History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson/First/II:3

by Henry Adams

Chapter 3: Claim to West Florida

When Marbois took the treaty to the First Consul, Bonaparte listened to its provisions with lively interest; and on hearing that twenty millions were to be employed in paying claims,—a use of money which he much disliked,—he broke out: "Who authorized you to dispose of the money of the State? I want to have these twenty millions paid into the Treasury. The claimants' rights cannot come before our own."^[1] His own projet had required the Americans to assume these claims,—which was, in fact, the better plan. Marbois's alteration turned the claims into a French job. Perhaps Bonaparte was not averse to this; for when Marbois reminded him that he had himself fixed the price at fifty millions, whereas the treaty gave him sixty, and settled the claims besides,—"It is true," he said; "the negotiation leaves me nothing to wish. Sixty millions for an occupation that will not perhaps last a day! I want France to have the good of this unexpected capital, and to employ it in works of use to her marine." On the spot he dictated a decree for the construction of five canals. This excellent use of the money seemed inconsistent with Lucien's remark that it was wanted for war,—but the canals were never built or begun; and the sixty millions were spent, to the last centime, in preparations for an impracticable descent on England.

Yet money was not the inducement which caused Bonaparte to sell Louisiana to the United States. The Prince of Peace would at any time have given more money, and would perhaps have been willing, as he certainly was able, to pay it from his private means rather than allow the United States to own Louisiana. In other respects, the sale needed explanation, since it contradicted the First Consul's political theories and prejudices. He had but two rooted hatreds. The deeper and fiercer of these was directed against the republic,—the organized democracy, and what he called ideology, which Americans knew in practice as Jeffersonian theories; the second and steadier was his hatred of England as the chief barrier to his military omnipotence. The cession of Louisiana to the United States contradicted both these passions, making the ideologists supreme in the New World, and necessarily tending in the end to strengthen England in the Old. Bonaparte had been taught by Talleyrand that America and England, whatever might be their mutual jealousies, hatreds, or wars, were socially and economically one and indivisible. Barely ten years after the Revolutionary War had closed, and at a time when the wounds it made were still raw, Talleyrand remarked: "In every part of America through which I have travelled, I have not found a single Englishman who did not feel himself to be an American; not a single Frenchman who did not find himself a stranger." Bonaparte knew that England held the monopoly of American trade, and that America held the monopoly of democratic principles; yet he did an act which was certain to extend British trade and fortify democratic principles.

This contradiction was due to no change in Bonaparte's opinions; these remained what they were. At the moment when talking to Marbois about "those republicans whose friendship I seek," he was calculating on the chance that his gift would one day prove their ruin. "Perhaps it will also be objected to me," he said,^[2] "that the Americans may in two or three centuries be found too powerful for Europe; but my foresight does not embrace such remote fears. Besides, we may hereafter expect rivalries among the members of the Union. The confederations that are called perpetual last only till one of the contracting parties finds it to its interest to break them. . . . It is to prevent the danger to which the colossal power of England exposes us that I would provide a remedy." The colossal power of England depended on her navy, her colonies, and her manufactures. Bonaparte proposed to overthrow it by shattering beyond repair the colonial system of France and Spain; and even this step was reasonable compared with what followed. He expected to check the power of England by giving Louisiana to the United States,—a measure which opened a new world to English commerce and manufactures, and riveted England's grasp on the whole American continent, inviting her to do what she afterward did,—join hands with the United States in revolutionizing Mexico and South America in her own interests. As though to render these results certain, after extending this invitation to English commerce and American democracy, Bonaparte next invited a war with England, which was certain to drive from the ocean every ship belonging to France or Spain,—a war which left even the United States at England's mercy.

Every detail that could explain Bonaparte's motives becomes interesting in a matter so important to American history. Certain points were clear. Talleyrand's colonial and peace policy failed. Resting on the maintenance of order in Europe and the extension of French power in rivalry with the United States and England in America, it was a statesmanlike and honorable scheme, which claimed for the Latin races what Louis XIV. tried to gain for them; but it had the disadvantage of rousing hostility in the United States, and of throwing them into the arms of England. For this result Talleyrand was prepared. He knew that he could keep peace with England, and that the United States alone could not prevent him from carrying out his policy. Indeed, Madison in his conversation with Pichon invited such action, and Jefferson had no means of resisting it; but from the moment when St. Domingo prevented the success of the scheme, and Bonaparte gained an excuse for following his own military instincts, the hostility of the United States became troublesome. President Jefferson had chiefly reckoned on this possibility as his hope of getting Louisiana; and slight as the chance seemed, he was right.

