A Wilderness So Immense (42 page)

Regardless of the merits of his scheme, Livingston used it to keep Napoleon thinking about the arguments advanced in his memorandum about Louisiana while he waited for guidance from Jefferson about how much to offer and for what. Livingston’s December conversations with Joseph Bonaparte also forced Talleyrand back into play. Talleyrand did not want Napoleon’s brother taking the lead in foreign affairs, and he was not about to watch from the sidelines while anyone else explored lucrative opportunities for graft. In this respect, Livingston knew he had scored a direct hit when Joseph Bonaparte informed him, early in January, that all future negotiations about Louisiana must go through Talleyrand, “who alone could inform you of the intention of the government.”
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Livingston also used his December conversations with Joseph Bonaparte to reemphasize the British threat. If France persisted in its efforts to reclaim Louisiana and the Floridas, her actions were certain to force America into an alliance with Great Britain. Livingston’s personal Anglophobia and his affection for France were well known, but through his
intrigue with Joseph Bonaparte he reminded Talleyrand and the first consul that his own republican sympathies, and those of his countrymen, had limits.

Livingston’s conversations with Joseph Bonaparte in December had attracted Talleyrand’s attention. Early in January he reinforced this message by openly conversing with the British ambassador about Louisiana and the Floridas. If France persisted, Charles, Earl Whitworth, reported back to his superiors at Whitehall, Livingston “gave it as his decided opinion that… it would have the immediate effect of uniting every individual in America, of every party, and none more sincerely than himself, in the cause of Great Britain.” In light of Livingston’s “known political bias” toward France, Lord Whitworth concluded that Britain would have “few enemies” in America if France took possession of Louisiana. Whitworth also noted “that the little intercourse which has arisen between [Livingston] and myself gives a considerable degree of jealousy to Mr. Talleyrand.”
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During the autumn of 1802, before and during his conversations with Joseph Bonaparte, Livingston also advanced America’s negotiating position in one additional, crucial way. Ever since they got wind of the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso, American officials had been striving to discover whether its terms provided for the retrocession of East and West Florida from France to Spain. In August 1802, Livingston discovered that “all the old French maps mark the river Perdi[d]o as the boundary between Florida and Louisiana.” Livingston knew, of course, that the Perdido River (now the westernmost boundary of the State of Florida) marked the border between the Spanish provinces of East and West Florida. He now realized that Talleyrand’s and Bonaparte’s evasions about the retrocession of the Floridas derived in part from their inadequate knowledge of the geography of the Gulf Coast.
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Livingston, Jefferson, and Madison generally distinguished between “Louisiana proper” (by which they meant the western watershed of the Mississippi), and the city or isle of New Orleans east of the river and West Florida along the Gulf Coast. Perhaps as a result of their reliance on outdated maps, the French seem never fully to have understood the importance that the Americans attached to West Florida—that “narrow slip of very barren lands” that controlled the Alabama, Chattahoochee, Mobile, and Tombigbee Rivers, which extended north into the American frontier settlements in Tennessee and the Mississippi Territory.
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The Americans’ superior knowledge of their own geography gave them a greater advantage over the French than Livingston or anyone else realized. Time and again the Americans targeted New Orleans and West
Florida as their chief objectives, while shrugging with indifference about the “immense wilderness” of the western watershed. Jefferson’s letter to Livingston on April 18, 1802, sought “the island of New Orleans and the Floridas.” His cover letter to Du Pont demanded “the cession of New Orleans and the Floridas” as the price of peace. Similarly, the news of Spain’s intended retrocession of Louisiana to France had prompted Secretary of State James Madison to “turn the present crisis to [our] advantage” by directing Charles Pinckney the American minister to Spain, to seek “a cession … of the two Floridas or at least of West Florida, which is rendered of peculiar value by it containing the mouths of the Mobile and other rivers running from the United States.” America had plenty of land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, and the nation had no need to fight for more. Western farmers and planters did need, and were prepared to fight for, secure access to the world market via the Mississippi.
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Until Livingston began his conversations with Joseph Bonaparte, the American objective was always limited, as Madison wrote in January 1803, to “a cession of New Orleans and Florida to the United States and consequently the establishment of the Mississippi as the boundary between the United States and Louisiana.” The idea of extending the American territory beyond the Mississippi arose during Livingston’s unscripted conversations with Joseph Bonaparte. In October 1802, when Bonaparte asked him “whether we should prefer the Floridas or Louisiana,” Livingston replied that America “had no wish to extend our boundary across the Mississippi.” America sought only “security,” he said, “and not an extension of territory.” As Livingston pitched his scheme to enrich the Bonapartes by the sale of American lands, however, he concocted the idea of an American colony north of the Arkansas River and west of the Mississippi. It could be justified as a buffer to protect French Louisiana from attack by British Canada, but its real purpose was to attract American farmers as the most plausible way to assure the Bonaparte family that Louisiana lands would quickly appreciate in value. Livingston dropped his quirky scheme when it had served his purposes and brought Talleyrand back into the game. Nevertheless, the idea of transferring land west of the Mississippi to the United States was a lagniappe first voiced in Livingston’s conversations with Joseph Bonaparte.
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By early January 1803 Robert Livingston had everything in place for the success of the diplomatic mission that Jefferson had entrusted to him two years earlier. Bonaparte and Talleyrand knew exactly what Jefferson wanted—New Orleans, West Florida, and control of the Mississippi—and exactly why. They knew that Jefferson welcomed friendship between France and the United States. They also knew that if they took possession
of New Orleans, America would regard France as its “natural and habitual enemy.” With persistence and imagination over the course of many months, Chancellor Livingston had set the stage for the Louisiana Purchase, effectively conveying to the first consul and his advisors every subtle nuance of the strategy Jefferson defined in his famous letter of April 18, 1802. “Every eye in the U. S.,” Jefferson had written, “is now fixed on this affair of Louisiana.”
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As the new year began, American eyes were watching closely to see how Bonaparte would react to Livingston’s overtures. They were watching, as well, to see how Bonaparte
and
Jefferson reacted to a flurry of recent events that brought Spain, France, Great Britain, and the United States once again to the brink of war.

