by Jon Kukla
Chancellor Livingston and his entourage arrived in Paris early in December and were greeted by the marquis de Lafayette, a frequent visitor to Clermont during the Revolutionary War, and François Barbé-Marbois, former charge d’affaires to the United States and now Bonaparte’s minister of finance. Livingston met with Talleyrand on the 5th, and was formally presented to the first consul on the 6th. Bonaparte asked Livingston whether he had visited Europe before. Livingston answered that he had not. “You have come,” replied the first consul, “to a very corrupt world.”8
Against a backdrop of routine consular business, including American claims for ships and property seized during the Quasi-War, Livingston became a full player in the American guessing game about Bonaparte’s plans. There were three questions: Whether France had accepted Louisiana from Spain (which Talleyrand resolutely denied). Whether the Floridas were included in the cession that Talleyrand denied. And whether Bonaparte was sending troops beyond St. Domingue to secure New Orleans. Gathering intelligence about these matters, however, was incidental to Livingston’s basic objective. Depending on how far things had gone with Spain, Jefferson wanted Livingston to persuade France to forgo the retrocession. Or, if it was too late for that, he wanted Livingston to persuade France “to make over to the United States the Floridas … or at least West Florida.” Or finally, if the retrocession had not included the Floridas, he wanted France to persuade Spain to cede them to the United States. In short, Livingston’s chief task was to press the American case against Bonaparte’s ambitions in the Caribbean and Louisiana.9
As events unfolded between December 1802 and the spring of 1803, Jefferson, Madison, Livingston, Du Pont, and Monroe all would contribute to the American acquisition of Louisiana, with important support from Rufus King in London. Throughout the long and complicated process of diplomacy, however, it was Livingston who did the heavy lifting. With so many uncertainties in play, his written instructions had been perfunctory from the beginning. Jefferson had explained his goals in broad terms. He and Madison kept Livingston abreast of their reactions to changing situations, but they counted on Livingston to size things up in Paris and exercise broad discretionary powers if necessary. Livingston, in turn, kept them candidly informed of both obstacles and opportunities—and his constant communication with Rufus King prevented either Britain or France from sowing confusion in the American camp.
Affable in temperament, Livingston was also hard of hearing—a potential disadvantage in his dealings with the witty and inscrutably subtle Talleyrand. But the French minister’s legendary knack for discovering and exploiting an opponent’s weaknesses was nearly worthless in the face of Livingston’s unusual self-confidence. Despite his firm attachment to republican values that Bonaparte regarded as dangerously Jacobin, Livingston was a Hudson Valley squire to the manor born, unruffled by the hauteur of the former bishop of Autun.
Talleyrand tried to keep the American minister at arm’s length with trifling ploys—pretending all the while that France had no claim to Louisiana. Soon after arriving in Paris, Livingston suggested that France offer Louisiana in settlement of the nation’s debts to American merchants. “None but spendthrifts satisfy their debts by selling their lands,” Talleyrand objected. Then he added, after a short pause, “but it is not ours to give.” Livingston found ways to work around him.10
No Frenchman was willing to admit that Spain’s retrocession was in the works, so Livingston prepared a forceful memorandum addressing the question, “Whether it will be advantageous to France to take possession of Louisiana?” He had twenty copies of his memorandum privately printed. He sent one to Madison, and he sent copies to Talleyrand and Bonaparte. The rest he carefully distributed to influential men around the first consul. The genius of Livingston’s pamphlet lay not in its obvious conclusion but in its careful demolition of Bonaparte’s mercantilist vision of Louisiana as a breadbasket for the sugar islands. France “is no longer a republic,” he advised Madison, “it is the government of one man whose will is law.” In one respect Bonaparte’s secrecy about Louisiana made Livingston’s diplomatic task easier: if the retrocession had not been concluded, then his question was safely hypothetical.11
Since France, “like every other country, possesses a limited capital” for investment, “the sole object of inquiry should be, where can this capital best be placed? At home? In the islands? At Cayenne? In the East Indies? Or in Louisiana?” The question was not whether France should have “any colonies” but whether she needed Louisiana.
France possesses colonies … and she is bound in good faith to retain and protect them. But she is not bound to create new colonies, to multiply her points of defense, and to waste [investment] capital which she needs both at home and abroad.