This was, in effect, the explanation which Talleyrand officially wrote to his colleague Decrès, communicating a copy of the treaty, and requesting him to take the necessary measures for executing it.^[3]

"The wish to spare the North American continent the war with which it was threatened, to dispose of different points in dispute between France and the United States of America, and to remove all the new causes of misunderstanding which competition and neighborhood might have produced between them; the position of the French colonies; their want of men, cultivation, and assistance; in fine, the empire of circumstances, foresight of the future, and the intention to compensate by an advantageous arrangement for the inevitable loss of a country which war was going to put at the mercy of another nation,—all these motives have determined the Government to pass to the United States the rights it had acquired from Spain over the sovereignty and property of Louisiana."

Talleyrand's words were always happily chosen, whether to reveal or to conceal his thoughts. This display of reasons for an act which he probably preferred to condemn, might explain some of the First Consul's motives in ceding Louisiana to the United States; but it only confused another more perplexing question. Louisiana did not belong to France, but to Spain. The retrocession had never been completed; the territory was still possessed, garrisoned, and administered by Don Carlos IV.; until actual delivery was made, Spain might yet require that the conditions of retrocession should be rigorously performed. Her right in the present instance was complete, because she held as one of the conditions precedent to the retrocession a solemn pledge from the First Consul never to alienate Louisiana. The sale of Louisiana to the United States was trebly invalid: if it were French property, Bonaparte could not constitutionally alienate it without the consent of the Chambers; if it were Spanish property, he could not alienate it at all; if Spain had a right of reclamation, his sale was worthless. In spite of all these objections the alienation took place; and the motives which led the First Consul to conciliate America by violating the Constitution of France were perhaps as simple as he represented them to be; but no one explained what motives led Bonaparte to break his word of honor and betray the monarchy of Spain.

Bonaparte's evident inclination toward a new war with England greatly distressed King Charles IV. Treaty stipulations bound Spain either to take part with France in the war, or to pay a heavy annual subsidy; and Spain was so weak that either alternative seemed fatal. The Prince of Peace would have liked to join England or Austria in a coalition against Bonaparte; but he knew that to this last desperate measure King Charles would never assent until Bonaparte's hand was actually on his crown; for no one could reasonably doubt that within a year after Spain should declare an unsuccessful war on France, the whole picturesque Spanish court—not only Don Carlos IV. himself and Queen Luisa, but also the Prince of Peace, Don Pedro Cevallos, the Infant Don Ferdinand, and the train of courtiers who thronged La Granja and the Escorial—would be wandering in exile or wearing out their lives in captivity. To increase the complication, the young King of Etruria died May 27, 1803, leaving an infant seated upon the frail throne which was sure soon to disappear at the bidding of some military order countersigned by Berthier.

In the midst of such anxieties, Godoy heard a public rumor that Bonaparte had sold Louisiana to the United States; and he felt it as the death-knell of the Spanish empire. Between the energy of the American democracy and the violence of Napoleon whom no oath bound, Spain could hope for no escape. From New Orleans to Vera Cruz was but a step; from Bayonne to Cadiz a winter campaign of some five or six hundred miles. Yet Godoy would probably have risked everything, and would have thrown Spain into England’s hands, had he been able to control the King and Queen, over whom Bonaparte exercised the influence of a master. On learning the sale of Louisiana, the Spanish government used language almost equivalent to a rupture with France. The Spanish minister at Paris was ordered to remonstrate in the strongest terms against the step which the First Consul had taken behind the back of the King his ally.^[4]

"This alienation," wrote the Chevalier d'Azara to Talleyrand, "not only deranges from top to bottom the whole colonial system of Spain, and even of Europe, but is directly opposed to the compacts and formal stipulations agreed upon between France and Spain, and to the terms of the cession in the treaty of Tuscany; and the King my master brought himself to give up the colony only on condition that it should at no time, under no pretext, and in no manner, be alienated or ceded to any other Power."

Then, after reciting the words of Gouvion St.-Cyr's pledge, the note continued:—

"It is impossible to conceive more frankness or loyalty than the King has put into his conduct toward France throughout this affair. His Majesty had therefore the right to expect as much on the part of his ally, but unhappily finds himself deceived in his hopes by the sale of the said colony. Yet trusting always in the straightforwardness and justice of the First Consul, he has ordered me to make this representation, and to protest against the alienation, hoping that it will be revoked, as manifestly contrary to the treaties and to the most solemn anterior promises."

