The outcome of the President's questionnaire was a report submitted to Congress in the fall of 1803, which contained much interesting information and some entertaining misinformation. The statistical matter we may put to one side, as contemporary readers doubtless did; certain impressions are worth recording. New Orleans, the first and immediate object of negotiations, contained, it would appear, only a small part of the population of the province, which numbered some twenty or more rural districts. On the river above the city were the plantations of the so-called Upper Coast, inhabited mostly by slaves whose Creole masters lived in town; then, as one journeyed upstream appeared the first and second German Coasts, where dwelt the descendants of those Germans who had been brought to the province by John Law's Mississippi Bubble, an industrious folk making their livelihood as purveyors to the city. Every Friday night they loaded their small craft with produce and held market next day on the river front at New Orleans, adding another touch to the picturesque groups which frequented the levees. Above the German Coasts were the first and second Acadian Coasts, populated by the numerous progeny of those unhappy refugees who were expelled from Nova Scotia in 1755. Acadian settlements were scattered also along the backwaters west of the great river: Bayou Lafourche was lined with farms which were already producing cotton; near Bayou Teche and Bayou Vermilion—the Attakapas country—were cattle ranges; and to the north was the richer grazing country known as Opelousas.
Passing beyond the Iberville River, which was indeed no river at all but only an overflow of the Mississippi, the traveler up-stream saw on his right hand "the government of Baton Rouge" with its scattered settlements and mixed population of French, Spanish, and Anglo-Americans; and still farther on, the Spanish parish of West Feliciana, accounted a part of West Florida and described by President Jefferson as the garden of the cotton-growing region. Beyond this point the President's description of Louisiana became less confident, as reliable sources of information failed him. His credulity, however, led him to make one amazing statement, which provoked the ridicule of his political opponents, always ready to pounce upon the slips of this philosopher-president. "One extraordinary fact relative to salt must not be omitted," he wrote in all seriousness. "There exists, about one thousand miles up the Missouri, and not far from that river, a salt mountain! The existence of such a mountain might well be questioned, were it not for the testimony of several respectable and enterprising traders who have visited it, and who have exhibited several bushels of the salt to the curiosity of the people of St. Louis, where some of it still remains. A specimen of the salt has been sent to Marietta. This mountain is said to be 180 miles long and 45 in width, composed of solid rock salt, without any trees or even shrubs on it." One Federalist wit insisted that this salt mountain must be Lot's wife; another sent an epigram to the United States Gazette which ran as follows:
Herostratus of old, to eternalize his name Sat the temple of Diana all in a flame; But Jefferson lately of Bonaparte bought, To pickle his fame, a mountain of salt.
Jefferson was too much of a philosopher to be disturbed by such gibes; but he did have certain constitutional doubts concerning the treaty. How, as a strict constructionist, was he to defend the purchase of territory outside the limits of the United States, when the Constitution did not specifically grant such power to the Federal Government? He had fought the good fight of the year 1800 to oust Federalist administrators who by a liberal interpretation were making waste paper of the Constitution. Consistency demanded either that he should abandon the treaty or that he should ask for the powers which had been denied to the Federal Government. He chose the latter course and submitted to his Cabinet and to his followers in Congress a draft of an amendment to the Constitution conferring the desired powers. To his dismay they treated his proposal with indifference, not to say coldness. He pressed his point, redrafted his amendment, and urged its consideration once again. Meantime letters from Livingston and Monroe warned him that delay was hazardous; the First Consul might change his mind, as he was wont to do on slight provocation. Privately Jefferson was deeply chagrined, but he dared not risk the loss of Louisiana. With what grace he could summon, he acquiesced in the advice of his Virginia friends who urged him to let events take their course and to drop the amendment, but he continued to believe that such a course if persisted in would make blank paper of the Constitution. He could only trust, as he said in a letter, "that the good sense of the country will correct the evil of construction when it shall produce its ill effects."
The debates on the treaty in, Congress make interesting reading for those who delight in legal subtleties, for many nice questions of constitutional law were involved. Even granting that territory could be acquired, there was the further question whether the treaty-making power was competent irrespective of the House of Representatives. And what, pray, was meant by incorporating this new province in the Union? Was Louisiana to be admitted into the Union as a State by President and Senate? Or was it to be governed as a dependency? And how could the special privileges given to Spanish and French ships in the port of New Orleans be reconciled with that provision of the Constitution which, expressly forbade any preference to be given, by any regulation of commerce or revenue, to the ports of one State over those of another? The exigencies of politics played havoc with consistency, so that Republicans supported the ratification of the treaty with erstwhile Federalist arguments, while Federalists used the old arguments of the Republicans. Yet the Senate advised the ratification by a decisive vote and with surprising promptness; and Congress passed a provisional act authorizing the President to take over and govern the territory of Louisiana.
