Stateside With Rosalea: Louisiana

Stateside With Rosalea Barker

Louisiana

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El bang gigante for les petits bucks! Pardon my manglais, por favor, but the Louisiana Purchase is one of the weirdest land transfers in history, and was a far bigger bang for the bucks President Jefferson laid out for it than he expected. It effectively doubled the size of the United States’ territorial claim on the North American continent.

To understand the 1803 purchase, it’s helpful to imagine what is now known as the Lower Forty-Eight—the states on the North American continent excluding Alaska—as being divided lengthwise into three stripes of roughly equal width. The westernmost stripe belongs to Spain, the central stripe to France (except for Texas), and the easternmost stripe to the newly created United States (except for Florida).

It’s also necessary to widen our gaze eastward to include the Caribbean islands that make up the West Indies. It is here that the seeds of the Louisiana Purchase are planted. And if you happen to have a mocha latte with two sugars in it on your desk, include that in the picture too. For it was the 1791 slave revolt that took place on the cocoa, coffee, and sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and the revolutionaries’ defeat of the French army that led to France’s decision that the major shipping hub of New Orleans was no longer important to hold on to.

Louisiana’s is a complex history, made more complex by the fact that actually that middle continental stripe was in the hands of Spain from 1763 until 1800 when a secret treaty was negotiated to return it to France. The treaty was so secret that the Spanish flag still flew over New Orleans until November 30, 1803. On that date, Spain formally transferred the Louisiana Territory to France, and a couple of weeks later, on December 17, New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory were transferred to the United States. Thirteen states or parts of states would eventually be carved from it.

What we now know as the State of Louisiana began life in 1804 as the Territory of Orleans, being that part of the Louisiana Purchase south of the 33rd parallel. It was admitted to the Union as the eighteenth state on April 30, 1812, just months before the US, under President Madison, went to war again with Britain.

Most Americans associate the Louisiana Purchase with the expedition of Lewis and Clark from 1803-1806, which travelled from St. Charles in what is now Missouri, but was then Upper Louisiana, to the Pacific Coast near Seattle. However, the purchase also had huge ramifications for the political life of the United States.

A great deal of secrecy surrounded the events leading up to the purchase. In early 1803, after learning that New Orleans had been closed to American interests there, two items emerged from closed sessions of the House. One was a resolution giving the President authority to take such measures as necessary “for asserting the rights and vindicating the injuries of the United States”, and the other was an appropriation of $2 million to defray all expenses involved in the nation’s relations with foreign powers.

Jefferson immediately dispatched a special envoy to France to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans and parts of Louisiana. Instead, the French offered all of the Louisiana Territory for $15 million, and the Johnny-on-the-spot signed off on it. It wasn’t just the huge amount of money involved but the enlarging of the country that angered folks back in the States.

While some writers of letters to the editor in local papers waxed lyrical that the Mississippi River valley was suitable for growing the three most important trade items in the world at that time—coffee, sugar, and cotton—other writers, especially from the Northeast, railed against the taxes that would be imposed on them to pay for the purchase.

In Congress, the Federalists (Jefferson was an Anti-Federalist) “argued that the Constitution provided no specific grant of authority to increase the size of the country, and Congress had no constitutional authority to incorporate the territory and its people into the Union without the express consent of the existing states.” (That, according to the current official historian of the House of Representatives, Robert V. Remini.)

Furthermore, the House had to ratify the treaty that made the purchase possible, but Jefferson didn’t forward the relevant documents, though he sent them to the Senate, and the Federalists had a field day arguing it was the House’s duty to “resist the usurped power exercised by the Executive.” The issue was so contentious, that even those in Jefferson’s own “party”—really at that time, they were just factions—began to break ranks with him.

Back in 1799 he had been elected to the Presidency by the House when there had been a tie in the electoral votes for President, but he’d also seen the effectiveness of the first “party ticket” of candidates in that same election in delivering people to Congress whose support he thought he could count on. Now, out of necessity, Jefferson had to maintain a coalition of group interests in order to get his way and help those who supported him stay in power.

So, in a sense, the Louisiana Purchase also marks the birth of the two-party system, because it clarified what was already becoming clear: that it was the only way to make the political life of the United States manageable by politicians.

Just find some common thread among diverse interest groups—“no new taxes”, for example—and use that to tie them together, give the package a name—Democratic, or Whig, or Republican—and drum up a certain loyalty to the whole package (even if parts of what it contained didn’t suit a smaller subset of the party). Attach some kind of brand image, and hey presto! Just two buttons to push, instead of many.

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--PEACE--

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