Union and Democracy

by Allen Johnson

In less exalted moments, Livingston and Monroe may well have experienced some disquietude at what they had done. The instructions given to Monroe contemplated no more extensive purchase than New Orleans and West Florida, at a sum not exceeding $10,000,000. The envoys had set out to purchase a tract of land which controlled the delta of the Mississippi they had acquired an empire beyond the Mississippi whose limits they did not know, at a price which exceeded their allowance by $5,000,000. Besides, it was not at first believed that West Florida was included in this purchase. Livingston was keenly disappointed, until on narrower examination he found, in the words of the treaty, evidence which satisfied him that France—to quote Mr. Henry Adams—"had actually bought West Florida without knowing it and had sold it to the United States without being paid for it." The words on which he founded his theory were those which retroceded Louisiana "with the same extent as it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be according to the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and the other States." Monroe soon adopted Livingston's view and pressed it upon the President.

The news of the purchase of Louisiana reached the United States in the latter part of June and occasioned much rejoicing among stanch Republicans of the Middle and Southern States. The people east of the Alleghanies were densely ignorant about this Spanish province, but they sensed in a vague way that its possession by a power like France would have dragged the United States into the maelstrom of European politics. The Federalists of the Eastern States looked askance at this as at every act of the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, without knowing anything about this vast domain beyond the Mississippi. The President himself was not much better informed about Louisiana. In a report to Congress he undertook to put together such information as he could cull from books of travel and pick up by hearsay. His credulity led him into some amazing statements. A thousand miles up the Missouri, he stated soberly, there was a salt mountain, one hundred and eighty miles long and forty-five miles in width, composed of solid rock salt, without any trees or even shrubs on it. He would not have believed the tale but for the testimony of travelers who had shown specimens of the salt to the people of St. Louis. Federalist newspapers made merry over the President's discovery. "Can this be Lot's wife?" asked one editor.

But Jefferson had already taken steps to dispel general ignorance about the Far West. Securing from Congress an appropriation for an expedition among the Missouri Indians, ostensibly to extend the external commerce of the United States, he commissioned his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark, brother of George Rogers Clark, to undertake one of the most important explorations in American annals. With a body of picked men, Lewis and Clark made their way to the upper waters of the Missouri, and passed the winter of 1804-05 among the Mandans. In the following spring and summer they crossed the Rocky Mountains to the waters of the Columbia. Here they spent a second winter, and then began their arduous return, by way of the Great Divide, the Yellowstone River, and the Missouri, to St. Louis. The journals of the members of this expedition are a remarkable record of personal adventures and scientific observations. It was not until 1814, however, that the details of this expedition were given to the public.

Meantime, Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike had won immediate fame by publishing an account of two thrilling expeditions into the Far West. On the first expedition Pike traced the upper course of the Mississippi almost to its source; on the second, begun soon after his return to St. Louis in 1806, he followed the course of the Arkansas to the peak which bears his name. His attempt to explore the headwaters of the Rio Grande, which he mistook for the Red River, led to his capture by the Spanish authorities. After a roundabout journey through Mexico and Texas, he was released on the Louisiana frontier.

Unexpected as the acquisition of Louisiana was to the Administration, President Jefferson was quick to appreciate the vast importance of the province to the United States. "Giving us the sole dominion of the Mississippi," he wrote, "it excludes those bickerings with foreign powers, which we know of a certainty would have put us at war with France immediately: and it secures to us the course of a peaceable nation." At the same time he was equally quick to see that the acquisition would give "a handle to the malcontents." To his intimates he avowed with the utmost frankness that the Administration had exceeded its constitutional powers. The Constitution, he conceived, did not contemplate the acquisition of territory not included within the limits fixed by the Treaty of 1783. Yet he was firmly convinced of the practical necessity of ratifying the treaty of purchase. The only way out of the dilemma, he thought, was frankly "to rely on the nation to sanction an act done for its great good, without its previous authority."

