CHAPTER adopted ninety to twenty-five, and the necessary bills XVII. were speedily passed. Nothing was ever said about any 1803. amendment of the Constitution to sanction this proceedOct. 25. ing; and Jefferson's silence on that head must be con

sidered as amounting to a recantation of the doctrine he had so zealously maintained against Hamilton-a recantation in which the whole Republican party joined, and which they reiterated by many subsequent votes.

An act, originating in the Senate while the House were debating Randolph's resolution, authorized the president to take possession of the ceded territory, and to employ for that purpose the army of the United States, and such portions of the militia as might be found necessary. He was also authorized, till Congress should otherwise provide, to vest in such person as he might appoint all the authority appertaining, under the Spanish laws, to the officers of government, to be exercised under the president's direction, for maintaining the inhabitants in their freedom, property, and religion. A second act, originating in the House, authorized the creation of the stocks to be given to France, and appropriated toward the interest and principal an annual sum of $700,000, thus raising the annual appropriation for the public debt to eight millions. A third act appropriated toward paying the merchants' claims the two millions voted at the last session toward the purchase of New Orleans, the remainder to be raised by a temporary loan.

Simultaneously with this provision for the claimants against the French government, the commissioners on illegal captures, sitting under the British treaty-the temporary articles of which just now expired-closed their labors, having awarded to American merchants about six millions of dollars, all of which was duly paid by the British government. Deduct from this the amount at

XVII.

which the British debts were liquidated, also some small CHAPTER awards to British claimants for captures made by French privateers in American waters, and there still remained 1803. a balance of upward of three millions secured to the country by Jay's treaty; to which might be added other large sums recovered in the British courts by way of damages for illegal captures; also the restoration of many captured vessels and cargoes by the British Admiralty Court of Appeals. Add to these amounts the sum allowed by France as a deduction from the payment for Louisiana, and also the vessels and cargoes released under the convention of 1800, and we have an amount of from fifteen to twenty millions of dollars recovered, by the policy of the Federal party, from the clutch of the belligerents. What success the Republican party had in this same line we shall presently see.

The State of Maryland derived a special pecuniary advantage from Jay's treaty in the recovery of upward of $800,000 invested in Bank of England shares and other British stocks, and claimed to belong to the state as successor to the late province of Maryland. This fund originated in a deposit, long prior to the Revolution, in the hands of three London merchants as trustees, of the interest received on certain loans of colony paper money, appropriated toward an accumulating fund for the redemption of that paper. No such redemption was ever made; and the paper, being continued in circulation by successive acts, finally depreciated to nothing, and disappeared in the general wreck of paper money toward the conclusion of the Revolutionary war. The fund meanwhile continued to accumulate by the addition of the interest on the stocks in which it was invested. Shortly after the peace of 1783, a bill in behalf of the State of Maryland had been filed in the English Court of

CHAPTER Chancery against the trustees of the fund, one of whom

XVII. set up as an offset a claim for private property of his, for

1803. feited by the State of Maryland on the ground of absenteeism and adherence to the state's enemies. After fifteen years' litigation, the chancellor gave an informal opinion that the present suit, being brought in the name of an independent state, over which he had no jurisdiction, could not be sustained; that the stock had belonged to the province of Maryland, a corporation created by the crown; but that, as this corporation had been dissolved, the property escheated to the sovereign. Subsequently to this decision, claims were put forward by Harford, the late proprietary of Maryland, and others, who alleged themselves to have suffered on account of their loyalty by the confiscating acts, indemnification for which they claimed out of this fund. But as they had already received their share of the very generous sum voted by Parliament for the relief of the American Loyalists, the restoration of the whole amount to the State of Maryland was finally ordered-an instance of upright dealing rare enough as between man and man, and as between nations not easy to be paralleled.

Already, before the ratifications had been exchanged, doubts and discussions had arisen as to the extent of territory embraced in the treaty with France. Was it Lou. isiana as claimed and held by the French prior to 1763, or was it Louisiana as that name had been understood subsequently to the Spanish possession? The words of the treaty, by no means precise, allowed room for either interpretation, the cession being described as including "the colony or province of Louisiana, with the same extent as it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and

XVII.

other states." As France originally possessed it, Lou- CHAPTER isiana included both banks of the Mississippi, extending east to the River Perdido, by which it had been separ- 1803. ated from the Spanish province of Florida. As received by Spain, it was bounded on the east by the Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne and the Mississippi River, the more eastern portions having been previously yielded up to Great Britain, under whose authority they had been erected, along with the country about Pensacola, ceded at the same time by Spain, into the English province of West Florida. By the treaty of 1783, the Floridas had been restored to Spain; but the division into an eastern and western province, first made by the English, had been still kept up; and West Florida, at the date of the late treaty of cession, still embraced all that territory south of the thirtieth degree of north latitude, and east of the Mississippi and the two lakes, which in former times had appertained to Louisiana. To allow this portion of the original Louisiana to remain in the hands of the Spaniards would be attended with many embarrassments; indeed, the obtaining of this very tract, together with the island of Orleans-thus securing the entire command of the Lower Mississippi, with a land communication between New Orleans and Natchez, and opening to the settlers on the Tombigbee an access to the Gulf through the port of Mobile-had been the only purchase contemplated by the American government.

Livingston, who had negotiated the treaty, strenuously argued that the cession included all Louisiana as originally claimed and possessed by France, except such parts, if any, as Spain might, by subsequent treaties, have yielded to other nations; and he strongly urged upon Jefferson to act upon this interpretation by taking possession at once of the disputed territory. But such an inter

CHAPTER pretation was sure to be resisted by Spain. Indeed, any XVII. cession of any sort to the United States had been very 1803. disagreeable to that court, as bringing the Americans too near to the Mexican provinces; so much so that Yrujo, the Spanish minister at Washington, had entered a solemn protest against the entire treaty. To employ force would be to adopt the policy recommended by the Federalists at the late session of Congress; and besides leading to embroilment with Spain, it might also operate to prevent the peaceable yielding up of New Orleans, still in the possession of the Spaniards.

Jefferson was therefore content to accept the formal Dec. 20. delivery of the island and city of Orleans, made by Citizen Lausat, who had, as commissioner of France, received possession a few days before from the Spanish authorities, leaving the left bank of the lakes and of the river above in possession of the Spaniards. The commissioners on the part of the United States were General Wilkinson, since the disbandment of the additional regiments again the commander-in-chief of the army, and C. C. Claiborne, governor of the Mississippi Territory, appointed under the late act of Congress to the supreme and sole government of the new province. Wilkinson had with him several companies of Mississippi volunteers, also two or three companies of regulars, drawn from Fort Adams, just at the southwestern corner of the Mississip pi Territory. A considerable militia force of volunteers from Tennessee had marched near four hundred miles along the new road through the Indian country from Nashville as far as Natchez; but as there proved to be no occasion for their services at New Orleans, they were stopped there, wheeled about, and marched home. An early exercise of the absolute authority with which he was intrusted was the charter by Claiborne of the Bank of Louisiana, with a capital of $600,000.