adequate to sink the capital, should we even go the sum proposed by Marbois; nay I persuade myself that the whole sum may be raised by the sale of the territory west of the Mississippi, with the right of sovereignty, to some power in Europe, whose vicinity we should not fear. I speak now without reflection and without having seen Mr. Monroe as it was midnight when I left the treasury, and is now three o'clock. It is so very important that you should be apprised that a negotiation is actually opened, even before Mr. Monroe has been presented, in order to calm the tumult which the news of war will renew, that I have lost no time in communicating it. We shall do all we can to cheapen the purchase; but my present sentiment is that we shall buy.26 Napoleon's proposal.-True to his promise Livingstone worked hard for a reduction in the price. A week was spent in haggling over this, and a fortnight passed after Monroe's arrival without anything more definite having been accomplished. On April 23 the First Consul drew up a "Project of a Secret Convention" which was given by him to Marbois. For the purpose, among other things, of strengthening friendly relations between the two nations the French Republic according to this document was to cede Louisiana to the United States; in consequence of which cession, "Louisiana, its territory, and its proper dependencies shall become part of the American Union, and shall form successively one or more states on the terms of the Federal Constitution." 27 French commerce in Louisiana was to be given all the rights of American commerce with permanent entrepôts at six points along the Mississippi together with a permanent right of navigation. The United States was also to assume all debts to American citizens under the treaty of Monfontaine and was to pay France one hundred million francs. Armed with this document on the afternoon of April 27, Marbois held a conference with Livingstone and Monroe in the rooms of the latter. Too unwell himself to sit at the table Monroe reclined on a sofa throughout the discussion. A counter proposal.-The conversation was opened by Marbois who submitted Napoleon's project. After admitting that he thought it hard and unreasonable, he presented his own. The former demanded a total expense of one hundred and twenty million francs to the American government, the latter reduced the demand to eighty million. Livingstone was particularly anxious to settle this question of claims first and separately, but Monroe overruled him in this. The twenty-eighth of April was spent by the two American envoys in revising Marbois's project, and drawing up one of their own. On the following day they called upon the French minister and presented their proposal. In this they had suggested fifty millions as the amount to be given France, and twenty millions more on account of her debt to the citizens of the United States. But Marbois refused to proceed unless eighty million francs was accepted as the price, and the American commissioners finally yielded. Marbois took the revised document for a conference with Napoleon on April 30. Monroe meets Napoleon.-On Sunday, May 1, Monroe was conducted to the Palace of the Louvre and presented by Livingstone to the First Consul whom he found in a genial and inquisitive frame of mind. "You have been here fifteen days?' Napoleon asked. I told him I had. 'You speak French?' I replied, A little!' 'You had a good voyage?' 'Yes.' 'You came in a frigate?' 'No, in a merchant vessel charged for the purpose.' Then turning abruptly to the subct in which Monroe and Livingstone were particukrly interested he assured them that their affair should be settled, and left them. After dinner the First Consul again came to Monroe and inquired whether the Federal city grew much. I told him it did. 'How many inhabitants has it?' '. . . in itself it contains two or three thousand inhabitants.' 'Well, Mr. Jefferson, how old is he?' 'About sixty.' 'Is he married or single?' 'He is not married.' 'Then he is a garçon.' 'No, he is a widower.' 'Has he children?' 'Yes, two daughters who are married.' 'Does he reside in the Federal city?' 'Generally.' 'Are the public buildings there commodious, those for the Congress and President especially?' 'They are.' 'You Americans did brilliant things in the war with England, you will do the same again.' 'We shall I am persuaded always behave well when it shall be our lot to be in war.' 'You may probably be in war with them again.' I replied that I did not know, that that was an important question to decide when there would be an occasion for it," "28 and so the conversation ended. The treaty concluded.