From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (19 page)

Jefferson's fears for Louisiana even prompted him to abandon—temporarily—efforts to subvert the rebellion on Saint-Domingue. Shortly after taking office, he had reversed Adams's policy toward the rebellious French colony. Labeling the rebels "cannibals" and fearing that the "combustion" they had sparked might spread to North America, he quietly suspended relations with the government of charismatic rebel leader Toussaint L'Ouverture and agreed to support French efforts to regain the colony. The threat of a French empire in North America gave Jefferson pause, however. Southern slaveholders fretted that a prolonged racial war on the sugar island posed a greater threat to slavery in the United States and that, once in control of Louisiana, the French might seek to abolish slavery there. The ever agile Jefferson shifted gears once again, withholding aid promised France and initiating a lively trade with Toussaint's forces including arms and ammunition. "St. Domingo delays their taking possession of Louisiana," Jefferson exulted, "and they are in the last distress for money for current purposes."
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By the time Monroe arrived in Paris in late winter 1803, a sequence of calamitous events in Europe and the Caribbean—fortuitous for the United States—pulled the props from beneath Napoleon's scheme for empire. Spanish officials procrastinated until late 1802 executing the treaty, delaying French plans to take possession of Louisiana and allowing time for U.S. hostility to build. They also refused to relinquish the Floridas, without which, Napoleon realized, Louisiana was indefensible. The First Consul had dispatched to Saint-Domingue in 1802 one of the largest expeditionary forces ever sent to the New World. His brother-in-law, Gen. Victor LeClerc, enjoyed early military successes. He tricked Toussaint into surrendering under the false pretense that blacks would be given their freedom. The rebel leader was instead sent to France and thrown into prison,
where he subsequently died. Even without Toussaint, blacks fiercely resisted French rule—the women "die with incredible fanaticism; they laugh at death," LeClerc lamented.
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Yellow fever decimated French forces. In all, some twenty-four thousand French troops died in the futile effort to reconquer Saint-Domingue, denying Napoleon the centerpiece of his projected empire. The expedition to take control of Louisiana was icebound in Holland. "Damn sugar, damn coffee, damn colonies," a frustrated Napoleon blurted out in a moment of rage. By this time, the resumption of war with England was imminent. Desperate for money and angry at Spain, he ignored the Treaty of San Ildefonso and sold the United States all of Louisiana instead of simply New Orleans for funds to underwrite war against England. His precise motives will never be known. Events in Europe and the Caribbean were certainly most important. But Jefferson's threats appear to have made an impression. Napoleon probably reasoned that it would be better to secure much-needed cash and U.S. goodwill than risk losing by force a territory he did not control and could not defend. After some haggling, the two nations agreed on a price of $15 million.
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Having acquired far more than he had sought, Jefferson quickly cleared away obstacles to possession of his empire for liberty. Troubled that the Constitution did not explicitly authorize acquisition of new lands, he considered an amendment remedying the omission. But when told that Napoleon might be having second thoughts about the transaction, he waved aside his scruples and presented the treaty to Congress without reference to the constitutional issue. A few die-hard Federalists complained of paying an exorbitant price for a vast wasteland, poorly masking their fears that the purchase would solidify Republican control of the government. But the treaty was generally popular, and Congress quickly approved it. When Spain protested the illegality of the transfer and threatened to block it, Jefferson mobilized troops along the frontier and vowed to seize Louisiana
and
the Floridas, leaving hapless Spain little choice but to acquiesce.

Governing the new territory caused more serious problems. Deeming the Creoles and Indians unfit for self-government, Jefferson readily abandoned his principles of representative government, delaying full admission to the Union until the natives had served an apprenticeship and the American population had increased. Only after vigorous protest from the
inhabitants did he speed up the timetable, in 1805 creating a representative assembly.
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In a move fraught with great portent for the future of the republic, Congress allowed national security concerns to thwart efforts to limit slavery in the Louisiana territory. Taking a modest step toward gradual abolition, Congress in 1804 prohibited the international and domestic slave trade in Louisiana. White Louisianans, some of them refugees from Caribbean sugar islands eager to replicate what they had left behind, warned they would not accept U.S. rule unless slavery was protected. They even threatened to approach Napoleon. Many Americans feared that the republic was dangerously overextended. The inhabitants of Louisiana, in their view, were not ready for self-government; "a more ignorant and depraved race of civilized men did not exist," Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin observed. Without assurances about slavery, they would be susceptible to foreign, especially French, influence and prime candidates for disunionist schemes. To ensure U.S. control of the new territory, it was also deemed essential to encourage emigration of Americans there, and bans on slavery could hinder that process. Southerners increasingly feared that the rapid growth of the slave population in their states posed the threat of rebellions like the one on Saint-Domingue. Diffusion of the existing slave population through emigration into the new territories provided a safety valve. Responding to these multiple pressures, Congress in 1805 refused to renew its ban on the domestic slave trade in Louisiana or take measures to check the expansion of slavery, laying the foundation for the crisis of the Union a half century later.
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By any standard, the Louisiana Purchase was a monumental achievement. The nation acquired 287,000 acres, doubling its territory at a cost of roughly fifteen cents per acre, one of history's greatest real estate steals. Control of the Mississippi would tie the West firmly to the Union, enhance U.S. security, and provide enormous commercial advantages. Napoleon's sale of Louisiana all but eliminated a French return to North America, leaving the Floridas hopelessly vulnerable and Texas exposed. The United States' acquisition of Louisiana established a precedent for expansion and empire and gave substance to the idea that would later be called Manifest Destiny. This stunning achievement increased the self-confidence of the nation and reinforced an already deeply entrenched

