It was not so much the onslaughts of Commodore Preble's gunboats, however, as an unexpected attack on his eastern frontier which brought the Pasha to terms. His exiled brother, Hamet Caramelli, had fallen in with an American adventurer by the name of Eaton, who persuaded him to join an expedition against their common enemy. With a motley army they marched across the desert from Egypt and fell upon the outlying domains of the Pasha. That astute monarch then yielded to persuasion. On June 3, 1805, with many protestations that he was being subjected to humiliating terms, he agreed to live on terms of peace with the United States and renounce all claim to tribute; but his injured feelings were salved by a ransom of sixty thousand dollars for the crew of the Philadelphia. The Pasha's brother was rewarded with a pension of two hundred dollars a year.
At the same moment that hostilities broke out in the Mediterranean, Jefferson heard disquieting news from France. "There is considerable reason to apprehend," he wrote to Monroe, on May 26, 1801, "that Spain cedes Louisiana and the Floridas to France. It is a policy very unwise in both, and very ominous to us." What Jefferson apprehended was, indeed, an accomplished fact. On October 1, 1800, the day after Joseph Napoleon, in the name of his brother, set his hand to the Treaty of Morfontaine, which restored amicable relations between France and the United States, General Berthier under instructions from Napoleon signed at Ildefonso a treaty which restored Louisiana to France. In effect, as Mr. Henry Adams says, the second treaty undid the work of the first.
The retrocession of Louisiana, long desired and sought by the Directory, was regarded by Talleyrand as a diplomatic triumph of first magnitude. The price, easily paid by one who held Italy under his iron heel, was a kingdom in Tuscany for the young Duke of Parma, nephew and son-in-law of Charles IV of Spain. The gateway to this vast province was New Orleans, and the avenue of approach lay by way of Santo Domingo, once an important French colony, but now under the rule of Toussaint L'Ouverture. Before Talleyrand's dream of a revived colonial empire in the heart of the North American continent could be realized, this "gilded African" must be removed and Santo Domingo restored to its former position as the center of the French West Indies. The conquest of a negro republic surely could not be a difficult undertaking for one who had humbled Austria on the battlefields of northern Italy. In November, 1801, Napoleon dispatched Leclerc with an army of ten thousand men to recover Santo Domingo.
Jefferson was thoroughly alarmed at the news of Leclerc's expedition. "Every eye in the United States," he wrote, "is now fixed on this affair of Louisiana. Perhaps nothing since the Revolutionary War has produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation." No discerning man could mistake the significance of the expedition; the French troops would proceed to Louisiana after finishing their work in Santo Domingo. The retrocession of Louisiana, in short, as Jefferson said, completely reversed all the political relations of the United States. Hitherto, from the Republican point of view, France had been our natural friend. Henceforth, as the possessor of New Orleans, through which three eighths of the produce of the West passed to market, she became a natural and habitual enemy. "France placing herself in that door," wrote Jefferson to Livingston, "assumes to us the attitude of defiance. The impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us, and our character, ... these circumstances render it impossible that France and the United States can continue long friends when they meet in so irritable a position.... The day that France takes possession of New Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her low-water mark. It seals the union of two nations who in conjunction can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation."
Even as he expressed his apprehensions to Livingston, then Minister to France, Jefferson suggested ways and means for averting the clash of conflicting interests. If France was bent on possessing and holding Louisiana, might she not make concessions for the sake of retaining the friendship of the United States? Livingston was to sound the French Government to ascertain whether it would entertain the idea of ceding the Island of New Orleans and the Floridas. "We should consider New Orleans and the Floridas as equivalent for the risk of a quarrel with France produced by her vicinage," he assured Livingston.
What the Western world had to fear from the French occupation of Louisiana appeared in November, 1802, when Governor Claiborne, of the Mississippi Territory, reported that the right of deposit at New Orleans had been withdrawn. The act, to be sure, was that of the Spanish intendant, but every one believed that it had been incited by France. The people of the Western waters, particularly in Tennessee and Kentucky, were outraged and demanded instant war against the aggressor. Even in Congress a war party raised its head. During all this popular clamor the self-restraint of the Administration was admirable. The annual message ignored the existence of the war party and referred to the cession of Louisiana in colorless language worthy of Talleyrand.
The Administration was not, however, without a well-considered policy. In January, at the instance of party leaders, an appropriation of two million dollars was voted by Congress "to defray any expenses in relation to the intercourse between the United States and foreign nations"; and James Monroe was appointed Minister Extraordinary to France and Spain, to aid Livingston and Pinckney in "enlarging and more effectually securing our rights and interests in the river Mississippi and in the territories eastward thereof."
Meantime, Napoleon's colonial schemes had received a decisive check. The transfer of Louisiana had been delayed by the opposition of Godoy, who had returned to royal favor in Spain; Leclerc's invading army had been worn away by the attrition of incessant war with the negroes; a second army had been decimated by yellow fever; and finally Leclerc himself had succumbed to the dread destroyer, leaving the remnants of the French troops to their fate. Without the most extraordinary exertions, Santo Domingo was lost; and what was Louisiana without the island which was the very heart of the projected colonial system? The First Consul was almost ready to abandon a project which after all had originated in Talleyrand's brain rather than in his own. What he sought was a fair pretext to cover his retreat from failure.
Livingston plied the French Ministers with arguments to prove that it was good policy to put the Americans in possession of the Island of Orleans. One day, while he was repeating the old story, Talleyrand suddenly asked what he would give for the whole of Louisiana. For the moment Livingston was nonplussed, and declined to make any offer. Talleyrand repeated his question and Livingston replied that twenty millions of francs would be a fair price, if France would pay the spoliation claims of American citizens since the Treaty of 1800. Talleyrand demurred: the sum was too small. Thereupon Livingston promised to advise with Monroe who was expected soon.
Monroe, as it happened, arrived on this very day. On the following day Livingston learned casually from Marbois, a minister who stood very close to the First Consul, that Napoleon had named a hundred million francs and the payment of the American spoliation claims as the price of Louisiana. Further conversation elicited the information that Napoleon would consider an offer of sixty million francs with claims amounting to twenty millions more. For a fortnight the two envoys, at the risk of losing everything, sought to secure better terms. But the First Consul would not abate his demands. On May 2, 1803, Livingston and Monroe set their signatures to a treaty by which Napoleon agreed to sell a province of which he was not in possession and which he had contracted never to alienate. The price to be paid was the sum last named, amounting in American figures to $11,250,000. The amount of outstanding claims which the United States agreed to assume was estimated at $3,750,000. After signing his name to the treaty, Livingston rose and shook hands with Monroe and Marbois. "We have lived long," he said with emotion, "but this is the noblest work of our lives."