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St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana.
and Portage des Sioux. The Indian trade was pouring wealth into the pockets of the natives, and a degree of prosperity un- known in French America prevailed.
The life of the early French settlers in Louisiana was highly picturesque, a life chequered with extremes of light and shadow, joy and sorrow, religious fervor mingled with utter frivolity, ease never free from the shadow of hardship, and calamity following close upon the heels of prosperity. Contrasted with the sombre intelligence of New England Puritanism or the lonely brilliance of the Virginia planter, the social structure was loose and hollow, but withal bright and attractive. The facile, adaptable French- man, with free and easy manners, a vivacious spirit, and a fond- ness for display, mixed readily with the Indians and won their lasting friendship. They took naturally to the wild life and en- joyed the license, the freedom, the exhilaration of the pure air of the prairies and the forests. The young man became a voyageur on the rivers, then, perchance, drifted into the woods as a hunter and trapper. Ignoring the monopolistic spirit of the French authorities, he began clandestine trading as a coureur- des-bois. He purchased his Indian squaw with gifts, and lived on the outskirts of the Indian camp. His visits to the settle- ments were spent in carousals and debauchery. Civilization was left behind, and the instruction of the priests forgotten. The canoe, the gun, the dog, the trap, were his companions, the rude wilderness hut his home. But by and by the suppleness of youth gives way to the infirmities brought on by hardship, while the conservatism of age tempers the wild heedlessness of youth. The coureur begins to yearn for the quiet of the settlement where he returns to build a cabin within whose shadows he can smoke and chat away his declining years. Meanwhile a family of half- breeds has grown up, and his sons have taken his place at the oar and in the camp. Such is the adventurous and romantic life of the coureur.
But he is only a type, the forerunner of progress in western life. St. Louis had its quota of these, but not the large percent-
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Brief History of the Louisiana Territory.
age found in the Illinois towns. Stable settlers came down from Canada; the church crept in from the North and South; Creoles and Frenchmen came up from New Orleans; Englishmen drifted in from the East; and emigrants still crossed over from Spain and France. Merchants, traders, artisans, adventurers, priests, soldiers, men of ability, men of ambition, men of culture, were not lacking. St. Louis combined many of the characteristics of Canada, the Illinois country, and New Orleans, without being like either. More democratic and progressive ideas were adopted. Instead of clinging to the old French idea of a commune, with its system of common tillage, the land was parcelled out for in- dividual ownership. Instead of depending on individual hunters, trappers, and boatmen, fur companies, transportation companies, and mining companies were organized. In fact, St. Louis be- came a real western village, and only the larger infusion of sturdy English blood was needed to make her typical of the rapid taming of the vast expanse of the west, which a century has jeweled with a thousand cities and made to blossom with luxuriance and wealth.
The government of St. Louis was similar to that of other French towns. At first there was no organized civil government. The mechanics and hunters and traders who came with Laclede were bound together by common interests and were subject to his orders. Laclede was never disposed to assume civil responsibility, and about the only governmental function necessary was the allot- ment of land for use until the inchoate title thus acquired could . be confirmed by some higher authority. With the arrival of St. Ange and his soldiers and the other Illinois immigrants, some form of government became necessary. By common consent, St. Ange was chosen de facto governor, awaiting the arrival of the Spaniards. He was a man of mature years, being then over sixty, who had seen much service in the French army. He was no less able as an administrator than as a soldier, and his tact, fairness, and practical intelligence soon proved the wisdom of his selection. Associated with St. Ange in the civil administration were Judge Lefebre, who had control of legal matters, and Joseph
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St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana.
Labuscière, secretary and notary public. With this simple form of self-government, the town started, and later the director-gen- eral of Louisiana, Aubry, completed the organization by appoint- ing two judges, an attorney-general, and a notary. Under this government, St. Louis continued until the arrival of the Spaniards in 1770.
This event was heralded by the arrival of O'Reilly at New Orleans. As soon as the commandant had overawed the rebellious Frenchmen about the mouth of the Mississippi, he dispatched Don Pedro Piernas with a body of Spanish troops to St. Louis to take possession of Upper Louisiana. Piernas arrived in the spring of 1770 and quietly assumed control. He was a man of ability and rare tact. Several weeks were spent in the hospitable home of Laclede, cultivating the friendship of the people and familiariz- ing himself with the situation. On May 20, as lieutenant-gov- ernor in charge of Upper Louisiana, he assumed the reins of government without opposition. Thus passed from the control of the French the last foot of soil within the present bounds of the United States.
