Long before the port of New Orleans was closed, vague reports were propagated, both in the United States and Europe, that the colony of Louisiana \vas to be re-ceded to France, and as subsequently developed, such was the case, in October 1800, by the treaty of St. Ildefonso.
The clause of cession stands unique in treaty stipulation. It runs thus: "His Catholic Majesty engages to retrocede to the French Republic six months after the full and entire execution of the conditions and stipulations above recited, relative to His Royal Highness the duke of Parma, the co lony or province of Louisiana, with the same ex tent that it already has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be, after the treaties passed subsequently be tween Spain and other powers.".
It will probably forever remain a secret, whe ther France really intended a recolonization of Louisiana, or merely gained the legal power over that country with ulterior views of negotiation with the United States. Whatever was, however, the motive, the peace of Amiens, signed the 27th of March 1802, left France free to announce the secret article of that of St. Ildefonso; an ar ticle which totally changed the political relations of the United States, as regarded the whole western and south-western border of the republic. To ad mit France to succeed Spain along the Mississippi, was an alternative to which war itself would have been almost unanimously preferred not only by the whole western inhabitants of the United States, but generally over most sections of the con federacy.
From the commencement of their struggle with Great Britain, it was fortunate for the United States that the French government and people possessed no adequate means to revive their power in America. In 1802, with all its real, and its much greater apparent power, and with a very pre carious peace with Great Britain, it was beyond any exertion France could have made, to regain a solid footing in Louisiana. Grasping in reality, as was its administration at the epoch before us, it'combined too much of political talent, to so far mistake their relative position. But there were advantages to be gained by pretending to re-occupy New Orleans, and those advantages were gained.
The promulgation of the actual retrocession of Louisiana from Spain to France, though suspect ed, produced all the effects of violent surprise in the United States. The worst fears were realised.
"The administration," says Lyman, " watched with an anxious and vigilant eye the movements in Europe and in its own neighbourhood. The people, at large, were probably little aware of the danger with which they were menaced; and though any great portion of secresy appears impossible in the operations of this government, yet the whole busi ness was managed with remarkable caution and discretion. It is far, indeed, from being imaginary, that the executive looked forward at that period to the contingency of a war." The government of the United States seems, however, to have gradually unfolded its own views, and to have shown that the actual purchase of all Louisiana was not the original conception. In a despatch, dated the 11th day of May 1802, from the secretary of state to the United States minister in Spain, are the following remarkable passages: " Should the cession (from Spain to France) ac tually fail, and Spain retain New Orleans and the Floridas, I repeat to you the wish of the President, that every effort and address be employed to obtain the arrangement, by which the territory on the east side of the Mississippi, including New Or leans, may be ceded to the United States, and the Mississippi made a common boundary, with the common use of its navigation to them and Spain.
The inducements to be held out to Spain were in timated in your original instructions on this point. I am charged by the President now to add, that you may not only receive and transmit a proposi tion of guarantee of her territory beyond the Miss issippi, as a condition of her ceding to the United States the territory including New Orleans on this side, but in case it be necessary, may make the proposition yourself, in the forms required by our constitution."* The contingency of the recession to France fail ing, was so far from taking place, that, towards the end of 1802, it was fully ascertained that.active preparations were making in the ports of France to take possession. The situation of the United States became extremely embarrassing. By the ancient French province of Canada not becoming a part of the confederacy, Great Britain retained her footing to the northward, and now her inveterate rival was, to appearance, ready to recover her po sition on the south, and again expose the vast fron tiers of the United States to their contentions; and what was little less disastrous, to their in trigues. The real danger was, nevertheless, most astonishingly magnified. France was formidable in Europe, but still more formidable were the evi dent obstacles to an extension of her power into America. It demanded a small share of political knowledge to have seen the flames of war through the parchment on which was written the treaty of Amiens. That treaty " consented to by France," says an elegant and sagacious writer, " to satisfy the public wish, had been on the side of England a concession to much more imperious necessity, and the result of a political situation much more disad vantageous than that of France. Nevertheless, the opposition party from whom this peace had been conquered, never ceased to make it the text for most virulent declamation, and to represent it as a treaty not less injurious to the honor than to the interests of Great Britain. Lord Grenville, who was at that epoch at the head of the opposition in the British parliament, at the opening of the ses sion of 1802, declared, that this peace had been more fatal to England, than could have been the most ruinous war. He attacked the French go vernment with peculiar severity, and depicted it as pressing with all the weight of an absolute tyranny' on humiliated Europe; and followed this charge with a detailed enumeration cf all the breaches of public faith; encroachments on the rights of neutrals; of all the usurpations of terri tory, which he could right or wrong impute to the French republic, and terminated with the manifest wish of an immediate rupture." That rupture was inevitable from still deeper reasons given by our author; reasons which were conclusive as to Great Britain permitting France to regain Louisiana in full sovereignty and possession.