Jumbo's Hide, Elvis's Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha

by Harvey Rachlin

  Europeans of the Renaissance era thought of their enlightened realm as the“civilized” world, and considered the New World—a vast terrain of wilderness stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean—to be inferior; because the land had bred only savages, they assumed, it was therefore not of the same quality as that in the Eastern Hemisphere.

  The major European powers of England, France, and Spain dispatched soldiers to colonize the New World, but holding on to the land they claimed became a test of their strength. During the power struggles of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, countries entered into numerous treaties and ceded and retroceded land like chess pieces. In some cases the language of the treaties was ornate, befitting the sovereigns of the countries, as in this brief passage from the introduction to the treaty of San Ildefonso of October 1,1800, between France and Spain: “His Catholic Majesty having always manifested an earnest desire to procure for His Royal Highness the Duke of Parma an aggrandizement which would place his domains on a footing more consonant with his dignity. …”

  Although its land was considered inherently inferior, the New World still offered much opportunity to Europe, and colonization was an important European activity during these centuries. Eventually the European colonizers lost their New World land, but they surely never envisioned that two centuries down the line the seeds they sowed in the New World would grow into great and prosperous societies playing major roles on the stage of world affairs.

  It was a time of international unrest, during which the major European nations of England, France, and Spain engaged in bloody war, fearful that a superior enemy might gain control over their valued possessions in North America. It was also a time of great hope, with the fledgling United States eager to stretch its boundaries westward and grow into a strong and independent nation. But two nations, the United States and France, similar in many ways yet also very different, would come together as parties to a treaty that was to have important consequences not only for them but for the rest of the world as well.

  The American colonists had a quarter century earlier fought their way to freedom from the British, who under King George III had controlled the thirteen New World colonies; the French working class, fed up with the prodigal and oppressive reign of King Louis XVI, had likewise rebelled and overthrown their king. With America’s Declaration of Independence and France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man, the common people in both countries made it clear that liberty and equality were the ideals they wanted their countries to embrace. But now, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, with Thomas Jefferson the president of the United States of America and Napoleon Bonaparte the first consul of France, each nation had divergent interests that were brought together by a single parcel of land. What happened as a result of this common bond is the story of the growth of one nation, the near-destruction of a continent across the ocean, and the dramatic transformation of many lives in an epic era of history that would reverberate for many years to come.

  Paris, 1803

  James Monroe, as President Thomas Jefferson’s plenipotentiary, had arrived in the French capital. A growing concern back in the young American republic motivated the president to send the esteemed Virginia statesman to Europe to assist the American minister at Paris, Robert R. Livingston, in negotiating a deal with the French to buy New Orleans and the Floridas so western American settlers would have a port from which to ship their goods.

  A Frenchman cruising down the Mississippi River from Canada in 1682 claimed the valley of the Mississippi River in honor of the king of France, Louis XIV, naming it Louisiane. Forts were built to establish colonies, and except for a brief period of fourteen years when the territory was turned over to a private company because it was too costly for the French government, the area was controlled by France. Over the years French colonists poured into Louisiane; in 1718 hundreds arrived, some settling in New Orleans.

  The Mississippi River at this time was an important route and was also used by American settlers in the West. America was largely an agricultural nation at the time of its declared independence from Great Britain, and some of its citizens settled to the west of the thirteen original colonies. Farther west stretched the huge territory known as Louisiana, extending from the Gulf of Mexico all the way up to Canada. With the Appalachians preventing land transport of their products to eastern markets, American farmers west of these mountains instead transported them down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, where the products were transferred to boats that hauled them across the Gulf of Mexico to the eastern American seaboard and abroad. The 1795 Pinckney Treaty with Spain provided Americans with the right to transport their goods on the Mississippi River and to store their goods at New Orleans after having paid a duty, a privilege called the right of deposit.

  Within a few years, Americans began to fear that the rights granted them by the Pinckney Treaty would be denied by Spanish authorities in Louisiana. Some of their anxieties would be realized due to momentous events occurring across the Atlantic.

  Leading a coup d’état in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte extirpated the French Directory and took control of France as its first consul. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the French minister of foreign affairs, hatched a plan for the country to establish an empire in North America, which Napoleon approved. In a secret treaty of October 1, 1801, Napoleon coerced the Spanish king, Charles IV, into ceding back to France for a consideration the territory which it had conveyed to Spain some forty years earlier, Louisiana. This transfer was upheld in another treaty signed almost six months later.

