Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/265

Rh Clark arise and gather an army and drive the Spaniards out of St. Louis. The man selected for this secret mission to St. Louis was John Baptiste Charles Lucas. Lucas was a Frenchman that had studied law in Paris; had some acquaintance (here with Franklin and Adams while they were representing America during the Revolutionary war, and having come to America after the war made the acquaintauce of Albert Gallatin, Jefferson's secretary of the treasury, who introduced him (Lucas) to the president. Lucas was an ardent supporter of republican principles, he could speak the Spanish as well as the French language, and everything pointed him out as the man capable of serving Jefferson and his adopted country. Lucas undertook the confidential mission to St. Louis, and after sounding the drift of personal and political feeling at that point, proceeded to New Orleans on the same mission, making his confidential reports to the president only. Upon this information the president was prepared to act, and did act, as the sequel showed. He was prepared for war if the French had not backed down and offered to sell out before he had even time to submit an ultimatum.

That the services of Lucas in this national crisis were of great value and highly appreciated by the president, is shown from the facts that when Lucas became a candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania in 1803, the Jefferson administration most heartily supported him and secured his election; and after Louisiana was formally ceded to the United States and a territorial government established in Missouri, the president appointed Lucas a United States district judge in that territory where he was heartily welcomed by the people. For although old St. Louis had a Spanish governor and Spanish soldiers, the majority of the townspeople were French and under the influences of the great fur traders, Pierre Laclede, August Chouteau and others, and already disposed to support an American president and American principles.

It is not, therefore, surprising that after all this careful preparation to deal diplomatically with the Spanish King for the purchase of Louisiana, that the president, and the whole country with him, should have been alarmed beyond expression to find that Spain did not in fact own Louisiana; but that the great province had been secretly ceded to France two years before the publication of the event. This discovery produced intense excitement throughout the whole country, and especially to President Jefferson. It could not be divined what purpose France had in view in taking back Louisiana by a secret treaty, and everybody assumed that sooner or later the nation would be forced into a war with an old friend. Writing to Livingston, the American minister to Paris, April 18. 1802, Jefferson says: "Every eye in the United States is now fixed on the affairs of Louisiana. Perhaps nothing since the Revolutionary war has produced more uneasiness throughout the nation and in spite of our temporary bickerings with France, she still has a strong hold on our affections. The ceSsion of Louisiana to France completely reverses all the political relations of the United States, and will form a new epoch in our political course. There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. That spot is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce, and contain more than half of our inhabitants. France placing herself in that door assumes to us the attitude of defiance."

Jefferson read the future as if by inspiration. The great waterways pouring