And Jefferson penned a letter to Livingstone, the American minister at Paris:
"There is on the globe but one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market. France placing herself in that door assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Not so France. The impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, render it impossible that France and the United States can continue friends when they meet in so irritating a position. The day that France takes possession of New Orleans—from that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation."
As Jefferson placed that letter in the hands of Monroe he added:
"In Europe nothing but Europe is seen. But this little event, of France's possessing herself of Louisiana,—this speck which now appears an invisible point on the horizon,—is the embryo of a tornado.
"I must secure the port of New Orleans and the mastery of the navigation of the Mississippi.
"We must have peace. The use of the Mississippi is indispensable. We must purchase New Orleans."
"You are aware of the sensibility of our Western citizens," Madison was writing to Madrid. "To them the Mississippi is everything. It is the Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable rivers of the Atlantic States, formed into one."
But Napoleon's soldiers were dying at San Domingo, the men with whom he would have colonised Louisiana. At that moment the flint and steel of France and England struck, and the spark meant—war. England stood ready to seize the mouth of the Mississippi.
After the solemnities of Easter Sunday at St. Cloud, April 10, 1803, Napoleon summoned two of his ministers.
"I know the full value of Louisiana!" he began with vehement passion, walking up and down the marble parlour. "A few lines of treaty have restored it to me, and I have scarcely recovered it when I must expect to lose it. But if it escapes from me," the First Consul shook his finger menacingly, "it shall one day cost dearer to those who oblige me to strip myself of it, than to those to whom I wish to deliver it. The English have successively taken from France, Canada, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the richest portions of Asia. They shall not have the Mississippi which they covet. They have twenty ships of war in the Gulf of Mexico, they sail over those seas as sovereigns. The conquest of Louisiana would be easy. I have not a moment to lose in putting it out of their reach. I know not whether they are not already there. I think of ceding it to the United States. They only ask one town of me in Louisiana but I already consider the colony as entirely lost, and it appears to me that in the hands of this growing power it will be more useful to the policy and even to the commerce of France, than if I should attempt to keep it."