  The British got hold of the treaty and passed on the agreement to the American minister in England, who in turn forwarded it to Thomas Jefferson. The president responded by sending a letter dated April 18, 1802, to the American minister in Paris, Robert R. Livingston, in which he discussed the dilemma now presented to the United States and implied a threat that was probably more rhetoric than a realistic promise of action, since it involved America’s old nemesis:

  The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France works most sorely on the U.S. On this subject the Secretary of State has written to you fully. Yet I cannot forbear recurring to it personally, so deep is the impression it makes in my mind. It completely reverses all the political relations of the U.S. and will form a new epoch in our political course. Of all nations of any consideration France is the one which hitherto has offered the fewest points on which we could have any conflict of right, and the most points of a communion of interests. From these causes we have ever looked to her as our natural friend, as one with which we never could have an occasion of difference. Her growth therefore we viewed as our own, her misfortunes ours. There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce and contain more than half our inhabitants. France placing herself in that door assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific dispositions, her feeble state, would induce her to increase our facilities there, so that her possession of the place would hardly be felt by us, and it would not perhaps be very long before some circumstance might arise which might make the cession of it to us the price of something of more worth to her. Not so can it ever be in the hands of France. The impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us, and our character, which though quiet, and loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded, despising wealth in competition with insult or injury, enterprising and energetic as any nation on earth, these circumstances render it impossible that France and the U.S. can continue long friends when they meet in so irritable a position. They as well as we must be blind if they do not see this; and we must be very improvident if we do not begin to make arrangements on that hypothesis. The day that France takes posses
sion of N. Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her low water mark. It seals the union of two nations who in conjunction can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.

  Jefferson opted for diplomacy instead and requested Livingston to work out a settlement with the French. But Talleyrand avoided negotiating, and the situation became more desperate when in 1802 the Spanish governor of Louisiana suspended the vital right of deposit. With their livelihoods at stake, as well as the growth of the West, the western American settlers became incensed, and their concerns soon reached the nation’s capital. Through American agents at the French capital, Jefferson heard rumors that King Charles of Spain hadn’t yet ceded Louisiana to France by written treaty, although he was about to. With the situation at once crucial and uncertain, Jefferson dispatched to Paris James Monroe, George Washington’s minister to France who had recently retired as governor of Virginia, to join Livingston in negotiating.

  The "exchange copy," or French ratification of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, signed by Bonaparte and Talleyrand. A skippet and two tassels are attached to the binding by cords. It has regal blue velvet covers adorned with gold ornamentation; at the center of the front cover of the volume are the letters "P.F.," standing for Peuple Français."

  President Jefferson had wanted Livingston to request France not to take back Louisiana from Spain, but if it had already done this, he wanted to purchase New Orleans and the Floridas from France. But now, after a temporary halt to fighting between England and France, the Peace of Amiens had collapsed and war was on the verge of breaking out again. With Livingston threatening that America might ally itself with Great Britain, the Louisiana territory perhaps seemed to Napoleon to be a pivotal possession now. On the one hand, with French forces engaged in war in Europe, it could be lost in an Anglo-American attempt to wrest control of it. On the other hand, disposing of it for a good sum could enrich the royal treasury and help finance France’s wars in Europe.

  In 1803 Talleyrand shocked the American minister Robert Livingston by asking what the United States would offer for the entire Louisiana territory. James Monroe soon assisted him in negotiating a price for the 828,000-square-mile territory. The agreed-upon sum was $11.25 million.

  Napoleon’s decision to sell Louisiana troubled President Jefferson. A strict adherent to the U.S. Constitution, Jefferson knew the Constitution did not authorize the government to buy territory. Jefferson wanted to enact a constitutional amendment to provide authorization, but he was warned that protracting the arrangement might cause Napoleon to rescind his offer. So making a vague interpretation of the Constitution, Jefferson went forward in purchasing Louisiana by formal provision of a treaty.

  On April 30, 1803 (the eleventh year of the French Republic), French and American envoys signed the treaty for the cession of Louisiana at Paris. The treaty, which was originally drafted and agreed to in the French language, contained ten articles.

  The treaty confirmed France’s ownership of the colony of Louisiana as per the treaty of San Ildefonso of October 1, 1800, between the first French consul and the king of Spain, and ceded the territory to the United States. Other provisions of the treaty specified that residents of Louisiana be granted all the rights of U.S. citizens; that all French military posts in the ceded territory be remitted to commissaries of the U.S. president; that for a twelve-year period ships coming directly from France or Spain or their colonies into the port of New Orleans and other Louisiana ports would not be subject to higher duties than those paid by U.S. ships; and that the treaty be ratified within six months from the date of signing.

  The signatories to the treaty were, for the United States, Robert R. Livingston, Minister Plenipotentiary, and James Monroe, Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary; and for France, Barbé Marbois, Minister of the Public Treasury.

