More Than Cowboys

by Tim Slessor

  The British replied at sea, where they had strength. Then for a few years there was meant to be a peace while treaties, truces and armistices were argued far away in Europe. But in North America, those cease-fires were irrelevant; “la petite guerre” never really stopped. The French, seeking to outflank the British and, at the same time, to cut south from their St. Lawrence colonies to their Mississippi territory (based on New Orleans and St. Louis), came sneaking down the Ohio valley. They built a line of forts. This was something that the British had always feared. So, thinking to introduce some class to the proceedings, they sent a General Braddock of the Coldstream Guards to tidy up. Nearing Fort Duquesne (Pittsburg) he and most of his command walked into an ambush and were overwhelmed by Indians, urged on by the French. The redcoats were not used to a close-quarter fight where they could not see the enemy coming. The General was killed, but one of his staff officers, a Major George Washington, despite having his horse shot from under him, got away - to fight another enemy another day.

  Nevertheless, in the end Britain’s navy won the victories that really mattered. Her captains stopped French troop-and-supply ships from reaching the St. Lawrence; they chased the enemy’s Channel fleet and smashed it in Brittany’s Quibéron Bay; they swept the Mediterranean; they landed General Wolfe and his grenadiers on the cliffs by Quebec. With the dawn, they were on the Heights of Abraham. The battle lasted three hours, and sealed the matter.

  The Louisiana Purchase, showing the boundaries of modern states

  Three years later, in 1763, the Treaty of Paris stripped France of all her North American possessions. Her claims to lands all the way down the Mississippi, including New Orleans, went to Spain; all her Canadian territory, except for two very small islands off Newfoundland (why, even to this day, did she keep those?), were turned over to the victor: Britain. France, though not Les Canadiens (one thinks of de Gaulle’s exhortation two centuries later: “Vivre le Québec libre”), was finished in North America. It was an extraordinary finale to more than two centuries of extraordinary Gallic endeavor.

  Historians will roast me for such a skimpy summary. But for my sake, rather than theirs, I have to keep it simple. And I will not even try to cope with 1776 and All That, because the Americans tell that particular story much better than any Englishman could do; after all, they have a better story to tell. Anyway, except for the fact that the rebels (all right, the colonists) were deeply irritated, first by Britain’s unreasonable attempt to bar them from pushing west into the virgin wilderness, and second by her much more reasonable attempt to tax them to help pay for the recent wars holding off their French and Indian enemies (another fact that some Americans are still slow to appreciate), the “first West” did not have much to do with the quarrel.

  But the Western void was to have everything to do with the confused ambitions of the new and very loosely jointed republic once the matter of independence was finally settled. With the defeat of the British, the rebels-now-become-Americans belatedly realized that they had just come by an enormous windfall: all the land west as far as the Mississippi. Already they had heard from hunters and soldiers returning from the frontier wars about what lay beyond the mountain ridges. They had heard quite enough to start them dreaming.

  Some dreamed of personal wealth, some of empire, some of an arcadian utopia. And some, the hardy few with little time for mere dreaming, followed pathfinders like Daniel Boone and got on with the business of working their way through the mountains to make new lives in the exploitable wilderness beyond: the first all-American West.

  They broke through to the grassy parklands of Kentucky, they burned clearings across the piney uplands of Georgia, they chopped mule trails through the forests of Pennsylvania, they banged a few logs together and went rafting down the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Tennessee to see what they could find.

  Those pioneers, afraid of no one and with total faith in themselves and in their ambitions, are easily recognizable as the archetypes of a new breed: the pure-bred American frontiersman. They were impatient and brashly practical men, highly mobile, single-minded, individualistic, acquisitive, thoroughly capitalistic (though they would not have known what that meant), and not in the least averse to taking the law (such as it was) into their own hands. As these early “Oh-yes-indeed-we-can!” loners hacked about in that first trans-montane wilderness, the Americans following on behind looked toward their first great inheritance: for the next 100 years, the knowledge that there were always virgin lands to win further on made the frontier much more than a westward-drifting line on the map; it was a social process which generated a state of mind that seeped into the young nation’s evolving style and personality. The essentials of that driving temperament and character are not gone yet. One hopes that they never will be.