Not stopping there, the note also insisted that Tuscany should be evacuated by the French troops, who were not needed, and had become an intolerable burden, so that the country was reduced to the utmost misery. Next, King Charles demanded that Parma and Piacenza should be surrendered to the King of Etruria, to whom they belonged as the heir of the late Duke of Parma. Finally, the note closed with a complaint even more grave in substance than any of the rest:—

"The King my master could have wished also a little more friendly frankness in communicating the negotiations with England, and especially in regard to the dispositions of the Northern courts, guarantors of the treaty of Amiens; but as this affair belongs to negotiations of another kind, the undersigned abstains for the moment from entering into them, reserving the right to do so on a better occasion."

Beurnonville, the French minister at Madrid, tried to soothe or silence the complaints of Cevallos; but found himself only silenced in return. The views of the Spanish secretary were energetic, precise, and not to be met by argument.^[5] "I have not been able to bring M. Cevallos to any moderate, conciliatory, or even calm expression," wrote Beurnonville to Talleyrand; "he has persistently shown himself inaccessible to all persuasion." The Prince of Peace was no more manageable than Cevallos: "While substituting a soft and pliant tone for the sharpest expressions, and presenting under the appearance of regret what had been advanced to me with the bitterness of reproach, the difference between the Prince's conduct and that of M. Cevallos is one only in words." Both of them said, what was quite true, that the United States would not have objected to the continued possession of Louisiana by Spain, and that France had greatly exaggerated the dispute about the entrepôt.

"The whole matter reduces itself to a blunder (gaucherie) of the Intendant," said Cevallos; "it has been finally explained to Mr. Jefferson, and friendship is restored. On both sides there has been irritation, but not a shadow of aggression; and from the moment of coming to an understanding, both parties see that they are at bottom of one mind, and mutually very well disposed toward each other. Moreover, it is quite gratuitous to assume that Louisiana is so easy to take in the event of a war, either by the Americans or by the English. The first have only militia,—very considerable, it is true, but few troops of the line; while Louisiana, at least for the moment, has ten thousand militia-men, and a body of thee thousand five hundred regular troops. As for the English, they cannot seriously have views on a province which is impregnable to them; and all things considered, it would be no great calamity if they should take it. The United States, having a much firmer hold on the American continent, should they take a new enlargement, would end by becoming formidable, and would one day disturb the Spanish possessions. As for the debts due to Americans, Spain has still more claim to an arrangement of that kind; and in any case the King, as Bonaparte must know, would have gladly discharged all the debts contracted by France, and perhaps even a large instalment of the American claim, in order to recover an old domain of the crown. Finally, the intention which led the King to give his consent to the exchange of Louisiana was completely deceived. This intention had been to interpose a strong dyke between the Spanish colonies and the American possessions; now, on the contrary, the doors of Mexico are to stay open to them."

To these allegations, which Beurnonville called "insincere, weak, and ill-timed," Cevallos added a piece of evidence which, strangely enough, was altogether new to the French minister, and reduced him to confusion: it was Gouvion St.-Cyr’s letter, pledging the First Consul never to alienate Louisiana.

When Beurnonville’s dispatch narrating these interviews reached Paris, it stung Bonaparte to the quick, and called from him one of the angry avowals with which he sometimes revealed a part of the motives that influenced his strange mind. Talleyrand wrote back to Beurnonville, June 22, a letter which bore the mark of the First Consul’s hand.

"In one of my last letter," he began,^[6] "I made known to you the motives which determined the Government to give up Louisiana to the United States. You will not conceal from the Court of Madrid that one of the causes which had most influence on this determination was discontent at learning that Spain, after having promised to sustain the measures taken by the Intendant of New Orleans, had nevertheless formally revoked them. These measures would have tended to free the capital of Louisiana from subjection to a right of deposit which was becoming a source of bickerings between the Louisianians and Americans. We should have afterward assigned to the United States, in conformity to their treaty with Spain, another place of deposit, less troublesome to the colony and less injurious to its commerce; but Spain put to flight all these hopes by confirming the privileges of the Americans at New Orleans,—thus granting them definitively local advantages which had been at first only temporary. The French government, which had reason to count on the contrary assurance given in this regard by that of Spain, had a right to feel surprise at this determination; and seeing no way of reconciling it with the commercial advantages of the colony and with a long peace between the colony and its neighbors, took the only course which actual circumstances and wise prevision could suggest."