But with a wisdom too uncommon among Spanish governors, no radical changes were made. The venerable and popular St. Ange was made captain of infantry in the Spanish service. The minor offices were filled with Frenchmen. All the land titles granted under the French regime were confirmed and a French surveyor, Martin Duralde, was appointed to define the bounds of the various estates. Conciliation was the watchword. Governor Piernas himself married a French woman, and the Spanish force of six officers and twenty men was soon lost in the spirit of the village.
St. Louis continued in the even tenor of its way to develop and prosper. Governor Piernas was superseded in May, 1775, by Don Francisco Cruzat, whose nature was not less kindly and whose political discretion was not less conspicuous than that of Piernas. But the political content of the people was rudely upset in 1778 by the harshness and rapacity of Cruzat's successor, Fer-
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Brief History of the Louisiana Territory.
nando de Leybe. During De Leybe's administration two events of importance occurred. The first of these was the death of Pierre Laclede, the father of the settlement, in 1778. In the four- teen years since Laclede laid out the town of St. Louis, he had not been idle. While his name occupies little space in the politi- cal history of the region, his services in building up her trade and commerce were incalculable. He was almost constantly on the road, establishing new trading posts, making alliances with Indian tribes, and opening up new relations with New Orleans and Europe. It was while returning from New Orleans that he was smitten with a fatal illness and carried to a military post at the mouth of the Arkansas, where he died at the age of fifty-four. He was buried in the wilderness on the south bank of the Arkan- sas, but when, in later years, a grateful people desired to erect a monument to his memory it was found that the insiduous cur- rent of the river had washed his remains into the Mississippi to join those of its great discoverer.
The other event was an attack of the Indians which might easily have proved tragic. While the heroic struggle was going on between Great Britain and the embattled farmers of the At- lantic slope, the echoes of battle scarcely caused a thrill in the placid calm of the wilderness center. In 1778 Colonel George Rogers Clark had captured Kaskaskia and Cahokia without shed- ding a drop of blood, but the Spanish city rested secure. Gov- ernor Cruzat had matured a plan of defense for St. Louis, but had been removed before putting it into execution. The city was defenseless in the hands of the incompetent de Leybe, when in 1780 the Indians, inspired by the British to the north, de- scended the Mississippi in search of scalps. They feared to at- tack Cahokia and a predatory band crossed the river. The plan was to capture the unarmed men in the fields and then attack the city; but so few men happened to be at their labors the day of the attack that they made only a half-hearted attack on the fort and decided to rest content with a half dozen scalps and a few
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St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana.
prisoners, most of whom were released after the peace of 1783 .*
Governor De Leybe ended his dissipations with death in 1780, and the popular Cruzat was recalled. Cruzat was suc- seeded by Don Manuel Perez in 1787. It was during his rule that the system of inducing immigration by the offer of large tracts of land was begun. His successor, Trudeau, extended the policy, and some of the grants reached as high as thirty thousand acres. Dreams of opulence began to attract settlers to the hither- to sluggish village, and frenzy of speculation disturbed its wonted repose. New settlements were springing up along the rivers. With the arrival of Charles Delassus as Governor in 1799 (he had been promoted from the post commandership at New Madrid) a census of Upper Louisiana was taken. It was found that the population of the whole region was 6,028. Of these 883 were slaves and 197 were freedmen. The population of St. Louis was 925. Delassus remained in control of Upper Louisiana until its transfer to the United States in 1803.
While St. Louis and Upper Louisiana were growing apace, New Orleans and Lower Louisiana were making a similar de- velopment. Spanish regulation, or rather restriction, of com- merce threatened at first to stifle prosperity, but when O'Reilly gave place as governor to Don Luis de Unzago in August, 1772, the evils were somewhat mitigated. Ulloa had, through the French Governor, Aubry, restricted trade to a half-dozen Spanish seaports, and required that all imports and exports should be car- ried in Spanish vessels. Since these ports could not supply the traffic most needed in the colony, the only resource that enabled the colonists to subsist was a clandestine trade with the English. The treaty of 1763 had reserved to the English the free naviga- tions of the Mississippi, and large numbers of English immigrants had located at Bayou Manchac, Baton Rouge and Natchez Their vessels ploughed up and down the river and the thrifty traders
*There is a historical controversy regarding the extent and complicity of the British in this famous Indian attack on St. Louis. Not having been able as yet to ascertain the truth from documentary sources, the most reasonable account has been accepted.