  Before the end of the century there were nearly 200,000 Americans west of the Appalachians. The land was surveyed, pack-trails became wagon roads, fords were replaced by bridges, settlements grew to towns, Kentucky and Tennessee were admitted to statehood, and the forward scouts of the migration had reached all the way down to the bustling Spanish port of New Orleans; indeed, it was the Americans who did most of the bustling.

  Like the branches of a huge tree, all the creeks and rivers of the mid-continent flowed into the trunk of the Mississippi; you could build yourself a cargo-raft somewhere near Pittsburgh and in three months drift 1,000 miles downstream to New Orleans and the sea. The journey home, of course, took much longer. Anyway, at New Orleans you traded off your resins, skins and grain for the hardware necessities of hinterland life. On the levées and the wharfs were traders from New England, sea-captains from Europe, French-speaking fur-men from the far Missouri country, river-men from Tennessee. A generation before the first steamboats, New Orleans had become a bazaar for most of back-country America.

  President Jefferson had long been both bothered and intrigued by the huge emptiness that began beyond the Mississippi. This vastness went by the name of Louisiane and, along with the port of New Orleans, was now claimed - under the terms of that earlier treaty - by Spain. In fact, Jefferson was not worried by any expansionist plans the Spanish might have had; they were too weak to have any. But in 1801 the Spanish did something he did not expect: they traded Louisiane back to France, its original “owners”, in exchange for some obscure gains in Tuscany. One can assume that this transfer to France sent Jefferson straight to his maps. While he liked the French on a personal level, he did not trust them as a nation - not, at least, while they were led by Napoleon. He suspected that a French “re-taking” of La Louisiane might presage an attempt to re-build her North American empire. The British, for whom he had no great affection, but whom he seems to have trusted to behave with some predictability, might try to head off any French move by landing on the Gulf coast first. Then, perhaps at the same time, to further thwart the French, they might push south from their Canadian territories. Jefferson feared that his infant republic would be hemmed in.

  He had already sent word to his man in Paris, the diplomat Robert Livingston, that he should sniff about and keep him informed. His first concern was that the French would close the gateway port of New Orleans to all ships and cargoes other than their own, and thereby starve the upriver American settlements of both imports and exports. So he instructed his Paris emissary to see how the French would react to the idea of a straight cash offer for New Orleans... say $2 million? Napoleon and his foreign minister, Talleyrand, were not interested.

  Jefferson grew more worried. He seems to have felt that, of the two superpowers, France was the more likely to initiate a disturbance; the danger from Britain lay in her probable reaction. The young United States would lose either way. So, he decided that, if there were any trouble from France, he would have to make some loose alliance with Britain. In short, if a French army did land at New Orleans, “from that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation”. By way of a diplomatic leak, Jeffer
son made sure that Napoleon became aware of his thinking. In fact, Jefferson had diagnosed Napoleon’s intentions exactly; French troops were already on their way to New Orleans; they had recently landed to gather their strength on a Caribbean stepping stone: San Domingo (present-day Haiti and Dominica). It is said that this French army of more than 25,000 men was, up to that time, the largest seaborne expeditionary force in history.

  However (without a sprinkling of “howevers”, the writing of even simple history would be almost impossible), unknown to Jefferson, Napoleon now began to get increasingly wobbly about his plans for a new American empire. First, he had learned that in San Domingo thousands of his soldiers were being lost to yellow fever and to a Black revolt. Second, and just as important, before he had even heard of Jefferson’s threat, Napoleon had already begun to realize that the shipping of munitions and supplies across the Atlantic to his expeditionary army in New Orleans, in the face of an inevitable blockade by the British navy, would be a very chancy business. After all, only a few years earlier he and his Mediterranean fleet had suffered a catastrophic defeat, at the hands of Admiral Nelson, in the Battle of the Nile (Aboukir Bay). As a consequence of that debacle, a French army of 20,000, recently landed to establish a French empire in the Levant, had been abandoned and left to rot. Napoleon could see that the same thing might happen again if he attempted to land an army at the mouth of the Mississippi. So, almost overnight, he decided to give up on his distant American adventure. He would sell to the Americans. That way, he could also raise some much-needed cash for priorities closer to home, such as re-building a fleet and fighting the British.