Never doubting that so benevolent a purpose would be cordially approved, Jefferson drafted an amendment to the Constitution authorizing the acquisition of Louisiana and providing for its government. To his surprise, leading Republicans received his proposal with indifference, not to say with coolness. Nicholas thought that the power to acquire territory by treaty might fairly be inferred from the Constitution, and advised the President not to run the risk of turning the Senate against the treaty by raising constitutional scruples. In much distress of spirit Jefferson replied that to assume by free construction the power to acquire territory was to make blank paper of the Constitution. If the treaty-making power could be stretched in this fashion, then there was no limit to its extent. But finding that his party did not share his scruples, Jefferson abandoned his amendment to the Constitution, "confiding that the good sense of our country will correct the evil of construction when it shall produce ill effects." Hamilton in all the pride of triumphant Federalism had never gone further than this.

The debates in Congress over the treaty are full of interest to the student of constitutional law. The treaty fairly bristled with controversial points. The exigencies of politics played havoc with consistency. Parties seemed to have changed sides. Federalists borrowed state-rights arguments without a tremor; and Republicans employed the language of centralization with Federalist facility. Federalists from New England looked beyond the immediate issue and discerned the inevitable economic as well as political consequences of westward expansion. The men who would have naturally populated the vacant lands of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont would inevitably seek this "new paradise of Louisiana," observed a New England pamphleteer. Jeffersonian Democracy rather than Federalism would become the creed of these transplanted New Englanders, if Ohio were a fair example of future Western Commonwealths. Moreover, as these new States would in all probability enter the Union as slaveholding communities, they would further impair the influence of the Eastern States in the National Government. Even the remnant of the Federalist party in the South opposed the purchase of Louisiana, fearing that the Atlantic States would be depressed in influence by the formation of great States in the West.

Upon one great constitutional principle, both Federalists and Republicans were disposed to agree: that the United States had the power to acquire foreign territory, either by treaty or conquest. Senator Tracy, of Connecticut, conceded this point, but denied that the inhabitants of an acquired territory could be admitted into the Union and be made citizens by treaty. In providing that "the inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union," the Administration had exceeded its constitutional authority. The consent of all the States was necessary to admit into the Union. Senator Pickering, of Massachusetts, held the same view. "I believe the assent of each individual State to be necessary," said he, "for the admission of a foreign country as an associate in the Union, in like manner as in a commercial house the consent of each member would be necessary to admit a new partner into the company." To this line of argument, Taylor, of Virginia, replied that the words of the treaty did not contemplate the erection of the ceded territory as a State, but its incorporation as a Territory.

On October 17, 1803, the Senate ratified the treaty by a vote of twenty-four to seven. Two constitutional principles seemed, therefore, to be decided: the Government had a constitutional right to acquire foreign territory; and the treaty-making power could incorporate—whatever that expression might mean—such territory into the Union. A third matter of policy had yet to be determined: what powers had Congress over the new territory? Two courses lay open, either to make Louisiana a part of the "territory" which the Constitution gives Congress power to "dispose of," or to hold the province as a dependency apart from other organized Territories. The provisional act which Congress adopted pointed in this latter direction, since it authorized the President to take possession of the province and concentrated all powers, civil and military, in the hands of agents to be appointed by him. When objection was made that such despotic authority was incompatible with the Constitution, Rodney, of Maryland, declared in the House of Representatives that Congress had a power in the Territories which it could not exercise in the States, and that the limitations of power found in the Constitution were applicable to States and not to Territories. The Republicans were making rapid progress in learning the vocabulary of Federalism.

It is one of the ironies of history that the province over which parties battled with so much display of legal profundity was not yet in the possession of the First Consul. Six months after the ratification of the treaty, in the old Cabildo at New Orleans, Laussat received from the Spanish governor the keys of the city and took possession of the province in the name of his master. For twenty days the Tricolor floated over the Place d'Armes, emblem of the shadowy French tenure. On December 2, it, in turn, gave place to the Stars and Stripes, as Louisiana passed into the hands of the last of its rulers, the puissant young republic.