CHAPTER IX

FROM THE ALLEGHANIES TO THE MISSISSIPPI

Ar the opening of the new century the frontier advancing westward was along the Ohio River.* The greater part of the original States was in private ownership. From the shores of Ontario and Erie a new zone of occupation extended southwestward to the country of the Creeks and Cherokees-a new world of isolated settlements, found along the great streams flowing into the Ohio, along the south shore of the two great lakes, and in the valleys of Kentucky and Tennessee. But throughout this new region the fear of straggling half-breeds and remnants of once powerful tribes made the new West a vast agricultural camp. St. Louis stood at the outpost of civilization. Peace with the United States, France, and Spain contributed to make it a centre of population as well as a frontier trading-post. It was the one town on the continent which served the function of the middle-man with the people of the States, the French, Spaniards, and Mexicans on the south, and the unknown Indian tribes of the

*The principal authorities for this chapter are the treaties, the statutes at large referred to, and the meagre records of the constitutional conventions.

The Control of the Channels of Commerce

yet undiscovered West. It stood near the confluence of the three great rivers of the countrythe Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri-the confluence also of civilization and savagery. Three hundred miles to the south, another and an older town, New Orleans, laid tribute on all that came from the upper country; and this meant the surplus product of the United States west of the Alleghanies. A less discerning mind than Jefferson's could see that the fate of the Western country was in the hands of New Orleans. The phrase "manifest destiny" had not yet been invented as the apology for the acquisition of new territory, but the thought was embodied in Jefferson's dictum, that the power possessing New Orleans was the natural enemy of the United States. It was a prescient idea, and one that the wayfaring man might not have expected to find in a republic of only twenty-five years' standing, and not without signs of falling. Why more land when more than half the public domain was yet a wilderness? Why the isle of Orleans when population had barely reached the Altamaha, four hundred miles to the east, or the Cumberland, three hundred to the north? We all know the reason— it has been written in the history of all nationsthat the power is supreme which regulates commerce and controls the highways of trade. Although the greater part of the people of the United States inhabited the Atlantic slope, the future of the republic did not rest with them. More than half the country lay in the valley of the Missis

sippi; on this yet unoccupied portion rested the fate of the Union. Trade and commerce follow lines of least resistance. The mountains which divided the people of the coast from the people of the great valley might prove a greater obstacle to "a more perfect union" than the delusion of fiat money and the jealousy of the State sovereignties had been at the time of the ratification of the Constitution. In the last analysis union rests on morality and industrial association, and the general welfare means a true political economy. Thus the fate of the republic depended on the course of streams and the trend of mountains, as well as on Congress and the Legislatures. Had the Rocky Mountains run parallel with the Mississippi at twenty miles to the west, it is doubtful whether the United States would ever have extended beyond its original limits and the peninsula of Florida. The acquisition of the Louisiana country ranks in importance with the Declaration of Independence-for it made room for democracy in America.

With nations, as with individuals, it is the forward look that stimulates. Too much history, like too much introspection, chills the spirit and cripples action. Thus the thought of an energetic people is of their outposts and frontier, and the history of these is the history of civilization. When the new century opened the outposts of the republic were at Buffalo, Erie, Detroit, Mackinaw, Chicago, Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, St. Louis, and Orleans-names, it is true, seldom heard in

Concerning the Cession of Louisiana

the East then, but to the statesmen of the day the subject of diplomacy, the signs of the times, the vanguard of democracy.

Louisiana was almost an unknown land. Not until sixteen years after its purchase, when Florida was acquired, was there even a rude definition of the boundaries, for no accurate maps existed. No man knew the true course of the Rio Grande or of the Rocky Mountains, for there were several great rivers and many mountain ranges, any of which might be the boundary. Fortunately for the republic, the western boundaries were at the edge of the world, and not likely, it was thought, to raise diplomatic questions for centuries.

Of greater domestic interest were the political articles of the treaty. The United States guaranteed the inhabitants of Louisiana the protection of their liberty, property, and religion, and this guarantee of property rights was soon applied in a way that determined the real importance of the acquisition and its effect on the destiny of the country. If property included slaves, what was the national significance of the guarantee? What effect on the commonwealths of the future? Was the fate of freedom in the States to be formed within the new acquisition to be determined by the property rights of a few thousand people living in Louisiana at the time of the treaty?

Nor were these the only civil problems latent in the acquisition. What effect would the great Ordinance of 1787 now have? If slaves were propertyand, by the treaty, slavery was to prevail through

out the Louisiana country-was not the republic thereby converted forever into a slave-holding community? The Ordinance excluded slavery from the territory northwest of the Ohio, but at the same time included it southwest.

Slavery did not exist in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts; but elsewhere, in every State, and in the Northwest Territory, there were slaves. By the Ordinance it became unlawful in that Territory after 1800, but the year came and went with no change in the condition of the negroes within its boundary. The white people in the Territory were not enthusiastic to apply the Ordinance. The year of the acquisition of Louisiana witnessed the admission of Ohio* with a constitution forbidding slavery, and it also saw the persistent efforts of the inhabitants of Indiana to persuade Congress to repeal, or suspend, the Ordinance. Their petition was answered by the unanimous report of the committee, of which John Randolph was chairman. Slave labor would be unprofitable in the Northwest; slavery would make the frontier less secure. But defeat did not cause petitions to cease. In the following year another committee reported favorably, but the House took no action. Two years later another committee made a favorable report, on the ground that the repeal of the prohibitory clause was almost universally desired in the Territory; that the suspension of the clause would stimulate

* February 19, 1803.