idable as Great Britain, because of her inferiority as a
naval power. Even if unsupported by any outside alliance the Americans
would doubtless in the end have driven a French army from New Orleans,
though very probably at the cost of one or two preliminary rebuffs. The
West was stanch in support of Jefferson and Madison; but in time of
stress it was sure to develop leaders of more congenial temper, exactly
as it actually did develop Andrew Jackson a few years later. At this
very time the French failed to conquer the negro republic which
Toussaint Louverture had founded in Hayti. What they thus failed to
accomplish in one island, against insurgent negroes, it was folly to
think they could accomplish on the American continent, against the power
of the American people. This struggle with the revolutionary slaves in
Hayti hindered Napoleon from immediately throwing an army into
Louisiana; but it did more, for it helped to teach him the folly of
trying to carry out such a plan at all.

Report of Pontaiba.

A very able and faithful French agent in the meanwhile sent a report to
Napoleon plainly pointing out the impossibility of permanently holding
Louisiana against the Americans. He showed that on the Western waters
alone it would be possible to gather armies amounting in the aggregate
to twenty or thirty thousand men, all of them inflamed with the eager
desire to take New Orleans. [Footnote: Pontalba's Memoir. He hoped that
Louisiana might, in certain contingencies, be preserved for the French,
but he insisted that it could only be by keeping peace with the American
settlers, and by bringing about an immense increase of population in the
province.] The Mississippi ran so as to facilitate the movement of any
expedition against New Orleans, while it offered formidable obstacles to
counter-expeditions from New Orleans against the American commonwealths
lying farther up stream. An expeditionary force sent from the mouth of
the Mississippi, whether to assail the towns and settlements along the
Ohio, or to defend the Creole villages near the Missouri, could at the
utmost hope for only transient success, while its ultimate failure was
certain. On the other hand, a backwoods army could move down stream with
comparative ease; and even though such an expedition were defeated, it
was certain that the attempt would be repeated again and again, until by
degrees the mob of hardy riflemen changed into a veteran army, and
brought fort