. But he had been
in office only a few months when the behaviour of the Spanish officials
at New Orleans gave cause for alarm; for they suddenly terminated the
right of deposit, granted in 1795. It was quickly rumoured that the
reason was to be found in the fact that France, now under the First
Consul, Napoleon, {185} had regained Louisiana. It was, in fact, true.
Bonaparte overthrew the Directory in 1799 and established himself,
under the thin disguise of "First Consul," as practical military despot
in France. He had immediately embraced the idea of establishing a
western colonial empire, which should be based on San Domingo, now
controlled by insurgent negroes, and which should include Louisiana.
By a treaty of October 1, 1800, he compelled Spain to retrocede the
former French province in return for a promise to establish a kingdom
of "Etruria" for a Spanish prince. During 1802 large armaments sailed
to San Domingo and began the process of reconquest. It needed only the
completion of that task for Napoleon to be ready to take over
Louisiana, and thereby to gain absolute control over the one outlet
from the interior territories of the United States.

Jefferson at once recognized the extreme gravity of the situation.
During the years after the English, Spanish, and Indian treaties,
emigrants had steadily worked their way into the inner river valleys.
Western New York and Pennsylvania were rapidly filling, Ohio was
settled up to the Indian treaty line, Kentucky and Tennessee were
doubling in population, and fringes of pioneer communities stretched
along the Ohio and {186} Mississippi rivers. In 1796 Tennessee was
admitted as a State, and Ohio was now, in 1801, on the point of asking
admission. For France to shut the only possible outlet for these
communities would be a sentence of economic death; and Jefferson was so
deeply moved as to write to Livingston, his Minister to France, that if
the rumour of the cession were true, "We must marry ourselves to the
British fleet and nation." The United States must fight rather than
submit. He sent Monroe to France, instructed to buy an outlet, but the
latter only arrived in time to join with Livingston in signing a treaty
for the purchase of the whole of Louisiana.

This startling event was the result of the failure of Napoleon's forces
to reconquer San Domingo. Foreseeing the loss of Louisiana in case of
the probable renewal of war with England, and desirous of money