  So, next time the American ambassador, Robert Livingston, came to call, Talleyrand and Barbe-Marbois (the treasury minister) asked how the Americans would feel about buying not just New Orleans but the whole of La Louisiane. Livingston, one imagines, could hardly believe his ears. Nevertheless, with admirable nerve, he murmured something about $5 million. He knew that Jefferson had recently authorized more than that for New Orleans alone. But a calculated lack of enthusiasm might persuade the French to keep the price down.

  By now, Jefferson’s special emissary, James Monroe, had arrived in Paris; he confirmed Jefferson’s anxieties. So, despite some inevitable haggling with the French, an agreement was quickly in place: $15 million for what (if one does not include Alaska) would eventually turn out to be nearly a third of the present-day United States. Arrangements for actual payment took longer. The Americans made to transfer $3 million across the Atlantic as a down-payment; they suggested that the rest, via promissory bonds, would be gradually paid off over the next 15 years. But this was an arrangement about which Napoleon was not at all enthusiastic. He wanted his $15 million, there and then. After all, despite a brief truce, another war with Britain was almost inevitable, and it would have to be paid for. But the US Treasury did not have anything like that amount in gold or silver in its vaults. As a consequence, the whole deal was in danger of coming apart. But, extraordinarily, just at this time there was that uneasy armistice (following the Treaty of Amiens) between Britain and France. The truce allowed the contract to be rescued by two banks acting in concert: Baring Brothers in London and Hope & Co. in Amsterdam. A Barings man was able to travel to Paris to negotiate directly with the French. Another Barings man was already in Philadelphia. In the end, the bankers bought the American promissory bonds at a discount of 13.3%. In short, they supplied the mortgage capital whereby the Americans were able to take possession of La Louisiane. The total sums involved were huge and there was much nervousness; indeed, Sir Francis Baring commented, “We all tremble at the magnitude of this American account.” But in the end the French got their cash; the Americans got nearly 1 million square miles of largely unexplored territory (at less than 4 cents an acre); and over the next 15 years the British bankers got their profit.

  Once the deal had gone through, Napoleon is said to have commented, “This accession of territory strengthens for ever the power of the United States and I have just given to England a maritime rival that sooner or later will humble her pride.” He had a point. No blood had been spilt, the door to the Great West was now more than merely ajar, and, as Napoleon predicted, the United States soon become the only transatlantic power that mattered.

  President Jefferson, in excusing the fact that he had fractured the US Constitution by not seeking the detailed approval of Congress and the individual states before the whole transaction was virtually a Done Deal, justified his action with the excuse that “it is the case of a guardian investing the money of his ward in purchasing an important adjacent territory, and saying to him when of age, ‘I did this for your sake’”. Talleyrand is said to have told Livingston and Monroe, “You have a bargain, make the most of it.” The politicians of New England, when they found out, became distinctly grumpy and some of them even plotted secession - which, presumably, is the main reason why Jefferson had not consulted them beforehand. If he had let them in on his intentions before the deal with the French was completed, they might well have tried to scupper the whole project - for fear that the dominance of their states in the affairs of the nation might eventually be challenged by new states to the south and to the west. They would have had a point: the Louisiana Purchase almost certainly made inevitable the Civil War just 60 years later.

  ***

  As described at the beginning of this chapter, I was amazed to find myself sitting in the boardroom of one of London’s leading merchant banks, being carefully guided through a file of documents that detailed the financing of the Louisiana Purchase.

