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. "A few lines of treaty have restored it to me, and I have scarcely recovered it when I must expect to lose it.
#Lewis and clark corps of discovery stop at fort massac full#
"I know the full value of Louisiana!" he began with vehement passion, walking up and down the marble parlour. Cloud, April 10, 1803, Napoleon summoned two of his ministers. England stood ready to seize the mouth of the Mississippi.Īfter the solemnities of Easter Sunday at St. At that moment the flint and steel of France and England struck, and the spark meant-war. But Napoleon's soldiers were dying at San Domingo, the men with whom he would have colonised Louisiana. It is the Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable rivers of the Atlantic States, formed into one." "You are aware of the sensibility of our Western citizens," Madison was writing to Madrid. The use of the Mississippi is indispensable. "I must secure the port of New Orleans and the mastery of the navigation of the Mississippi. 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. The day that France takes possession of New Orleans-from that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation."Īs Jefferson placed that letter in the hands of Monroe he added:
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. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. France placing herself in that door assumes to us the attitude of defiance. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market. "There is on the globe but one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. "No one but ourselves must own our own front door."Īnd Jefferson penned a letter to Livingstone, the American minister at Paris: "The French must not have New Orleans," was the lightning thought of Jefferson. What hope with a foreign nation at our gates? Spain might be got rid of, but France-Monroe was dispatched to France to interview Napoleon. Pittsburg, with shore lined with shipping, roared all the way to the gulf, "No grain can be sold down the river on account of those piratical Spaniards!"Īppeal after appeal went up to Jefferson, "Let us sweep them into the sea!" A powerful minority at Washington contended for instant seizure. The western country blazed only by strenuous effort could Congress keep a backwoods army from marching on New Orleans. Crowding back, for twenty thousand miles inland, were the products of the Autumn. Gaily the flatboats were floating down, laden with flour and bacon, hams and tobacco, seeking egress to Cuba and Atlantic seaports, when suddenly, in October, 1802, the Spanish Intendant at New Orleans closed the Mississippi. The fear of France was now as great as had been the admiration. "Shall we submit? And is this to be the end of all our fought-for liberty, that Napoleon should rule America?" He was sending Laussat, a French prefect, to take over New Orleans and wait for the army.
But a step and he would be at the Mississippi. Napoleon had fifty-four ships and fifty thousand troops, the flower of his army, sailing to re-establish slavery in Hayti. Instantly colossal Napoleon loomed across the prairies of the West. Afar they had read of his battles, had dreaded his name. Never so vast a shadow overawed the world. "Spain, knowing she cannot hold Louisiana, has ceded it to France!" The winds of ocean bore the message to America.
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