CHAPTER XLI TERRITORIAL EXPANSION I. THE WESTERN HALF OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 460. The most important one event in Jefferson's administration was the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson had always sympathized with the attitude of the West toward Spain's hold upon the mouth of the Mississippi (§ 305). Man of peace though he was, he had said that such portions of the vast domain of dying Spain as we wanted must come to us in time, - by force if necessary; but he had believed confidently that such territory must drop peacefully into our hands, as Spain's grasp weakened. But late in 1801 fell a thunderbolt: America learned that Spain had secretly ceded Louisiana back to France, then the most aggressive of European nations. Congress hastily passed a war appropriation; and Jefferson, spite of his French sympathies, saw that we must fight 2 or purchase. He instructed Livingston, our minister at Paris, to buy the island of New Orleans, and sent Monroe, as special envoy, to help him. Monroe found a great and unexpected bargain practically completed. Napoleon had suddenly changed front; and, April 30, 1 In 1786 Jay had proposed a treaty with Spain, whereby, in return for certain commercial concessions, we were to surrender for twenty-five years all claim to navigate the Mississippi; but Jefferson wrote from Paris, in solemn warning, "The act which abandons the navigation of the Mississippi is an act of separation between us and the Western country." 2 Jefferson said that France had become our foe "by the laws of Nature." He wrote to Livingston: "There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural . . enemy. France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us an attitude of defiance. . . The day that France takes possession of New Orleans . . . 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." 1803, for the petty price of $15,000,000, the United States doubled its territory. A splendid army of twenty-five thousand French veterans had just wasted away, against tropical fever and the generalship of the Negro leader Toussaint L'Ouverture, in an attempt to secure Haiti as a halfway station to Louisiana. Napoleon hesitated to send more of his soldiers to hold the swamps at the mouth of the Mississippi against American frontiersmen swarming down that stream. Moreover, he had already decided upon a new war with England; and a distant colony would be exposed to almost certain seizure by the English navy. So Napoleon abandoned his dream of American colonial empire, together with his solemn pledges to Spain,' and, with characteristic abruptness, forced upon the American negotiators not merely the patch of ground they asked for at the river's mouth, but the whole western half of the great river valley, — which they had not particularly wanted. The heart of the American people was immediately fired by the grand prospect of expansion opened before us by the Purchase; and Jefferson wrote a few weeks later: — แ Objections are raising to the eastward [among leaders of New England Federalism] to the vast extent of our territory, and propositions are made to exchange Louisiana, or a part of it, for the Floridas. But we shall get the Floridas without, and I would not give one inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any foreign power." 66 1 Spain had hoped to find compensation for Louisiana by interposing France as a barrier between the United States and her other American possessions. Talleyrand, who had managed the French negotiations with Spain, played upon this string. "The Americans," he urged, are devoured by pride," and mean at any cost to rule alone in the whole continent. . . . The only means of putting an end to their ambition is to shut them up within the limits Nature seems to have traced for them [east of the Mississippi]. . . . Spain, therefore, cannot too quickly engage the aid of a preponderating power, yielding to it a small part of her immense dominions in order to preserve the rest. France [mistress of Louisiana] will be to her a wall of brass, impenetrable forever to the combined efforts of England and America." Finally, a specific pledge never to alienate the province to America became part of the price France paid. § 461] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 387 The opposition by the little coterie of Federalist leaders, and their jealous dread of the West, proved once more that they were rightly distrusted by the nation. The Jeffersonian Republicans, with whatever follies, were "the safest guardians of the country, because they believed in its future and strove to make it greater." 