r consistent. But the Northeastern Federalists, though with
many exceptions, did as a whole stand as the opponents of national
growth. They had very properly, though vainly, urged Jefferson to take
prompt and effective steps to sustain the national honor, when it seemed
probable that the country could be won from France only at the cost of
war; but when the time actually came to incorporate Louisiana into the
national domain, they showed that jealous fear of Western growth which
was the most marked defect in Northeastern public sentiment until past
the middle of the present century. It proved that the Federalists were
rightly distrusted by the West; and it proved that at this crisis, the
Jeffersonian Republicans, in spite of their follies, weaknesses, and
crimes, were the safest guardians of the country, because they believed
in its future, and strove to make it greater.

The Jeremiads of the Federalist leaders in Congress were the same in
kind as those in which many cultivated men of the East always indulged
whenever we enlarged our territory, and in which many persons like them
would now indulge were we at the present day to make a similar
extension. The people of the United States were warned that they were
incorporating into their number men who were wholly alien in every
respect, and who could never be assimilated. They were warned that when
they thus added to their empire, they merely rendered it unwieldy and
assured its being split into two or more confederacies at no distant
day. Some of the extremists, under the lead of Quincy, went so far as to
threaten dissolution of the Union because of what was done, insisting
that the Northeast ought by rights to secede because of the injury done
it by adding strength to the South and West. Fortunately, however, talk
of this kind did not affect the majority; the treaty was ratified and
Louisiana became part of the United States.

The French Prefect Laussat.

Meanwhile the Creoles themselves accepted their very rapidly changing
fates with something much like apathy. In March, 1803, the French
Prefect Laussat arrived to make preparations to take possession of the
country. He had no idea that Napoleon intended to cede it to the United
States. On the contrary, he showed that he regarded the French as the
heirs, not only to the Spanish territory, but of the Spanish hostility
to the Americans. He openly regretted that the Spanish Government had
reversed Morales' act taking