Overview
James Monroe was appointed by President Thomas Jefferson to assist the U.S. Ambassador to France in negotiating for the purchase of New Orleans. Instead of purchasing the port for the $2 million authorized by Congress, Monroe and Ambassador Robert Livingston negotiated the purchase of France’s entire Louisiana territory for $15 million, virtually doubling the size of the United States.
While the Louisiana Purchase was only a relatively early chapter in Monroe’s storied political career, its consequences echoed throughout the Monroe presidency and American history. First, despite Jefferson’s and Monroe’s anti-federalist views, the purchase underscored the practical need for a strong federal government and reinforced a growing nationalism that substantially shaped the American experience. Second, the displacement of a potentially threatening European power from the Louisiana territory launched an assertive U.S. foreign policy culminating in the non-interference doctrine for which President Monroe is perhaps best remembered. Third, the treaty and implementing legislation served as a prototype in applying the shared powers of the executive and legislative branches. Finally, the limited reciprocity and most-favored-nation provisions of the treaty with France established a precedent, however pale, on which the U.S. later built its bilateral treaties of friendship, commerce and navigation, leading to multilateral agreements liberalizing international trade and promoting economic growth.
Background
As the 18th century transitioned into the 19th, Europe was again embroiled in war.1 The fledgling United States sought to secure its peace and prosperity by avoiding any entanglement in Old World rivalries.2 Realizing the importance of the port of New Orleans to all western settlers, the fledgling United States concluded an agreement with Spain in 1795 to obtain the right of deposit, and thus access to New Orleans (or an equivalent port on the Mississippi).3 The Spanish empire was in the process of disintegrating4, and the new nation felt relatively secure in this arrangement.
However, in 1802 Spain violated the agreement, closed the Mississippi, and ceded all Louisiana to Napoleonic France5, an empire with ambitions in the New World including military engagement in nearby Santo Domingo.6 These developments caused “extraordinary agitation ... in the public mind”7; some called for an American invasion of New Orleans.8 Concerned about pugilistic France’s power over a port that served as the natural outlet for all western agricultural production, the U.S. Congress provisionally appropriated $2 million for the purchase of New Orleans “to [obtain], on fair conditions, the sovereignty of New Orleans, and of other possessions in that quarter interesting to our quiet9,” thus sanctioning such acquisition by the President. To negotiate this arrangement, Jefferson appointed James Monroe -- his fellow Virginian, former pupil, former Minister to France and accomplished public servant10 -- as Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to assist Robert R. Livingston, U.S. Ambassador to France.
In haste11, the two American diplomats boldly concluded in Paris a treaty and two conventions for the purchase of not just New Orleans, but France’s entire Louisiana Territory, for $15 million (most of which was payable fifteen years after its purchase12). President Jefferson hailed the purchase for its security benefits as well as its “promise in due season [of] important aids to our treasury, an ample provision for our posterity, and a wide-spread field for the blessings of freedom and equal laws13.” Years later, President Monroe himself extolled the enlargement of the U.S. “by fair and honorable treaty, and with great advantage to the original States.”14 The Louisiana Purchase indeed looms large in American history for the following reasons.
Effective Commitment to Strong Federal Government and Stimulus to Nationalism
First and perhaps most importantly, the Louisiana Purchase effectively committed the United States to a strong central government. By doubling its size through a single treaty15, the United States undertook to provide for the welfare of the new territory and its inhabitants, which required road building, port maintenance, governance, and peacekeeping. These needs led inexorably to a broader construction of the federal government’s powers (for example, under the commerce clause) than Jefferson, Monroe and other Republicans had championed. They also stimulated further expansion, such as the acquisition of Floridian territory during both Madison’s and Monroe’s presidencies.16
Ironically, the purchase itself raised constitutional questions whether the nation could lawfully acquire new territory for incorporation into the U.S. The purchase itself required a broad construction of the new Constitution, not the narrower construction normally championed by Republicans. Jefferson himself had doubts, but “eventually acquiesced ... without the constitutional amendment that he believed was necessary to sanction it....”17
Assertiveness in Foreign Policy
The negotiation of the Louisiana Purchase was undertaken primarily as a security measure, to avoid any French exercise of power that would be injurious to American political, military or commercial interests. By removing any direct European presence from the original thirteen states by over a thousand miles to the west, the U.S. fundamentally asserted itself in North America.18
The next steps were for the United States to assert itself further both on19 and beyond the continent. Many former European (largely Spanish) colonies in South America had revolted, emulating the earlier U.S. and French revolutions. However, the U.S. became concerned that European powers might try to reassert authority there. To protect its commercial interests in trading with the independent South American republics, Great Britain suggested to the U.S. during Monroe’s presidency the desirability of a joint statement warning against European interference there. However, Monroe’s Secretary of State John Quincy Adams advised unilateral U.S. action instead: “ It would be more candid ... to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war.”20 Acting on this advice, Monroe issued the statement later known as the Monroe Doctrine: “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European Power.”21
Model Application of Articles I and II of the Constitution
Constitutionally, the Louisiana Purchase was a complex web of executive and legislative actions. Under his Article II foreign affairs powers, the President negotiated the agreements with France. The role of the Congress under Article I, however, was extensive, from preliminary authorization of $2 million for the purchase to subsequent enactment of legislation for the remaining funds and for other implementing and governance measures.22 With the Louisiana Purchase, the experimental checks-and-balances of power envisaged by the Founding Fathers and enshrined in the Constitution received their most elaborate application to date.
