over the Louisiana territory to the young nation that, before that century closed, would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. . . . . . . . Three exhibits relating to the Louisiana Purchase are continuing. "Read All About It," an exhibit of newspapers from that period, is at the Historic New Orleans Collection's Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres St. The collection's exhibit of the papers of Pierre Clément Laussat is at its main museum, 533 Royal St. Both exhibits are open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. At the New Orleans Museum of Art, "Jefferson's America and Napoleon's France" is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dennis Persica can be reached at dpersica@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3783.