-On that same evening the two American envoys had a final discussion with Marbois. Some amendments were made to the treaty and a few minor changes were agreed upon. On May 2 the "treaty and convention for sixty millions of francs to France in the French language" was signed. The English copies were prepared and signed two or three days later. The convention affecting American claims was not signed, however, until about the eighth or ninth, and all these documents were antedated to April 30. But in the document thus agreed upon there was no attempt to define the boundaries of the property which changed hands. This subject was left for later diplomatic negotiations, and in the meantime American explorers, fur traders, and settlers were crossing 28 Hamilton, Stanislaus Murray (Editor), The Writings of James Monroe, Including a Collection of His Public and Private Papers and Correspondence Now for the First Time Printed, 7 vols. New York, 18981903, IV. 13-16. the Mississippi to seek adventure and furs and to build homes in the Trans-Mississippi West. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES The Louisiana Purchase: An account of the purchase of Louisiana will be found in the general histories of the United States and in the different lives of Jefferson. The most satisfactory secondary accounts may be found in the following: Henry Adams, History of the United States of America (during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison), 9 vols., New York, 1903-1904; Clarence W. Alvord, The Illinois Country, 1673-1818, Springfield, 1920; Edward Channing, History of the United States (5 vols. completed), New York, 1907-1921, Vol. IV; Ibid, The Jeffersonian System (Vol. XII of The American Nation; a History) New York, 1906; Binger Herman, The Louisiana Purchase and Our Title West of the Rocky Mountains, with a Review of Annexation by the United States, Washington, 1900; Thomas Maitland Marshall, A History of the Western Boundary of the Louisiana Purchase, 1819-1841 (University of California Publications in History, 1914); Frederick Austin Ogg, The Opening of the Mississippi, New York, 1904; C. F. Robertson, The Louisiana Purchase in Its Influence Upon the American System," in The American Historical Association PAPERS, I. Barbé-Marbois, Histoire de la Louisiane et de la Cession de cette Colonie par la France aux Etats-Unis de L'Amérique Septentrionale; Précédée d'un discours sur la Constitution et le Gouvernement des Etats-Unis (Paris, 1829, and the English translation, Philadelphia, 1830) is an attempt by one of the negotiators to defend the sale of the province. The American State Papers, Foreign Relations, II, and Public Lands, I, contain the documents on the American side of the subject. See also State Papers and Correspondence bearing upon the Purchase of the Territory of Louisiana in House Documents, 57 Cong., 2d Sess., No. 431. Additional material may be found in Channing, Hart, and Turner, Guide to the Study and Reading of American History, Boston, 1912; J. N. Larned, The Literature of American History, a Bibliographical Guide, Boston, 1902; in the preface of Ogg, Opening of the Mississippi, and in the bibliographies to Everett S. Brown, Constitutional History of the Louisiana Purchase, Berkeley, 1920, and Marshall, Western Boundary of the Louisiana Purchase. CHAPTER II AMERICAN EXPLORATIONS WEST OF THE The country west of the Mississippi which was purchased from France in 1803 was practically unknown to the people who had acquired it. The American frontiersmen had learned something of its eastern fringe south of the fortieth parallel, but beyond and to the north was a field into which they had not penetrated. It was a land whence sounded the call to wild adventure and boundless solitude, and hither came many during the first quarter of the nineteenth century to satiate their restless spirits and to spy out the land. But preceding the American explorer into the TransMississippi was the interest of the President under whose administration the purchase had been concluded. Suggestions of American expedition to the Pacific. -Jefferson's desire to learn of the country which he had been instrumental in adding to the public domain of the United States antedates the Louisiana purchase by many years. Indeed as early as 1782 we find him endeavoring to obtain information in regard to the animal and vegetable life of the country.1 A year later, while attending the Confederate Congress at Annapolis, he wrote to Rogers Clark: "I find they have subscribed a very large sum of money in England for exploring the country from the Mississippi to California. they pretend it is only to promote knolege. I am afraid they have thoughts of colonizing into that quarter. some of us have been talking here in a feeble 1 See the letter to Steptoe, November 26, 1782, in Paul Leicester Ford (editor) The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. 10 vols. (N. Y., 1892-1899). III. 62. |