sense of destiny. For Republicans, it assumed special significance. By making available the land necessary for continued expansion of agriculture, ensuring commercial growth, and easing the European threat, thus seemingly eliminating the need for a large military establishment, the purchase appeared to ensure the preservation of the essentially republican character of American society. All of this was accomplished without the use of force—"truth and reason have been more powerful than the sword," a pro-administration newspaper exulted—thus vindicating republican statecraft.
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His appetite whetted and self-confidence inflated beyond reason, Jefferson set out to relieve Spain of the Floridas. Americans had long viewed that land as essential to their security and prosperity. Rapidly expanding settlements in the Mississippi territory required access to the port of Mobile. The commerce of the Gulf Coast promised great riches. Resting astride the Gulf of Mexico, the Floridas, as Napoleon had perceived, were vital to the defense of Louisiana. In Spanish hands, they represented a nuisance rather than a threat, but Jefferson was tempted by Spain's weakness and harbored near paranoid fears these lands might be seized by Britain. Americans now insisted that the Floridas were manifestly useless to Spain and interpreted the ever adaptable and useful laws of nature as entitling them to a water boundary on the South.

Displaying an obsessiveness not easy to comprehend, Jefferson used every conceivable means to attain his object. Permitting his wishes to drive his claims, he argued with more force than logic that since Louisiana under French control had extended to the Perdido River, including a sizeable chunk of West Florida, the United States was entitled to the same boundary, a position Spain quickly and rightly dismissed. Confident that if he "pushed Spain strongly with one hand, holding out a price in the other, we shall certainly obtain the Floridas and in all good time," he employed the same bullying tactics used with France. He combined offers to purchase the Floridas with only slightly veiled threats to seize them by force. He concentrated troops along the Spanish frontier and secured congressional passage of the Mobile Act, a vague document that appeared unilaterally to assert U.S. jurisdiction over much of West Florida. Again rebuffed, he swallowed his republican scruples and responded positively to hints from Paris that for a price Napoleon would intercede with the stubborn Spain.
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Jefferson's lust for Florida, along with pressures from southern slaveholders, also prompted abandonment of his brief and altogether expedient flirtation with the rebellion on Saint-Domingue. On January 1, 1804, victorious rebels proclaimed the independent republic of Haiti and began systematically killing French citizens who remained on the island. These events sent a chill through already nervous American slaveholders. At the very time the cotton gin was infusing new life into the institution of slavery in the United States, Haiti appeared a major threat. It was demonized and used as an argument against emancipation. A Georgia senator even insisted that "the government of that unfortunate island must be destroyed." Still not ready to concede defeat, France demanded that the United States cease its "shameful" and "scandalous" trade with the rebels. The administration went well beyond that modest request, in effect denying the very existence of the new country. It refused to recognize the new republic or even to use the word
Haiti.
Fearing, as Jefferson's son-in-law put it, that trade with the island could result in "the immediate and horrible destruction of the fairest part of America," and hoping to curry French support on Florida, the United States imposed a trade embargo. For reasons of race and diplomatic expediency, it conceded to the British the wealth of the sugar island trade and moral leadership in its own hemisphere. As a result of persisting slaveholder opposition, the first republic in the Western Hemisphere outside the United States went unrecognized by Washington until 1862.
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Jefferson's Florida diplomacy reveals him at his worst. His lust for land trumped his concern for principle and obscured his usually clear vision. Having lost Louisiana as a result of French duplicity, Spain was not in a generous mood. It was determined to hold on to its last bit of leverage against an expansive America. Timing is crucial in international negotiation. In this instance, the twists and turns of European politics worked against the United States. At the outset, Napoleon eagerly played Washington against Madrid to see what he could get, but when Spain and France joined forces in 1805 he supported his ally. In the meantime, the revelation of a possible bribe to France provoked intense opposition from old-school Republicans such as Virginian John Randolph, who denounced this "base prostration of the national character," weakening Jefferson's hand. A frustrated president would voice righteous indignation at Spanish "perfidy and injustice," but he was unable to secure the object of his ambitions.
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Jefferson's successor, James Madison, shared his fixation with the Floridas and evinced a willingness to use the presence of Americans there and the exigencies of the European war to take them. Drawn to West Florida by cheap and fertile land and easy access to the Gulf, American settlers made up a majority of the population by 1810. They resented Spanish rule—such as it was—and especially the duties they paid to use Spanish ports. Encouraged by Washington to form a "convention" should Spanish authority collapse, a collection of gentleman planters, hooligans, and fugitives from Spanish
and
American justice seized the fort at Baton Rouge. With no money in hand but a flag already designed, they proclaimed the independent republic of West Florida and requested annexation by the United States. By not waiting for the end of Spanish rule to declare independence, the rebels moved much further and faster than Madison intended. Fearful, on the other hand, that France or Britain might seize the territory, he acted preemptively to back up America's contested claim. Refusing to negotiate with the rebels, whose legitimacy he questioned, he ordered the occupation of West Florida to the Perdido River.
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In 1811, he asserted U.S. jurisdiction over the province; the following year, he incorporated it into the state of Louisiana. Using the possibility of a British invasion as a pretext, Madison completed the conquest of Spanish West Florida in 1813 by annexing Mobile.