  On the same date as the treaty, two conventions were held providing for the payment by the United States to France of sums to cover the purchase of Louisiana. One convention provided for the U.S. government to pay France 60 million francs ($11,250,000), the other for the United States to assume the debt owed by France to United States citizens. The negotiating parties agreed on an amount of $3.75 million, bringing the total purchase price of the Louisiana territory to $15 million. However, interest payments would boost the final payment much higher. The cession treaty and the two conventions composed one transaction and were all signed at the same time.

  The Louisiana Purchase Treaty provided that the land ceded to the United States was, as Jefferson wrote on July 15, 1803, “according to the bounds to which France had a right,” but the boundaries of Louisiana were in fact not clear. Talleyrand, in response to Livingston’s question about the boundaries, replied that he did not know and could not offer any direction, but that “you have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you will make the most of it.” Spain continued to claim that it owned the Floridas, a dispute that wouldn’t be settled until the United States purchased the territory in 1819. In the meantime, Jefferson was concerned that the purchase of Louisiana might not have been constitutionally valid and expressed his desire for an amendment to the Constitution, but on October 21, 1803, the U.S. Senate voted to ratify the Louisiana Purchase.

  With the treaty signed, America more than doubled its size, and it could send scouts to explore its vast new terrain, have its citizens settle the untamed land, form new states, and strengthen its union. Napoleon, whose royal treasury was enriched by the purchase agreement, could now embark on a dream of conquest in which he would march his armies across Europe and attempt to seize nations with which to build a powerful French empire over which he would be the supreme ruler. Two very different goals, on two different sides of the world, yet each country a catalyst—via its desire to acquire or dispose of the Louisiana Territory—for the other’s goal.

  The Louisiana Purchase Treaty was not just a real estate transaction but a reflection of the world political situation at the dawn of the nineteenth century. Behind it were the goals and dreams of powerful men, and in its aftermath came a plethora of momentous events it hastened. From the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Napoleonic wars, this land paved the way for important actions to come over the following years. Between the lines of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, one may read the desires of eager statesmen and a despotic sovereign, and ultimately the fates of legions of people and the destinies of nations on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

  LOCATION: National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. The French-held Louisiana Purchase Treaty documents are located at the Archives Nationales, Paris, France.

  THE LEWIS AND CLARK JOURNALS

  DATE: 1804-1806.

  WHAT THEY ARE: The journals in which the co-leaders of the first expedition through the American Northwest recorded their experiences and observations, and the information they gathered about the inhabitants, animals, and plant life in the country they passed through.

  WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE: There are numerous journals, field books, and loose manuscript sheets that collectively comprise the so-called Lewis and Clark journals. The principal set of journals, a collection of eighteen, all housed at one institution (the American Philosophical Society), are basically of three bindings and sizes: thirteen volumes are bound in red morocco and have dimensions of 8¼ inches high by 5 inches wide; four are bound in marbled cardboard with leather spines and measure 6¾ inches by 4 inches; and one is bound in brown leather and is 8¼ inches by 5 inches. Another set (at the Missouri Historical Society) consists of four volumes bound in red morocco, each measuring 8¼ inches by 5 inches, and one volume bound in elk skin that is 6¾ inches by 5½ inches.

  At the dawn of the nineteenth century, a band of explorers led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark became the first U.S. citizens to cross the vast wilderness of the unknown and uncharted American Northwest and reach the Pacific Ocean. They traversed valleys and plains, ascend
ed mountains, floated over rapids, communicated with natives they encountered, and endured bitter winters, as they went along diligently recording their interactions and observations, which Americans eagerly awaited in order to see whether the trans-Mississippi West offered the potential for commerce and settlement. Out of this journey came the famous Lewis and Clark journals, but there is a mystery attendant on their writing. President Thomas Jefferson assumed the entries were written daily, as the expedition co-leaders wended their way to the Pacific coast and carried on their myriad surveys. Yet noted scholar Elliott Coues, who investigated many of the journals in the early 1890s, found the condition of these journals too pristine and the penmanship too good and too uniform for the entries to have been recorded regularly during an arduous transcontinental odyssey.

  Neither Lewis nor Clark revealed how their frontier documents were written, leaving later investigators to scour the extant original records of the expedition to determine whether the journals were written on a daily basis, or at some later date and place and were not actually on-the-scene accounts of events as had previously been believed. Do the journals offer posterity a distorted view of the original celebrated expedition through the northwestern United States? What is the solution to this mystery surrounding the writing of the immortal journals of Lewis and Clark?

  After years of deliberation and a few failed attempts to launch explorations of the American Northwest, Thomas Jefferson, as president of the United States in 1803, finally had the power to obtain funds for and dispatch such an expedition. On June 20 he informed his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, by letter (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.), that the objective of this mission was “to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by it’s course & communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce. …”