"The conferences began the same day between Mr. Livingston and M. Barbé Marbois, to whom the first consul confided the negotiation." Pending the preliminary discussions, Mr. Monroe arrived at Paris; but even then Mr. Livingston despaired of success, and said to Mr. Monroe, "I wish that the resolution offered by Mr. Ross in the senate had been adopted. Only force can give us New-Orleans; we must employ force; let us first get possession of the country and negotiate afterwards." Mr. Livingston, however, was happily mistaken. "The first difficulties," says M. Marbois, "were smoothed by a circumstance which is rarely met with in congresses and diplomatic conferences. The plenipotentiaries having been long acquainted, were disposed to treat each other with confidence." The negotiation, under such auspices, proceeded rapidly, but not without some distrust on our part.
"Mr. Monroe, still affected by the distrust of his colleague, did not hear without surprise the first overtures that were frankly made by M. de Marbois. Instead of the cession of a town and its inconsiderable territory, a vast portion of America was in some sort offered to the United States. They only asked for the mere right of navigating the Mississippi, and their sovereignty was about to be extended over the largest rivers of the world. They passed over an interior frontier to carry their limits to the great Pacific ocean."
The termination of this important negotiation was as speedy and satisfactory, as it has been and will be important in its consequences. M. Marbois truly observes, "the cession of Louisiana was a certain guarantee of the future greatness of the United States; and opposed an insurmountable obstacle to any design formed by the English of becoming predominant in America." In relation to the stipulations in the treaty, that the inhabitants should be incorporated in the Union, and, in due time, be admitted as a state, &c. M. Marbois records.
"The first consul, left to his natural disposition, was always inclined to an elevated and generous justice. He himself prepared the article which has been just recited. The words which he employed on the occasion are recorded in the journal of the negotiation, and deserve to be preserved. 'Let the Louisianians know that we separate ourselves from them with regret; that we stipulate in their favour every thing that they can desire, and let them hereafter, happy in their independence, recollect that they have been Frenchmen, and that France, in ceding them, has secured for them advantages which they could not have obtained from a European power, however paternal it might have been. Let them retain for us sentiments of affection; and may their common origin, descent, language, and customs, perpetuate the friendship.'"
The arrangement being completed, M. Marbois says—"the following words sufficiently acquaint us with the reflections which then influenced the first consul. This accession of territory, said he, strengthens forever the power of the United States, and I have just given to England a maritime rival, that will sooner or later humble her pride."
We return to the History of Judge Martin, who describes the ceremonies of delivering the colony to the United States. Some citizens of the United States waved their hats, but "no emotion was manifested by any other part of the crowd. The colonists did not appear conscious that they were reaching the Latium sedes ubi fata quietas ostendunt."
We pass on to the year 1806, when the celebrated plot of Aaron Burr is introduced. The president had received information of it, but not at first with such certainty as warranted any steps to be taken against the accused. General Wilkinson, then commanding in the west, afterwards made communications to the president, "involving men distinguished for integrity and patriotism; men of talents, honoured by the confidence of the government, in the flagitious plot." The designs of Burr and his associates were fully developed on his trial, and we need not repeat them here; but the proceedings of General Wilkinson are not so generally understood, and it is well that they should be. Nobody can be better qualified than our historian to give the information, nor to obtain implicit belief of all he narrates. We shall here see again that the old practice of shipping off obnoxious individuals was resorted to by a military commander; as if there was something in the climate of New-Orleans to excite men in power to this mode of punishment or revenge. We cannot present these transactions better than in the language of our author.
"On Sunday, the fourteenth, Dr. Erick Bollman was arrested by order of Wilkinson, and hurried to a secret place of confinement, and on the evening of the following day application was made on his behalf, for a writ of habeas corpus, to Sprigg, one of the territorial judges, who declined acting, till he could consult Mathews, who could not then be found. On the sixteenth, the writ was obtained from the superior court; but Bollman was, in the meanwhile, put on board of a vessel and sent down the river. On the same day, application was made to Workman, the judge of the county of Orleans, for a writ of habeas corpus, in favour of Ogden and Swartwout, who had been arrested a few days before, by order of Wilkinson, at Fort Adams, and were on board of a bomb ketch of the United States lying before the city. Workman immediately granted the writ, and called on Claiborne to inquire whether he had assented to Wilkinson's proceedings: Claiborne replied he had consented to the arrest of Bollman, and his mind was not made up as to the propriety of that of Ogden and Swartwout. Workman then expatiated on the illegality and evil tendency of such measures, beseeching Claiborne not to permit them, but to use his own authority, as the constitutional guardian of his fellow-citizens, to protect them; but he was answered that the executive had no authority to liberate those persons, and it was for the judiciary to do it, if they thought fit. Workman added, that he had heard that Wilkinson intended to ship off his prisoners, and if this was permitted, writs of habeas corpus would prove nugatory.
"From the alarm and terror prevalent in the city, the deputy sheriff could procure no boat to take him on board of the ketch, on the day the writ issued. This circumstance was made known early on the next morning, to Workman, who thereupon directed the deputy sheriff to procure a boat by the offer of a considerable sum of money, for the payment of which he undertook the county would be responsible. The writ was served soon afterwards, and returned at five in the evening by Commodore Shaw, and the commanding officer of the ketch, Lieutenant Jones; Swartwout had been taken from the ketch before the service of the writ. Ogden was produced and discharged, as his detention was justified on the order of Wilkinson only.
"On the eighteenth of December, Wilkinson returned the writ of habeas corpus into the superior court, stating that, as commander in chief of the army of the United States, he took on himself all responsibility for the arrest of Erick Bollman, charged with misprison of treason against the government of the United States, and he had adopted measures for his safe delivery to the government of the United States: that it was after several conversations with the governor and one of the judges of the territory, that he had hazarded this step for the national safety, menaced to its basis by a lawless band of traitors, associated under Aaron Burr, whose accomplices were extended from New-York to New-Orleans: that no man held in higher reverence the civil authorities of his country, and it was to maintain and perpetuate the holy attributes of the constitution, against the uplifted arm of violence, that he had interposed the force of arms in a moment of the utmost peril, to seize upon Bollman, as he should upon all others, without regard to standing or station, against whom any proof might arise of a participation in the lawless combination.