These assertions contained no more truth than those which Cevallos had answered. Spain had not promised to sustain the Intendant, nor had she revoked the Intendant's measures after, but before the imagined promise; she had not confirmed the American privileges at New Orleans, but had expressly reserved them for future treatment. On the other hand, the restoration of the deposit was not only reconcilable with peace between Louisiana and the United States, but the whole world knew that the risk of war rose from the threat of disturbing the right of deposit. The idea that the colony had become less valuable on this account was new. France had begged for the colony with its American privileges, and meaning to risk the chances of American hostility; but if these privileges were the cause of selling the colony to the Americans, and if, as Talleyrand implied, France could and would have held Louisiana if the right of deposit at New Orleans had been abolished and the Americans restricted to some other spot on the river-bank, fear of England was not, as had been previously alleged, the cause of the sale. Finally, if the act of Spain made the colony worthless, why was Spain deprived of the chance to buy it back?

The answer was evident. The reason why Bonaparte did not keep his word to Don Carlos IV. was that he looked on Spain as his own property, and on himself as representing her sovereignty. The reasons for which he refused to Spain the chance to redeem the colony, were probably far more complicated. The only obvious explanation, assuming that he still remembered his pledge, was a wish to punish Spain.

After all these questions were asked, one problem still remained. Bonaparte had reasons for not returning the colony to Spain; he had reasons, too, for giving it to the United States,—but why did he alienate the territory from France? Fear of England was not the true cause. He had not to learn how to reconquer Louisiana on the Danube and the Po. At one time or another Great Britain had captured nearly all the French colonies in the New World, and had been forced not only to disgorge conquests, but to abandon possessions; until of the three great European Powers in America, England was weakest. Any attempt to regain old ascendency by conquering Louisiana would have thrown the United States into the hands of France; and had Bonaparte anticipated such an act, he should have helped it. That Great Britain should waste strength in conquering Louisiana in order to give it to the United States, was an idea not to be gravely argued. Jefferson might, indeed, be driven into an English alliance in order to take Louisiana by force from France or Spain; but this danger was slight in itself, and might have been removed by the simple measure of selling only the island of New Orleans, and by retaining the west bank, which Jefferson was ready to guarantee. This was the American plan; and the President offered for New Orleans alone about half the price he paid for all Louisiana.^[7] Still, Bonaparte forced the west bank on Livingston. Every diplomatic object would have been gained by accepting Jefferson's projet of a treaty, and signing it without the change of a word. Spain would have been still in some degree protected; England would have been tempted to commit the mistake of conquering the retained territory, and thereby the United States would have been held in check; the United States would have gained all the stimulus their ambition could require for many years to come; and what was more important to Bonaparte, France could not justly say that he had illegally and ignobly sold national territory except for a sufficient and national object.

The real reasons which induced Bonaparte to alienate the territory from France remained hidden in the mysterious processes of his mind. Perhaps he could not himself have given the true explanation of his act. Anger with Spain and Godoy had a share in it, as he avowed through Talleyrand's letter of June 22; disgust for the sacrifices he had made, and impatience to begin his new campaigns on the Rhine,—possibly a wish to show Talleyrand that his policy could never be revived, and that he had no choice but to follow into Germany,—had still more to do with the act. Yet it is also reasonable to believe that the depths of his nature concealed a with to hide forever the monument of a defeat. As he would have liked to blot Corsica, Egypt, and St. Domingo from the map, and wipe from human memory the record of his failures, he may have taken pleasure in flinging Louisiana far off, and burying it forever from the sight of France in the bosom of the only government which could absorb and conceal it.

For reasons of his own, which belonged rather to military and European than to American history, Bonaparte preferred to deal with Germany before crossing the Pyrenees; and he knew that meanwhile Spain could not escape. Godoy on his side could neither drag King Charles into a war with France, nor could he provide the means of carrying on such a war with success. Where strong nations like Austria, Russia, and Prussia were forced to crouch before Bonaparte, and even England would have been glad to accept tolerable terms, Spain could not challenge attack. The violent anger that followed the sale of Louisiana and the rupture of the peace of Amiens soon subsided. Bonaparte, aware that he had outraged the rights of Spain, became moderate. Anxious to prevent her from committing any act of desperation, he did not require her to take part in the war, but even allowed her stipulated subsidies to run in arrears; and although he might not perhaps regret his sale of Louisiana to the United States, he felt that he had gone too far in shaking the colonial system. At the moment when Cevallos made his bitterest complaints, Bonaparte was least disposed to resent them by war. Both parites knew that so far as Louisiana was concerned, the act was done and could not be undone; that France was bound to carry out her pledge, or the United States would take possession of Louisiana without her aid. Bonaparte was willing to go far in the way of conciliation, if Spain would consent to withdraw her protest.