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Brief History of the Louisiana Territory.
had established floating warehouses fitted up as stores which sup- plied at the water's edge the goods and slaves needed by the planters, in return for the produce of their farms. This smug- gling trade was wisely winked at by Unzago, and the Chinese- like regulations, instead of working to the advantage of Spain, gave a monopoly of the coveted trade to the English.
One of the most serious disturbances of the colony was of a religious nature. This difficulty had sprung up at an early day between the Jesuits and the Capuchins. In 1717 the Capuchins had secured from the East India Company the exclusive ecclesi- astical jurisdiction over New Orleans and a large part of Louis- iana. But in 1726 the Jesuits obtained permission to settle in the colony and had been assigned the Upper settlements. Once in the colony, they began to intrigue to get control. The first definite attempt was made in 1755, when their superior obtained from the Bishop of Quebec, in whose diocese Louisiana was in- cluded, a commission as Grand Vicar of Louisiana. This brought on an open conflict with the Capuchins, which soon assumed large proportions; and, like most religious quarrels, was very acrimon- ious. The Superior Council finally decided in favor of the Capu- chins, but the Jesuits continued to exercise many ecclesiastical functions. In 1764 came the order for the expulsion of the Jesuits and their property, worth $180,000, was confiscated and sold. But the nine-lived Jesuits refused to die, and when some half dozen years later a similar struggle arose between the French · and Spanish Capuchins, they were ready to fan the embers of dis- cord into a flame. Father Dagobert was the venerable and much beloved superior of the Capuchin monastery. He had shown much sweetness of temper, great liberality, and rare power of adapting his ministrations to the spirit of the people, so that when the Spanish assumed control of the province and Louis- iana became the ecclesiastical fief of the Bishop of Cuba, he was still left in charge. In 1772 the Bishop sent over Father Cirilo to investigate the affairs of the Church. When the report was made, the lenience of the French Father Dagobert was con-
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demned; but the governor stoutly defended him, and a contro- versy sprang up between the Bishop of Cuba and Governor Unzago. The matter was appealed to Spain, where a compro- mise was effected, through which peace again entered the reverend fraternity.
The administration of Governor Unzago lasted from 1772 to February, 1777. He was a mild and beneficent ruler, and by a policy of such exceeding liberality that it failed to meet the com- plete approval of the authorities at Madrid, he had increased the prosperity of the colony and done much to reconcile the French- men to Spanish control. The inhabitants were thriving on the illicit trade he allowed, and it was with universal regret that he announced his intention to leave. His successor was Don Ber- nardo de Galvez, then colonel of the regiment in Louisiana.
Galvez was only twenty-one years old, but he was a young man of great ability and unbounded energy. His father was viceroy of Mexico, and his uncle the most powerful man in the service of the Spanish King. His administration was no less liberal than that of his predecessor, and lasted to the close of the American Revolution. It was very important in the development of Louisiana, and for the aid rendered to the patriot cause.
The opening months of his rule were signalized by the de- . struction of the English monopoly of the carrying trade of Louis- iana, and its transfer to the French. In 1776 the courts of France and Spain had agreed to open trade between Louisiana and the French West Indes. A short time after the accession of Galvez two French commissioners, Villars and d'Aunoy, arrived at New Orleans to control this traffic. The West India trade proved profitable, and various steps were taken to encourage agri- culture, particularly the raising of tobacco. Imports came in from Cuba and other places, specie became more plentiful, ne- groes were introduced in larger numbers, industry began to thrive. Plans to attract immigration were not forgotten. Large numbers, 499 in one body for example, came over from the Canary Islands at the King's expense. They were provided with lands and
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Brief History of the Louisiana Territory.
houses and cattle and farming utensils; a church was erected for them in each village they established, and provisions out of the general commissary were supplied until they could become self- sustaining. The policy of making extensive land grants, which proved so successful in Upper Louisiana, was inauguarted by Galvez and extended by his successor, Miro. Munificent grants lured many English settlers to cross over into Louisiana and take the oath of allegiance to the Spanish monarch. In 1788 Colonel George Morgan was given an immense tract of land about seventy miles below the mouth of the Ohio and led a large party to the site of New Madrid, Missouri. Other settlements grew up in like manner and thus, by a general infiltration of English blood was Louisiana prepared for its future transfer.