  Obviously, I felt wondrously privileged to be allowed to turn those pages. And, of course, I was surprised that the papers should be held in London. It would have taken me a week to study them all - even if I had appreciated the intricacies of eighteenth-century banking. Nevertheless, at its simplest there is something very intriguing about an English bank openly helping to bolster the finances of Britain’s then current enemy. As a short brochure recently published by ING-Barings suggests, the story seems to provide an insight into the character of international banking before the more recent centuries of total war.

  But, above all, there is something even more intriguing about the role of an English bank in such a pivotal event in American history. And one should not forget the role of Britain’s navy. Who knows but without that bank and the threat of those warships, the history of the West might have turned out rather differently. Just possibly, there might never have been a wholly American West...

  That last paragraph was intended to end my version of La Vente de la Louisiane. However, sometime after finishing it, I learned that, while most of the diplomatic papers (as opposed to the financial ones) are housed in Washington, there was at least one significant document held far away to the west. Entirely appropriately, it lived in the very heart of the vastness with which, more than 200 years ago, it was directly concerned. So, I made a short transatlantic phone call to an old friend, John Gottschalk, in Nebraska. Yes, he confirmed, the 1803, 16-page, handwritten Proclamation of La Vente, signed by President Jefferson and Secretary of State Monroe - the means whereby the American people were formally told of the just-completed agreement with France - was in Omaha. It was owned by a notable Nebraskan businessman. If it could be arranged, would I like to see it, next time I was in those parts? Yes, please.

  A few months later, in early 2011, Mr. Walter Scott explained to me how he had come to possess such an important fragment of his nation’s history. Apparently, as soon as President Jefferson and Secretary of State Madison had checked and signed the document, it was dispatched to the government’s official publisher. Then, once in print, it seems that the handwritten original was judged to be of no special significance. So the printer gave it away to someone who, most fortunately, had the foresight to suppose that, one day, there just might be some interest in the document - complete with its various addendums and deletions. Over the last two centuries it had oc
casionally changed hands, until Mr. Scott bought it at auction some years ago with the intention of eventually bequeathing it to Omaha’s renowned Joslyn Museum.

  So, there it was: the Proclamation in all its beautiful 16 pages, displayed in a sealed cabinet behind polished glass. One just had to stand and stare; and wonder at the privilege of seeing two sets of such priceless documents: the first in London, the second nearly 5,000 miles away in Omaha. Not many people can say that...

  Lewis And Clark

  An intelligent officer with ten or twelve chosen men... might explore the whole line [of the Missouri] even to the Western Ocean.

  From President Jefferson’s confidential proposal to Congress in January 1801 that an expedition should be sent across the continent

  ***

  To President Jefferson, the blend of geographical ignorance and tall-tales - rumors of prehistoric animals, a tribe of Welsh-speaking Indians, and, no doubt, mono-breasted Amazons - that came out from the mists of the continent’s vague interior was too tantalizing to be ignored. So for some years, quietly and without advertisement, he had been planning an expedition of exploration - regardless of who, at the time, actually claimed ownership of the unmapped vastness.

  To this end, two years before that fortuitous transaction in Paris, he had selected a young army officer, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to be his private secretary. This was a disguise: Lewis was really being groomed as the leader of the projected expedition. Accordingly, he was sent off to various savants and scientists in Philadelphia for crash courses in navigation, surveying, botany and geology. He was instructed to read anything that had even the remotest bearing on the project being planned. There was not much.

  Lewis would certainly have studied the recently published account of Alexander Mackenzie’s journey ten years earlier right across Canada to the northern Pacific. Both Lewis and his patron, the President, would have been worried by the last part of Mackenzie’s book in which he outlined British schemes for the far north-west. While predicting rich returns in fish and furs, he also forecast that the plans also had “many political reasons which it is not necessary here to enumerate”. This elliptical phrase added another purpose to Lewis’ assignment; he must get to the far Pacific to plant the new republic’s flag before the British. Elsewhere in Mackenzie’s account, Lewis would have been excited to read that the Scot claimed to have made his journey across most of the western part of the continent by paddling from one river or lake to the next with only a few intervening portages.