On Saturday, October 16, 1802, Juan Ventura Morales, a zealous and headstrong forty-six-year-old career bureaucrat, hurled a stone into the Mississippi. He closed the port of New Orleans to Americans—an action that started a wave of indignation that reached Natchez on Monday, and then spread to Kentucky, Washington, and the capitals of Europe. “From this date,” Acting Intendant Morales proclaimed on October 16, “the privilege which the Americans had of importing and depositing their merchandise and effects in this capital, shall be interdicted.”
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Since the age of twelve, when Morales started working as a clerk in the customhouse of Málaga on the Mediterranean coast, he had built a reputation for meddlesome efficiency. As acting intendant at New Orleans since 1796, Morales had demonstrated a strong antagonism toward Americans and a predilection for controversy. Often working at cross purposes with the Spanish governors, Morales was an inflexible secular counterpart to the self-righteous Pére Antoine. “The intendant places more obstacles in my way than the enemy,” Louisiana governor Manuel Gayoso de Lemos had complained in 1799, for “his unmitigated ambition forces him to intervene in military and political matters … [against] the true interests of the king.”
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By the terms of Pinckney’s Treaty of 1795, the right of deposit had been established at New Orleans for a period of three years. After 1798 the treaty permitted Spain to designate “another part of the banks of the Mississippi [as] an equivalent establishment.” Morales’s proclamation—which Gayoso’s successor, Manuel Juan de Salcedo, denounced as “a direct and open violation of the Treaty”—asserted that the period of “privilege” could be extended no longer “without an express order of the King.”
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Within two days, the news of Morales’s suspension of what Americans regarded as their
right
of deposit, not privilege, had reached Natchez. From there it spread rapidly upriver to Kentucky and Ohio. By October 26 the news of the closing of the port had reached Lexington, Kentucky, and the following Wednesday it was on the front page of Frankfort’s weekly
Guardian of Freedom.
“Whether this order was given by the Spaniards, or by the French,” the
Guardian
reported, “was [a] matter of uncertainty,” but after months of speculation about Bonaparte’s intentions, many westerners were ready to believe the worst. Early in November rumors flew through the bluegrass country, embellishing the story of the closing of the port with claims “that a French army had actually taken possession of Orleans.” The next Wednesday’s
Guardian
happily contradicted that rumor, “on the authority of a gentleman late from Natchez,” who assured the editor “that no army has arrived … but that the French would take possession of the Colony shortly.” Newspapers throughout the west also buzzed with information from another gentleman “just arrived from Bordeaux, who stated that arrangements were making by France to take possession of the colony, with 10,000 troops” commanded by General Victor.
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More immediately alarming were the reports of Spanish officials turning away flatboats laden with cotton, which gave all Kentucky farmers reason to fear that their autumn harvests “will be in the same predicament.” A subsequent letter stating that some boats arriving at the closed port were being allowed “to land their cargoes, on paying a duty,” offered
Guardian
readers a moment for optimism early in December, until they read in the next column that the situation at Natchez was one of “very great and general consternation,” with Americans and Spanish alike “much agitated, fully expecting a war.”
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As American citizens and public officials scrambled to discover who had closed the port, and why, speculation quickly focused on Morales’s motives. “It is said by some,” the
Guardian of Freedom
reported on December 1,

American traders in New Orleans doubted that any Spanish official would initiate so drastic a measure without explicit instructions. Morales was “too rich, too sensible and too cautious to take such responsibility on himself,” the unofficial American consul in New Orleans believed, and had often expressed his indifference to “the consequences of measures which he undertook in compliance with orders.”
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It took five weeks for news of the New Orleans crisis to reach Washington, but as soon as it arrived Jefferson and Madison adopted the position that Morales had acted on his own. Only a prompt reopening of the port could dissuade the western states from marching on New Orleans as they had been ready to do many times in the past. Since it is easier for a sovereign to disavow an overzealous subordinate than to be seen reversing his own policy, ascribing the closing of the port to a maverick Spanish bureaucrat gave the Jefferson administration room for diplomatic and political maneuvering toward a peaceful resolution of the crisis.

The closing of the port “is so direct and palpable a violation of the Treaty of 1795,” Madison wrote, “that in candor it is to be imputed rather to the Intendant solely, than to instructions of his Government.” Equally surprised by the proclamation, the Spanish ambassador in Washington had hastily assured Madison that Morales had overstepped his authority, while firsthand reports from New Orleans indicated “that the Governor did not concur with the Intendant” either. On the other hand, Kentucky’s
Guardian of Freedom
regarded the text of Morales’s proclamation itself as convincing “evidence that the shutting the port of New Orleans was not an act of the Intendant’s, but of the Spanish government”—and the
Guardians
editor called upon the president and Congress to do everything in their power to avenge the “insult” and “redress the grievance thus created.”
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“From whatever source the measure may have proceeded,” Madison advised Charles Pinckney the American envoy to Spain, “the President expects that the Spanish Government will neither lose a moment in countermanding it, nor hesitate to repair every damage which may result from it.” The wrath of America’s western citizens, Madison believed,