The aid to the American cause supplied through Louisiana during the Revolution should not be forgotten. One of the first official acts of the spirited young Galvez was to seize and con- fiscate eleven richly laden English ships engaged in the smuggling trade about New Orleans. The order of the Spanish court to render secret assistance to the Americans was seized with alacrity. Oliver Pollock and Captain Willing came down the Ohio and Mississippi from Fort Pitt and were aided in the purchase of powder and military stores for the American army. Gayarre, in his History of Louisiana, states that this secret aid amounted to seventy thousand dollars. Galvez was instructed to hold in trust any British settlement on the Mississippi, which the Americans might take and turn over to him-a peculiar bit of responsibility the Americans were pretty sure not to ask him to assume. But it was in 1779 when the Spaniards unsheathed the sword and joined hands with the United States and France against England that Galvez took the field. and, with great dash and courage, drove the English out of Florida and the Louisiana forts of Natchez, Baton Rouge, and Bayou Manchac. This capture of the Floridas was of peculiar importance to the United States since it left them at the conclusion of the war in possession of the decrepit monarchy from whose nerveless fingers they were certain at some future date to drop into the open arms of the young republic.
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St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana.
The administration of Galvez ended with the year 1784. He was succeeded by Don Estevan Miro, who remained in control seven years. He possessed none of the brilliance of Galvez, but was a man of good education, sound intelligence, a high sense of honor, and an abundance of energy. At the opening of his ad- ministration a census was taken which showed that the total popu- lation of Louisiana had increased from 13,538 in 1769 to 31,433 in 1785. By virtue of the arrival of a large number of Acadians and a liberal policy, this number was increased by more than 10,000 in three years. By the time of. the transfer in 1803 the number had reached about 50,000. The population of New Or- leans grew from 3,000 in 1769, to 5,000 in 1785, and to more than 8,000 in 1803.
Miro was succeeded in 1792 by François Louis Hector, Baron de Carondelet, who became governor and intendant of the provinces of Louisiana and West Florida. Carondelet was a native of Flanders who had risen by great zeal and ability to a responsible position in the service of Spain. The five years of his governorship were filled with stirring and significant events. The French Revolution was sending out its thrills of hope and horror to the uttermost parts of the earth, and Louisiana, still largely a French province, reaped a rich harvest of its excite- ment. First came a number of royalist emigrès who were re- ceived with joy and given large tracts of land upon which to found settlements. Then came the agents of the French Jacobins who published an inflammatory address from "The Freemen of France to their Brothers in Louisiana."
"The hour has struck, Frenchmen of Louisiana," it said. "The moment has arrived when despotism must disappear from the earth. Now is the time to cease being slaves of a government, to which you were shamefully sold; and no longer to be led on like a herd of cattle, by men who with one word can strip you of what you hold most dear-liberty and property. Compare with your situation that of your friends-the free Amer- icans. Look at the province of Kentucky, deprived of outlets
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Brief History of the Louisiana Territory.
for its products, and yet, notwithstanding these obstacles, and merely through the genial influence of a free government, rap- idly increasing its population and wealth, and already presaging a prosperity which causes the Spanish government to tremble."
So active were the Jacobin agents that an expedition was planned to wrest Louisiana from Spain by the aid of Kentucky riflemen and set up there the standard of a free French republic. But the energy and address of Carondelet, together with the firm- ness and prudence of Washington, prevented such a rash enter- prise. The net result of this disturbance, however, accrued to the interest of the United States. Her citizens in the Southwest were determined to have the free navigation of the Mississippi, and various intrigues and incipient buccaneering expeditions had threatened direful calamities. The accumulated dangers were made known to the Spanish court where the shrewd and unscrupu- lous Don Manuel Godoy reigned supreme. The treaty between the United States and Spain which had long been pending was . signed at Madrid, October 20, 1795,-thus registering the first real diplomatic triumph of the young Republic. The magnani- mous Godoy gave the United States all she asked,-a settlement of the boundary of the Floridas, free navigation of the Missis- sippi, and a port of deposit at New Orleans free of duty for three years. The term of three years was to be extended by subsequent negotiation; or, in lieu of this, another point on the island of New Orleans was to be assigned as a place of deposit for American trade.