The vast province which Napoleon had tossed so carelessly into the lap of the young Western Republic was, strangely enough, not yet formally in his possession. The expeditionary force under General Victor which was to have occupied Louisiana had never left port. M. Pierre Clement Laussat, however, who was to have accompanied the expedition to assume the duties of prefect in the province, had sailed alone in January, 1803, to receive the province from the Spanish authorities. If this lonely Frenchman on mission possessed the imagination of his race, he must have had some emotional thrills as he reflected that he was following the sea trail of La Salle and Iberville through the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. He could not have entered the Great River and breasted its yellow current for a hundred miles, without seeing in his mind's eye those phantom figures of French and Spanish adventurers who had voyaged up and down its turbid waters in quest of gold or of distant Cathay. As his vessel dropped anchor opposite the town which Bienville had founded, Laussat must have felt that in some degree he was "heir of all the ages"; yet he was in fact face to face with conditions which, whatever their historic antecedents, were neither French nor Spanish. On the water front of New Orleans, he counted "forty-five Anglo-American ships to ten French." Subsequent experiences deepened this first impression: it was not Spanish nor French influence which had made this port important but those "three hundred thousand planters who in twenty years have swarmed over the eastern plains of the Mississippi and have cultivated them, and who have no other outlet than this river and no other port than New Orleans."
The outward aspect of the city, however, was certainly not American. From the masthead of his vessel Laussat might have seen over a thousand dwellings of varied architecture: houses of adobe, houses of brick, houses of stucco; some with bright colors, others with the harmonious half tones produced by sun and rain. No American artisans constructed the picturesque balconies, the verandas, and belvederes which suggested the semitropical existence that Nature forced upon these city dwellers for more than half the year. No American craftsmen wrought the artistic ironwork of balconies, gateways, and window gratings. Here was an atmosphere which suggested the Old World rather than the New. The streets which ran at right angles were reminiscent of the old regime: Conde, Conti, Dauphine, St. Louis, Chartres, Bourbon, Orleans—all these names were to be found within the earthen rampart which formed the defense of the city.
The inhabitants were a strange mixture: Spanish, French, American, black, quadroon, and Creole. No adequate definition has ever been formulated for "Creole," but no one familiar with the type could fail to distinguish this caste from those descended from the first French settlers or from the Acadians. A keen observer like Laussat discerned speedily that the Creole had little place in the commercial life of the city. He was your landed proprietor, who owned some of the choicest parts of the city and its growing suburbs, and whose plantations lined both banks of the Mississippi within easy reach from the city. At the opposite end of the social scale were the quadroons—the demimonde of this little capital—and the negro slaves. Between these extremes were the French and, in ever-growing numbers, the Americans who plied every trade, while the Spaniards constituted the governing class. Deliberately, in the course of time, as befitted a Spanish gentleman and officer, the Marquis de Casa Calvo, resplendent with regalia, arrived from Havana to act with Governor Don Juan Manuel de Salcedo in transferring the province. A season of gayety followed in which the Spaniards did their best to conceal any chagrin they may have felt at the relinquishment—happily, it might not be termed the surrender—of Louisiana. And finally on the 30th of November, Governor Salcedo delivered the keys of the city to Laussat, in the hall of the Cabildo, while Marquis de Casa Calvo from the balcony absolved the people in Place d'Armes below from their allegiance to his master, the King of Spain.
For the brief term of twenty days Louisiana was again a province of France. Within that time Laussat bestirred himself to gallicize the colony, so far as forms could do so. He replaced the cabildo or hereditary council by a municipal council; he restored the civil code; he appointed French officers to civil and military posts. And all this he did in the full consciousness that American commissioners were already on their way to receive from him in turn the province which his wayward master had sold. On December 20, 1803, young William Claiborne, Governor of the Mississippi Territory, and General James Wilkinson, with a few companies of soldiers, entered and received from Laussat the keys of the city and the formal surrender of Lower Louisiana. On the Place d'Armes, promptly at noon, the tricolor was hauled down and the American Stars and Stripes took its place. Louisiana had been transferred for the sixth and last time. But what were the metes and bounds of this province which had been so often bought and sold? What had Laussat been instructed to take and give? What, in short, was Louisiana?
The elation which Livingston and Monroe felt at acquiring unexpectedly a vast territory beyond the Mississippi soon gave way to a disquieting reflection. They had been instructed to offer ten million dollars for New Orleans and the Floridas: they had pledged fifteen millions for Louisiana without the Floridas. And they knew that it was precisely West Florida, with the eastern bank of the Mississippi and the Gulf littoral, that was most ardently desired by their countrymen of the West. But might not Louisiana include West Florida? Had Talleyrand not professed ignorance of the eastern boundary? And had he not intimated that the Americans would make the most of their bargain? Within a month Livingston had convinced himself that the United States could rightfully claim West Florida to the Perdido River, and he soon won over Monroe to his way of thinking. They then reported to Madison that "on a thorough examination of the subject" they were persuaded that they had purchased West Florida as a part of Louisiana.