461. Three Constitutional questions came into prominence in connection with the purchase treaty. a. Power to acquire territory is not among the powers of Congress enumerated in the Constitution. According to the "strict construction" theory, the purchase of Louisiana was unconstitutional. Jefferson wanted an amendment to confirm the purchase: "The executive," he wrote, "in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so much advances the good of their country, have done an act beyond the Constitution. The legislature. risking themselves like faithful servants, must ratify and pay for it, and [then] throw themselves on the country" for an amendment, which should be also "an act of indemnity.” But he found no one among his friends willing to risk the precious prize by the delay that must go with an attempt at amendment. Such a move would imply that the purchase was not fully ratified; and meanwhile Napoleon might again change his mind. So that plan was dropped. In the debates in Congress, Republican members adopted frankly the doctrine of "implied powers." The right to acquire territory must exist, they argued, as a result (1) of the right to make treaties, and (2) of the power to make war and peace. b. Were the inhabitants entitled to civil and political rights? New Orleans had a population of 50,000. The treaty of purchase had promised that the inhabitants of the district should be "incorporated in the Union of the United States" and admitted, as soon as possible, to all the rights of citizens. The Federalists based their opposition to the treaty mainly on this provision. The admission of a new member to "the partnership of States," they urged, was not permissible "except by the consent of all the old partners." This was State sov ereignty doctrine. The Republicans themselves hesitated to carry out the promise of statehood to a foreign population bitterly aggrieved at transfer to American rule. In the spring of 1804 Congress divided the newly acquired region into two parts. The larger northern part (almost uninhabited), styled the "District of Louisiana," was attached to Indiana Territory (§ 317). The southern part was created "The Territory of New Orleans"; but the government was intrusted to a governor, council, and judges all appointed by the President; and provision was made for jury trial in capital cases only. This was a denial of all right of self-government to a highly civilized and densely settled district. It seemed strangely out of place at the hand of Jeffersonians, and it caused loud outcry in New Orleans. The Republicans defended the constitutionality of the Act on the ground that the guarantees in the Constitution applied only to citizens of the States, not to inhabitants of "territory belonging to the United States" (c below). In 1811, after a bitter struggle in Congress, the Territory of New Orleans came into the Union as the State of Louisiana. The New England Federalists resisted the admission furiously, because it seemed to transfer political power to the South. Josiah Quincy, their leader in Congress, affirmed: "I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion that, if this bill passes, the bonds of this union are, virtually, dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from their moral obligations, and that, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare, definitely, for a separation: amicably, if they can; violently, if they must. c. The treaty promised certain exemptions from tariffs to French and Spanish ships in Louisiana ports for twelve years. The Constitution requires that "all duties shall be uniform throughout the United States." Was there a conflict between these provisions? The answer depends upon the meaning of "United States" in the clause quoted. That term, territorially, has two meanings. To-day we give it commonly the larger sense in which it signifies all the land under the government of the American § 462] FEDERALIST OPPOSITION 389 nation, States, Territories, and unorganized Domain. But the Constitution, certainly in some places, and probably in all, uses the term to signify only the territory within the States. Territory not within a State, was not referred to as "part of the United States," but as "belonging to the United States" (Art. IV). In this sense, New Orleans was not, in 1803–1810, a part of the United States. For such " For such "territory" Congress is authorized to make "all needful rules and regulations." EXERCISE. For consideration (1) Can Congress constitutionally continue to govern Hawaii indefinitely as a Territory, without admitting her as a State? (2) Could Hawaii be deprived by Congress of all share in her own government, even after having been permitted such a share for a while? II. WEST FLORIDA AND THE TEXAS CLAIM 462. The Louisiana Purchase gave rise, also, to the West Florida question. Under France, before 1763, Louisiana had included a strip of Gulf coast east of the Mississippi's mouth. But when France ceded Louisiana to Spain (1763), England had already secured that strip and was governing it as "West Florida " (from the Iberville, or eastern mouth of the Mississippi, to the Appalachicola). The treaty of 1763 between Spain and England made these boundaries plain. Louisiana then comprised (1) the vast valley west of the Mississippi, and (2) the island of New Orleans, bounded on the east by the Iberville. In 1783, Spain recovered both Louisiana (from France) and West Florida (from England). But she did not reunite them. She kept the two provinces under separate governments and under these separate names; and in 1800 she ceded back to France only the one she then called Louisiana. 1 Almost identical questions have arisen since, in connection with the acquisition of Florida and the Philippines. In the Florida case, the Supreme Court held that the ports of that newly acquired territory were not ports of the United States, and that the revenue laws of the United States did not apply there unless expressly extended by act of Congress. In the other case, the Court upheld a tariff between the "insular possessions" and the rest of the "United States." |