In arguments that fill fourteen printed pages and that echo Jefferson’s suggestions, Livingston demonstrated that France did not need Louisiana in order to reap the benefits of St. Domingue. In peacetime the sugar islands could readily buy food, manufactured goods, cloth, wood, and other commodities on the open market. In time of war, however, “the mouth of the Mississippi will be blocked up and the planters of the French Colony [will] be reduced to the utmost distress.”12
Nor could France expect to benefit by exporting its manufactured goods up the Mississippi into the western states. “Nothing could give birth to this idea,” Livingston wrote, “but the most perfect ignorance of the navigation of the river; and of the wants of the inhabitants.” French wines found no favor with “the palates or purses of the inhabitants,” who preferred “their own liquors, cider, beer, whisky, and peach brandy; the last of which, with age, is superior to the best brandy of France.” Glass, tableware, hardware, and dry goods all reached the west through Baltimore or Philadelphia “on cheap and easy terms,” never by “the slow and expensive passage up the river against the current.”13
“In a commercial view, the settlement of Louisiana shall not be advantageous to France, but, on the contrary really injurious,” Livingston concluded. “In a political one, it will be found still more inconsistent with her interests.” Here, too, Livingston put forward arguments that he had discussed with President Jefferson, taking care neither to “leave unsaid what truth requires to be spoken” nor to “give umbrage by freedom which haughty spirits may construe into menace.” The United States and France “are so happily placed with respect to each other, as to have no point of collision,” Livingston wrote, in yet another echo of his conversations with Jefferson:
How strong, how powerful, should the inducement be that compels France to lose these advantages, and convert a natural and warm ally into a jealous and suspicious neighbor, and perhaps, in the progress of events, into an open enemy!
“If there is a situation in the world,” Livingston warned, again echoing Jefferson, “that would lead to these melancholy consequences, it would be that of France in possession of New Orleans.”14
In his cover letter to Madison, Livingston explained the purpose of his memorandum. “I have had several conferences on the subject of Louisiana,” he reported, “but can get nothing more from them than I have already communicated,” so “I have thought it best by conversation and by writing to pave the way … till I know better to what object to point.” Talleyrand promised to give his memorandum “an attentive perusal after which … I will come forward with some proposition.” As Du Pont had recognized, setting the right price was tricky, and Livingston hoped Madison could offer “some directions on this head and not leave the responsibility of offering too much or too little entirely at my door.” Weighed against the costs of “guards and garrisons, the risk of war, the value of duties and [the revenue that] may be raised by the sale of lands,” he ventured that the Floridas and New Orleans might be “a cheap purchase at twenty millions of dollars.”15
The summer passed with few developments, for as Livingston told Rufus King in August, “every body of fashion is now out of town.” By October, however, Livingston had opened a new channel around Talleyrand wh
en he gave a copy of his printed memorandum to Joseph Bonaparte, the first consul’s elder brother. “My brother is his own counsellor,” Joseph confided to Livingston, “but we are good brothers … and as I have access to him at all times, I have an opportunity of turning his attention to a particular subject that might otherwise be passed over.” At their next encounter, Joseph Bonaparte told Livingston that both he and the first consul had read Livingston’s memorandum “with attention,” and that Napoleon had told him “that he had nothing more at heart than to be on the best terms with the United States.”16
While waiting for guidance from Jefferson or Madison about how much he might offer for New Orleans or Florida, in December 1802 Livingston concocted a scheme that required no money at all. In a series of conversations with Napoleon’s elder brother, Livingston suggested that although Louisiana would be a ruinous burden for the French nation, it offered a lucrative haven for the Bonaparte family in the event of Napoleon’s death. Napoleon could transfer sovereignty over Louisiana to the United States and transfer the ownership of its lands to his own family. Then the United States could buy half the land from the Bonapartes for, say, $2 million.17
Livingston’s scheme was useful, and it was actually less bizarre than it may seem. Family interests, after all, had prompted Carlos IV to exchange Louisiana for the throne of Etruria for his queen’s nephew—a deal that had been brokered by Napoleon’s brother Lucien. The Bonapartes were not yet an imperial family, but they were beginning to act like one. “There are duties which a man owes to himself and his family,” Livingston advised, “which ought not to be overlooked when they can be performed without the smallest injury to the public.” Why not barter Louisiana to the United States to underwrite “the present splendour of your family,” he asked Joseph Bonaparte, and “secure to your posterity a property [in America] which nothing attainable in France would in any degree equal.”18
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.”19
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.”20
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.21
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.22
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.23
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.24
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.”25
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.”26 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.”27