Of this the American negotiators knew little. Through such complications, of which Bonaparte alone understood the secret, the Americans moved more or less blindly, not knowing enemies from friends. The only public man who seemed ever to understand Napoleon's methods was Pozzo di Borgo, whose ways of thought belonged to the island society in which both had grown to manhood; and Monroe was not skilled in the diplomacy of Pozzo, or even of Godoy. Throughout life, Monroe was greatly under the influence of other men. He came to Paris almost a stranger to its new society, for his only relations of friendship had been with the republicans, most of whom Bonaparte had sent to Cayenne. He found Livingston master of the situation, and wisely interfered in no way with what Livingston did. The treaty was no sooner signed than he showed his readiness to follow Livingston further, without regard to embarrassments which might result.

When Livingston set his name to the treaty of cession, May 2, 1803, he was aware of the immense importance of the act. He rose and shook hands with Monroe and Marbois. "We have lived long," said he; "but this is the noblest work of our lives." This was said by the man who in the Continental Congress had been a member of the committee appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence; and it was said to Monroe, who had been assured only three months before, by President Jefferson of the grandeur of his destinies in words he could hardly have forgotten:^[8] "Some men are born for the public. Nature, by fitting them for the service of the human race on a broad scale, has stamped them with the evidences of her destination and their duty." Monroe was born for the public, and knew what destiny lay before him; while in Livingston's mind New York had thenceforward a candidate for the Presidency whose claims were better than Monroe's. In the cup of triumph of which these two men then drank deep, was yet one drop of acid. They had been sent to buy the Floridas and New Orleans. They had bought New Orleans; but instead of Florida, so much wanted by the Southern people, they had paid ten or twelve million dollars for the west bank of the Mississippi. The negotiators were annoyed to think that having been sent to buy the east bank of the Mississippi, they had bought the west bank instead; that the Floridas were not a part of their purchase. Livingston especially felt the disappointment, and looked about him for some way to retrieve it.

Hardly was the treaty signed, when Livingston found what he sought. He discovered that France had actually bought West Florida without knowing it, and had sold it to the United States without being paid for it. This theory, which seemed at first sight preposterous, became a fixed idea in Livingston's mind. He knew that West Florida had not been included by Spain in the retrocession, but that on the contrary Charles IV. had repeatedly, obstinately, and almost publicly rejected Bonaparte's tempting bids for that province. Livingston's own argument for the cession of Louisiana had chiefly rested on this knowledge, and on the theory that without Mobile New Orleans was worthless. He recounted this to Madison in the same letter which announced Talleyrand's offer to sell:^[9]—

"I have used every exertion with the Spanish Ambassador and Lord Whitworth to prevent the transfer of the Floridas, . . . and unless they [the French] get Florida, I have convinced them that Louisiana is worth little."

In the preceding year one of the French ministers had applied to Livingston "to know what we understand in America by Louisiana;" and Livingston's answer was on record in the State Department at Washington:^[10] "Since the possession of the Floridas by Britain and the treaty of 1762, I think there can be no doubt as to the precise meaning of the terms." He himself drafted an article which he tried to insert in Marbois's projet, pledging the First Consul to interpose his good offices with the King of Spain to obtain the country east of the Mississippi. As late as May 12, Livingston wrote to Madison:^[11] "I am satisfied that . . . if they [the French] could have concluded with Spain, we should also have had West Florida." In his next letter, only a week afterward, he insisted that West Florida was his:^[12]—

"Now, sir, the sum of this business is to recommend to you in the strongest terms, after having obtained the possession that the French commissary will give you, to insist upon this as a part of your right, and to take possession at all events to the River Perdido. I pledge myself that your right is good."

