II. Governor William C. C. Claiborne
Exit Sargent—enter Claiborne. Exit the man whose record as governor, whether through native fault or inexorable fate, was a conspicuous failure, and enter one whose story throughout was that of brilliant success. In characteristics, the two men were the very antipodes, each of the other. The one, of austere temperament, and stern, unbending manner; the other of warm and genial nature, in demeanor gracious and inviting. Claiborne possessed in preëminent degree the ready tact, the power of always saying and doing the right thing, in which the other was so noticeably wanting.
William Charles Cole Claiborne was a native of Virginia, born in Sussex county. At the age of fifteen he went to New York, then the seat of government, and there was given employment by the clerk of the Congress. It was his good fortune while in that work to attract the attention of a number of leading men, who became his friends for life. Jefferson especially took him as a protégé, and gave him books to read and good advice. He read law in his spare moments, went to Tennessee, was admitted to the bar there, and took part in the first constitutional convention of the state. He received appointment as Judge of the State Supreme Court, by Governor Sevier, when he was in his twenty-second year, and a few months later was elected to Congress.
Claiborne was in Congress as member from Tennessee when the petition from Mississippi against Sargent was presented; was on the committee to which it was referred, and strongly recommended the change of the form of government in the territory. He is known to have censured Sargent’s course, and there is proof that Sargent subsequently doubted whether his motives in so doing were free from self-interest. It is not, however, necessary to think of Claiborne as guilty of meanness of this sort. He was no place-hunter, nor one who, at any time in his life, placed self-seeking above principle. He was an ardent Jeffersonian, and his sympathy was naturally with the party opposing the governor. He was young, too, twenty years Sargent’s junior, and his rapid advancement had doubtless rendered him a trifle “bumptious.” But from his standpoint, the contentions between Sargent and his people were quite unnecessary, and should not be tolerated.
WILLIAM C. C. CLAIBORNE
Photographic facsimile from the oil painting in the possession of W. C. C. Claiborne, New Orleans
I think that Jefferson commissioned Claiborne as governor of Mississippi, not because he thought the young man wanted the place, or for the adjustment of any political bargain. He named him because he was convinced that such selection would prove to be the right man in the right place, and so indeed it was.
Claiborne reached Natchez, November 23, 1801, and one of his first official acts was a message to the first Legislature of Mississippi, meeting a few days later. Records of the time assure us that his suavity of manner and speech made him popular with all classes from the very first. But his efforts to ensure perfect harmony between contending factions of the people were not immediately successful, as is shown by a most unworthy attack made by some members of the new Legislature upon the justices of the Territorial Supreme Court. This came to nothing, however, and at the election for representatives held in July, 1802, so many of the contentious spirits were relegated to private life, that it might have been well judged that the people at large were already ashamed of their unfair actions toward the previous governor.
I like to think of Claiborne as becoming more charitable toward Sargent as time went on and he learned the many difficulties of the situation; less inclined to censure the “contumacy” of the older man in feeble health, as he found the problems besetting him difficult enough to tax the powers of his own vigorous strength. From his journals we learn that the same hindrances which harassed Sargent tormented his successor—the imperfect military equipment of the feeble garrisons, the need of a trained militia, the interference of Spanish plotters, the tendency of the floating population toward brigandage, the greed of the idle Indians, and so on. One of his very first requests of the authorities at Washington was that he be allowed the services of an interpreter, to aid him in carrying on his dealings with the Indians, a privilege for which Sargent had begged in vain.
Things, however, improved rapidly under the new incumbent, whose talent for administration was the most remarkable, perhaps, of his many gifts. Few men more richly endowed, not only in the line of pure intellect, but also in that wisdom that guides toward the best in man’s intercourse with his fellows, have figured in American history. During his brief career as governor of Mississippi he ensured the construction of a government fort near Washington, then the capital of the state; established Jefferson College at Natchez, the first institution of learning in the great Southwest; laid out roads; surveyed boundaries and mail routes; prepared the new land, in fact, for the forces of civilization on their way to enter it. His dealings with the robber bands that infested river traffic and with the disaffected Indians was prompt, decisive and thoroughly effective, compelling the order so essential to the prosperity of a young community.
When, in October, 1802, the port of New Orleans was closed, by the Intendant there, against foreign commerce and the American right of deposit, much feeling was aroused in Mississippi, since the injury thereby caused to American trade was great. Governor Claiborne, in his letters to the President and others, advocated stern measures of retaliation, which indeed would doubtless have been tried, had it not been generally known that Spain was negotiating for the sale of Louisiana. Indeed, there was more than a suspicion current as early as 1801, that the sale had been secretly consummated. In 1803, when the purchase of this territory by the United States from France was announced, it was known that no further fear of our encroaching neighbors need be cherished; they were now at our mercy.
One of the most important acts of Claiborne’s administration was the collection, at the request of James Madison, Secretary of State, of facts relative to land claims in Mississippi, and conflicting titles thereto. These included, Mr. Madison noted, not only claims grounded upon two grants of land made by Georgia to Mississippi, but also claims under the French government prior to 1763, those derived from the British and Spanish governments previous to the Spanish treaty of 1795, and those under Spanish title subsequent to this treaty. On all these items Governor Claiborne made a most exhaustive report, which became the foundation on which Congress based all future measures for the settlement of local land titles not only in Mississippi, but other Southern states as well.
November 9, 1803, Governor Claiborne received notification of his appointment as commissioner, associated with General James Wilkinson, to receive from France the Louisiana Purchase, and to succeed the Spanish governor provisionally, until a government for the new territory should be established. This transfer was received with all due ceremony, in the building known as the Cabildo at New Orleans, December 20, 1803.
Claiborne, though still nominally governor of Mississippi, exercised no further the functions of that office, these devolving on his secretary, Cato West. But he fulfilled the duties of provisional governor of the newly acquired province until October 2, 1804, when he was made governor of the “Territory of Orleans.” He served in this capacity until this territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Louisiana, when he was elected governor of the new state. He held this office for two terms, after which he was elected to the United States Senate, January 13, 1817. He did not live to take his seat in the Senate, dying November 3, following. Thus passed away, at the early age of forty-two, one who had already given a long life of active effort to his countrymen. Had he been spared for twenty years longer, his would surely have been one of the grandest national careers of America’s first century of history.