The time limit set to the privilege of deposit was a subter- fuge on the part of the astute Godoy to relieve the danger of an immediate descent of the determined Westerners upon New Orleans, and to give time to mature some other scheme to avoid extension. Little did he realize that within this time the enjoy- ment of the privilege would become so common as to be felt to be a natural right, and that its removal would arouse such towering wrath that it would force the hand of the distant government at Washington. But such was the case and the manifest destiny
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of Louisiana was wrought out of the diplomatic muddle within five years of the time limit set by Godoy in the Treaty of Madrid to the unobstructed navigation of the Mississippi.
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CHAPTER IV.
A DIPLOMATIC DRAMA: THE GREAT PURCHASE.
O N the fourth day of March, 1801, Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated President of the United States. He did not ride up to the capitol alone, dismount, hitch his horse to a fence post, and then walk into the audience room to read his fifteen-minute inaugural, as stated by many of the old school books ; but what was more significant was that he was a true democrat, mild, pacific, optimistic, trusting implicitly the ultimate sense of the American people. He was an aristocrat, born and bred, yet few men ever lived who had a more pious contempt for the tinsel glitter of royalty, or the noisy exhibition of rank and supposed social superiority. Of personal magnetism, oratory, dash and verve, of qualities that compel respect and herald leadership from afar, Jefferson had almost none; yet few entered his pres- ence without feeling the magic spell of his peculiar power. He was six feet two-and-a-half inches tall, loosely built, red-headed, sandy-complexioned. A sunny countenance and a bland smile covered a political cunning that surprised his friends and discom- fited his foes. He was approachable, friendly, even-tempered, a brilliant conversationalist, dabbled in science, philosophy, litera- ture, agriculture, and was never at a loss for a plane on which to meet an individual or a clever expedient to avoid a difficulty. His manner was rather stiff and awkward as a result of natural timid- ity. He sat in "a lounging manner, on one hip commonly, and with one of his shoulders elevated much above the other," presenting a "shackling air." His dress was plain and reckless, and his red- plush waistcoat, corduroy breeches, yarn stockings and slippers down at the heels, afforded no end of merriment to his aristocratic opponents.
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A Diplomatic Drama: the Great Purchase.
Such was the outward aspect of the man the American people had elected to deal on equal terms with the crowned heads of Europe, with Pitt and Godoy, Talleyrand and Napoleon. Be- neath the surface, however, there burned a fiery passion for liberty, a zeal for the public welfare, a disinterested patriotism, and a determined continuity of purpose which might swerve from the direct path but never lost sight of the end in view. His methods were peaceful and conciliatory but he knew how to hint at the use of the "mailed fist" in a way that proved far more effective than any amount of blustering could have done. Jefferson had a choice lot of theoretical vagaries that came out in his rambling talk and loose writings which were seized upon by his political enemies to discredit his intelligence and balance as a political leader; but his enthusiasm for revolutionary principles and philo- sophic theories were never allowed to interfere with his political shrewdness and supreme common sense in dealing with practical issues. They have sufficed, however, to cause his character to be misunderstood by early historians, all of the Federalist school, and it is only in the last quarter of a century that a true view of his administration has been obtained. John W. Foster has pro- nounced him the greatest politician America has yet produced and Mr. Henry Adams, whose innate hostility is too evident in his writings, says: "This sandy face, with hazel eyes and sunny aspect; this loose, shackling person; this rambling and often brilliant conversation, belonged to the controlling influences of American history, more necessary to the story than three-fourths of the official papers, which only hid the truth. Jefferson's per- sonality during these eight years appeared to be the government, and impressed itself, like that of Bonaparte, although by a dif- ferent process, on the mind of the nation." His cabinet was strong, but under the complete domination of his will, and until the days of Abraham Lincoln no man ever had such absolute con- trol of the nation or deserved equal credit for the acts of his ad- ministration.
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