Jefferson and his Colleagues

uresque figures that arrest the attention of the historian; but they seemed like shadowy actors in a remote drama to the American at home, absorbed in the humdrum activi

e also the confirmation of rumors current all winter in Europe. Bonaparte had secured from Spain the retrocession of the province of Louisiana. From every point of view, as the President

ission to the United States and more than one intrigue among the pioneers of the Mississippi Valley, during Washington's second Administration. The connecting link between the old regime and the new was the statesman Talleyrand. He had gone into exile in America when the French Revolution entered upon its last frantic phase and had brought back to France the plan and purpose which gave consistency to his diplomacy in the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs, first under the Direct

ambitions of the Americans, he had argued speciously, was to shut them up within their natural limits. Only so could Spain preserve the rest of her immense domain. But since Spain was confessedly unequal to the task, why not let Fran

a year he had pacified Europe, crushing the armies of Austria by a succession of brilliant victories, and laying prostrate the petty states of the Italian peninsula. Peace with

her Italian provinces which Bonaparte had just overrun with his armies. "Congratulate me," cried Don Carlos to his Prime Minister, his eyes sparkling, "on this brilliant beginning of Bonaparte's relations with Spain. The Prince-presumptive of Parma, my son-in-law and nephew, a Bourbon, is invited by France to reign, on the delightful banks of the Arno, ov

an the history of the French Revolution in this island, once the most thriving among the colonial possessions of France in the West Indies. The great plantations of French Santo Domingo (the western part of the island) had supplied half of Europe with sugar, coffee, and cotton; three-fourths of the imports from French-American colonies were shipped from Santo Domingo. As the result of class struggles between whites and mulattoes for political power, the most terrific slave insurrection in the Western Hemisphere had deluged the island in blood. Political convulsions followed which wrecked the prosperity of the island. Out of this chaos emerged the one man who seemed able to restore a semblance of order-the Napoleon of

expedition which was already preparing at Brest. In the latter part of November, Leclerc set sail with a large fleet bearing an army of ten thousand men and on January 29, 1802, arrived off the eastern cape of Santo Domingo. A legend says that Toussaint looking down on the huge armada exclaimed, "We must perish. All France is coming to Santo Domingo. It has been deceived; it comes t

sissippi country could never be a matter of indifference to those settlers of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio who in the year 1799 sent down the Mississippi in barges, keel-boats, and flatboats one hundred and twenty thousand pounds of tobacco, ten thousand barrels of flour, twenty-two thousand pounds of hemp, five hundred barrels of cider, and as many more of whiskey, for transshipment and export. The right of navigation of the Mississippi was a diplomatic problem bequeathed by the Confederation

not acquire the island of New Orleans or at least a port near the mouth of the river "with a circum-adjacent territory, sufficient for its support, well-defined, and extraterritorial to Spain." In case of war, England would in all probability conquer Spanish Louisiana. How much

ch gentleman, Dupont de Nemours, sought to impress upon the First Consul the unwisdom of his taking possession of Louisiana, without ceding to the United States

romise on condition that France should pledge herself not to alienate the province. Of course, replied the obliging Talleyrand. The King's wishes were identical with the intentions o

mmer of 1802 and had swept away the second army dispatched by Bonaparte to take the place of the first which had been consumed in the conquest of the island. Twenty-four thousand men had been sacrificed at the very threshold of colonial empire, and the skies of Eur

posit. The Mississippi was therefore closed to western commerce. Here was the hand of the Corsican.* Now they knew what they had to expect from France. Why not seize the

enough that Bonapa

is act of the Span

of the United State

te, 32

in. He was to act with Robert Livingston at Paris and with Charles Pinckney, Minister to Spain, "in enlarging and more effectually securing our rights and interests in the river Mississippi and in the territ

ding as high as ten million dollars if necessary. Failing in this object, they were then to secure the right of deposit and such other desirable concessions as they could. To secure New Orleans, they might even offer to guarant

e. The amazed onlookers soon spread the rumor that Europe was again to be plunged into war; but, viewed in the light of subsequent events, this incident had even greater significance; it marked the end of Bonaparte's colonial scheme. Though the motives for this change of front will always be a matter of conjecture, they are somewhat clarified by the failure of the Santo Domingo expedition. Leclerc was dead; the negroes were again in control; the industries of the island were ruined; Rochambeau, Leclerc's successor, was clamoring for thirty-

L'Ouverture to lead the blacks in insurrection; but there was a white menace from the north which was far more serious. These Kentuckians, said Pontalba trenchantly, must be watched, cajoled, and brought constantly under French influence through agents. There were men among them who thought of Louisiana "as the highroad to the conquest of Mexico." Twenty or thirty thousan

e in a sack are enough for an American to wander about in the forests alone for a whole month. With his carbine, he kills the wild cattle and deer for food and defends himself from the savages. The maize dampened serves him in lieu of bread .... T

s, with an eye to the needs of the Treasury of which he was the head, favored the sale of the province; and next day he was directed to interview Livingston at once. Before he could do so, Talleyrand, perhaps surmising in his crafty way the drift of the First Consul's thoughts, startled Livingston by asking what the United States would give for the whole of Louisiana. Livingston, who was in truth hard of hearing, could not be

in conversation, which was prolonged until midnight, he fenced with Marbois over a fair price for Louisiana. The First Consul, said Marbois, demanded one hundred million francs. Livingston demurred at this huge sum. The United States did not want Louisiana but was willing to give ten million dollars for New Orleans and the Floridas. What would the United States give then? asked

t to Madison without waiting to confer with Monroe. It was three o'clock in the morning when he was done. "

s on the terms set by Marbois. In two conventions bearing the same date, the commissioners bound the United States to pay directly to France the sum of sixty million francs ($11,250,000) and to assume debts owed by France to American citizens, estimated at not more than twenty mi