Precedent for Mutually Advantageous Commercial Agreements
While the Treaty with France was aimed primarily to acquire territory and thereby to promote the new nation’s security, it included narrow commercial provisions on which the nation expanded steadily over the next two centuries. For example, recognizing the reciprocal advantage to both countries of encouraging communication in the Louisiana territory, Article VII of the Treaty with France provides a limited form of national treatment for the ships of France and Spain for twelve years in the port of New Orleans and other Louisianan territory ports of entry (thereby protecting French and Spanish vessels from higher duties). Article VIII then provides most-favored-nation treatment for the ships of France in such ports “in future and forever….”23
National and most-favored-nation treatment became core provisions of bilateral treaties of friendship, commerce and navigation that the U.S. concluded with many countries through the Second World War24, which led to the post-WWII multilateral trade agreements, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, followed by the World Trade Organization.25
Conclusion
James Monroe’s service as U.S. co-negotiator for the Louisiana Purchase was merely an episode in a long, illustrious career of service to his country. Yet in retrospect, that episode appears a logical prelude to his later establishment of the Monroe Doctrine in U.S. foreign policy. Moreover, the vast consequences of the Louisiana Purchase are widely recognized, including its reinforcement of the need for strong national government and contribution to growing nationalism, vigorous assertion of the United States in foreign policy, execution of the intricate relationships between the executive and legislature under the new Constitution, and the negotiation of reciprocal trade agreements.
“All eyes, all hopes are fixed upon you,” wrote President Jefferson on January 13, 1802, when dispatching Monroe on his mission to France. “... [S]ome men are born for the public. Nature by fitting them for the service on a broad scale, has stamped them with the evidence of her destination and their duty.”26 Indeed, eyes and hopes remained on Monroe throughout his subsequent service as Minister to France and England, Secretary of State and War (simultaneously during the War of 1812), and two-term President of the United States.27 While credit for the sweeping benefits of the Louisiana Purchase is, of course, shared with President Jefferson and the U.S. Congress, Monroe and his co-negotiator Livingston played a crucial role, on which Monroe elaborated in his subsequent service to the United States.
1 “[T]he flames of war lighted up again in Europe, and nations with which we have the most friendly and useful relations engaged in mutual destruction.” Jefferson, Third Annual Message to Congress.
2 “[L]et us bow with gratitude to that kind Providence which ... guarded us from hastily entering into the sanguinary contest, and left us only to look on and to pity its ravages.” Id.
3 Treaty with France, introductory note. The right of deposit meant that cargo traveling down the Mississippi River (including from all rivers feeding into the Mississippi) could be warehoused in New Orleans, effectively ensuring access to and use of a key port.
4 Collier and Collier 24.
5 Id. See also Preliminary and Secret Treaty between the French Republic and His Catholic Majesty the King of Spain, Concerning the Aggrandizement of His Royal Highness the Infant Duke of Parma in Italy and the Retrocession of Louisiana.
6 Collier and Collier 25.
7 Jefferson, Third Annual Message to Congress. For a description of the importance of access to the Port of New Orleans, see Collier and Collier 22-23.
8 Collier and Collier 25.
9 Jefferson, Third Annual Message to Congress.
10 Monroe had served already as member of the Continental Congress (1783-86), United States Senator (1790-94), Minister to France (1794-96), and Governor of Virginia (1799-1802). “James Monroe,” <www.ipl.org/div/potus/jmonroe.html>.
11 The Avalon Project of Yale Law School documents errors in the preparation of these texts indicating the haste in which arrangements were concluded. <www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/france/louis1n.htm>
12 Jefferson, Third Annual Message to Congress. The purchase price amounted to less than three cents an acre. Collier and Collier 28.
13 Jefferson, Third Annual Message to Congress.
14 Monroe, First Inaugural Address.
15 The exact boundaries of the territory purchased were unknown. When asked about the western boundaries, Talleyrand had replied cryptically only that “the bargain was a noble one and that he supposed they would make the most of it.” Dangerfield 39. Neither the Treaty with France nor the preceding Treaty of San Ildefonso defines the boundaries precisely.
16 Dangerfield 37.
17 Mayer 215, Wiltse 20, Collier and Collier 29, Blumberg 109-11, Keats 337-38, 341-42, 356-48. See also Larson 56-57: “”The outstanding example of Jefferson’s violation of strict construction was the 1803 purchase of Louisiana. ... [Jefferson] drafted an amendment that indemnified his action ..... Good Republicans in Congress, however, doubted the need for Jefferson’s amendment and they showed no interest in his conversion to a neo-Federalist plan of compact frontier management. Instead, by majority rule, they hurried Louisiana through the elastic fabric of the existing Constitution, with Jefferson’s silent acquiescence.”
18 See generally Lafeber 380-82.
19 Cunningham, The Presidency of James Monroe 68, 105-07.
20 “James Monroe,” <www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jm5.html>
21 Id.
22 See generally in the Yale Law School Avalon Project: Stock Act, Governance Act, Claims Act, and Possession Act; Oct. 17, 1803 Message to Senate, Oct. 21, 1803 Message to Congress, and Jan. 16, 1804 Message to Congress; the Treaty with France as ratified by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. For the budget and financing implications, see Cunningham, The Process of Government under Jefferson 112-13; Blumberg 101-02.
23 Treaty with France.
24 For example, an early treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation was the U.S.-France Convention of Navigation and Commerce, signed at Washington June 24, 1822; entered into force Feb. 12, 1823; operative Oct. 1, 1822; 8 Stat. 278; TS 87; 7 Bevans 822.
25 Dep’t of State, Treaties in Force Jan. 1, 2000, 473-75 <www.state.gov/www/global/legal_affairs/tifindex.html>.
26 Dangerfield 21; see also <www.jamesmonroe.org/topic.html.>.
27 “James Monroe,” <www.ipl.org/div/potus/jmonroe.html>. See generally Cunningham, The Presidency of James Monroe.
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