Condition of the Western frontier in 1812 Condition of the Atlantic seaboard and the Southern frontier Governor Griswold, of Connecticut, refuses to furnish militia Officers selected for the army The affair in the Republican and the Federal papers Dearborn's plan for the invasion of Canada . Condition of Hull's troops Hull ordered to hurry to Detroit He enters Upper Canada Hull's sloth and Brock's energy Slow movements of Dearborn 547, 548 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. CHAPTER XIV. THE GOVERNMENT AND BOUNDARY OF LOUISIANA. WHILE the Federal writers were counting up the wagonloads of dollars Louisiana would cost, and laughing at the salt mountain the province was said to contain, the President was laboring hard to persuade his friends to make the purchase constitutional. He had come into power solemnly pledged to construe the Constitution strictly. Just what he meant by strict construction could not be doubted, for he had, in a document written by himself, laid down the principle clearly. Briefly stated, it was this: Congress has two kinds of powers and no others; powers expressly delegated, and powers absolutely necessary to put such as are expressly delegated into effect. To this principle Jefferson was still true. Change in place had brought to him no change of view. Power to buy foreign soil and incorporate foreign nations into the Union was not expressly given to Congress. Nor was it necessary in order to put any delegated power into effect. In signing the treaty he had, therefore, in his own words, "done an act beyond the Constitution.” * To make this act legal, the Constitution must be amended, and the needed amendment he now drew up and sent to his Cabinet.+ Beginning with the declaration that Louisiana was incorporated with the United States and made a part thereof, it confirmed to the Indians the right 198. * Jefferson to Breckenridge, August 12, 1803. Jefferson's Works, vol. iv, p. † Jefferson Manuscripts. VOL. III.-2 to live on the soil and to govern themselves, and cut the territory in two parts by a line along the parallel of thirty-two degrees north latitude. From all that splendid region north of this line and west of the Mississippi the white man was to be shut out till a new amendment gave him leave to enter. The region south of thirty-two degrees was to be provided with a territorial government. These were not the views of the Cabinet. Madison declaiming against the charter of the Bank, attacking the proclamation of neutrality in the Letters of Helvidius, and supporting the Virginia resolutions of 1798; Gallatin denouncing the treaty made by Jay, and crying out against the alien and sedition acts; these were the Republicans of the old school. But the old school no longer existed, or existed in Jefferson alone. Change of place had, in the Secretaries, wrought a change in opinions. Much of the strictness with which they had construed the Constitution when in Federal hands did not seem necessary now that the Constitution had passed to Republican hands, and the proposed amendment was received by all save the Secretary of the Navy with respectful silence. From his Cabinet, Jefferson now turned to his friends. But his friends gave no encouragement whatever to the plan, and he once more turned to his Secretaries. Before them in August he laid another amendment, in length shorter than the first, but in substance much the same.* One provision made Louisiana a part of the United States. Another gave to white men all the civil rights and laid on them all the obligations of citizens of the United States in like situations. A third set apart the territory west of the Mississippi and above the Arkansas for the Indians. The fourth and the strangest of all related to Florida. Not a foot of that country belonged to the United States. Every inch of it was still the property of Spain. Yet he proposed to announce to the world that it would some day be ours, and that when it was "rightfully obtained" it should, like Louisiana, be made a part of the United States. Again the Secretaries received the suggestion of *Jefferson to Gallatin, August 23, 1803. Gallatin's Works, vol. i, p. 144. Jefferson to Madison, August 25, 1803; to Lincoln, August 30, 1803. Jefferson's Works, vol. iv, pp. 501–505. 1803. WAS THE PURCHASE CONSTITUTIONAL? 3 an amendment in silence. But his friend, Wilson Cary Nicholas, spoke out, told him that the Constitution needed no amendment, assured him that the treaty-making power covered the case, and begged him to keep his doubts to himself. Let the Senate once know that he believed the treaty to be unconstitutional, and they would reject it. Let them reject it, and the people would accuse him of a wilful breach of the Constitution.* Advice such as this might be expected from a Federalist, but it ill became so stanch a Republican as Nicholas and was not quietly received by Jefferson. When, he wrote in reply, he considered that the bounds of the United States were fixed in 1783, when he considered that the Constitution expressly declared that it was made for the United States, he could not believe that the framers ever intended to give Congress power to take any foreign nation-as England, or Ireland, or Holland-into the Union by treaty. Such a construction. would put the treaty power above the Constitution and turn the paper on which that document was written into a blank sheet. This protest made, Jefferson, after his usual fashion, gave way, and when the eighth Congress, in obedience to his proclamation, began its session on October seventeenth, the message ment. did not contain one word on the need of an amend Each House was informed officially that Louisiana had been ceded to the United States, and that, when the treaty had been ratified, it would be necessary for Congress to provide for the immediate occupation and temporary government of the new country. On October nineteenth the treaty and conventions were ratified; the ratifications promptly exchanged for those of the First Consul, and, three days later, the whole matter was before Congress in order that stock might be issued to pay for Louisiana. In the House Mr. Griswold, as leader of the Federalists, moved a call on the President for letters and documents. He Wilson C. Nicholas to Jefferson, September 3, 1803. Jefferson Manuscripts. * Jefferson to W. C. Nicholas, September 7, 1803. Jefferson's Works, vol. iv, p. 505. |