The reasoning on which he rested this change of opinion was in substance the following: France had, in early days, owned nearly all the North American continent, and her province of Louisiana had then included Ohio and the watercourses between the Lakes and the Gulf, as well as West Florida, or a part of it. This possession lasted until the treaty of peace, Nov. 3, 1762, when France ceded to England not only Canada, but also Florida and all other possessions east of the Mississippi, except the Island of New Orleans. Then West Florida by treaty first received its modern boundary at the Iberville. On the same day France further ceded to Spain the Island of New Orleans and all Louisiana west of the Mississippi. Not a foot of the vast French possessions on the continent of North America remained in the hands of the King of France; they were divided between England and Spain.

The retrocession of 1800 was made on the understanding that it referred to this cession of 1762. The province of Louisiana which had been ceded was retro-ceded, with its treaty-boundary at the Iberville. Livingston knew that the understanding between France and Spain was complete; yet on examination he found that it had not been expressed in words so clearly but that these words could be made to bear a different meaning. Louisiana was retroceded, he perceived, "with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be according to the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other States." When France possessed Louisiana it included Ohio and West Florida: no one could deny that West Florida was in the hands of Spain; therefore Bonaparte, in the absence of negative proof, might have claimed West Florida, if he had been acute enough to know his own rights, or willing to offend Spain,—and as all Bonaparte’s rights were vested in the United States, President Jefferson was at liberty to avail himself of them.

The ingenuity of Livingston's idea was not to be disputed; and as a ground for a war of conquest it was as good as some of the claims which Bonaparte made the world respect. As a diplomatic weapon, backed as Napoleon would have backed it by a hundred thousand soldiers, it was as effective an instrument as though it had every attribute of morality and good faith; and all it wanted, as against Spain, was the approval of Bonaparte. Livingston hoped that after the proof of friendship which Bonaparte had already given in selling Louisiana to the United States, he might without insuperable difficulty be induced to grant this favor. Both Marbois and Talleyrand, under the First Consul's express orders, led him on. Marbois did not deny that Mobile might lie in Louisiana, and Talleyrand positively denied knowledge that Laussat’s instructions contained a definition of boundaries. Bonaparte stood behind both these agents, telling them that if an obscurity did not exist about the boundary they should make one. Talleyrand went so far as to encourage the pretensions which Livingston hinted: "You have made a noble bargain for yourselves," said he, "and I suppose you will make the most of it." This was said at the time when Bonaparte was still intent on punishing Spain.

Livingston found no difficulty in convincing Monroe that they had bought Florida as well as Louisiana.^[13]

"We consider ourselves so strongly founded in this conclusion, that we are of opinion the United States should act on it in all the measures relative to Louisiana in the same manner as if West Florida was comprised within the Island of New Orleans, or lay to the west of the River Iberville."

Livingston expected that "a little force,"^[14] as he expressed himself, might be necessary.

"After the explanations that have been given here, you need apprehend nothing from a decisive measure; your minister here and at Madrid can support your claim, and the time is peculiarly favorable to enable you to do it without the smallest risk at home. . . . The moment is so favorable for taking possession of that country that I hope it has not been neglected, even though a little force should be necessary to effect it. Your minister must find the means to justify it." A little violence added to a little diplomacy would answer the purpose. To use the words which "Aristides" Van Ness was soon to utter with striking effect, the United States ministers to France "practiced with unlimited success upon the Livingston maxim,—

                                                        'Rem facias, rem
          Si possis recte; si non, quocunque modo, rem.'"

1. Marbois's Louisiana, pp. 311, 312.
2. Marbois's Louisiana, p. 276.
3. Talleyrand to Decrès, 4 Prairial, An xi. (May 24, 1803); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
4. D'Azara to Talleyrand, June 6, 1803; Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
5. Beurnon to Talleyrand, 24 Prairial, An xi. (June 13, 1803); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
6. Talleyrand to Beurnonville, 3 Messidor, An xi. (June 22, 1803); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
7. Madison to Livingston and Monroe, March 2, 1803; State Papers, ii. 543.
8. Jefferson to Monroe, Jan. 13, 1803; Works, iv. 455.
9. Livingston to Madison, April 11, 1803; State Papers, ii. 552.
10. Ibid., July 30, 1802; State Papers, ii. 519.
11. Ibid., May 12, 1803; State Papers, ii. 557.
12. Ibid., May 20, 1803; State Papers, ii. 561.
13. Livingston and Monroe to Madison, June 7, 1803; State Papers, ii. 563-565.
14. Livingston to Madison, May 20, 1803; Nov. 15, 1803; State Papers, ii. 561, 573.