over the new territory? Two courses lay open, either
to make Louisiana a part of the "territory" which the Constitution gives
Congress power to "dispose of," or to hold the province as a dependency
apart from other organized Territories. The provisional act which
Congress adopted pointed in this latter direction, since it authorized
the President to take possession of the province and concentrated all
powers, civil and military, in the hands of agents to be appointed by
him. When objection was made that such despotic authority was
incompatible with the Constitution, Rodney, of Maryland, declared in the
House of Representatives that Congress had a power in the Territories
which it could not exercise in the States, and that the limitations of
power found in the Constitution were applicable to States and not to
Territories. The Republicans were making rapid progress in learning the
vocabulary of Federalism.

It is one of the ironies of history that the province over which parties
battled with so much display of legal profundity was not yet in the
possession of the First Consul. Six months after the ratification of the
treaty, in the old Cabildo at New Orleans, Laussat received from the
Spanish governor the keys of the city and took possession of the
province in the name of his master. For twenty days the Tricolor floated
over the Place d'Armes, emblem of the shadowy French tenure. On December
2, it, in turn, gave place to the Stars and Stripes, as Louisiana passed
into the hands of the last of its rulers, the puissant young republic.

In the following year Congress divided the province, giving to the
southern part, the Territory of Orleans, which contained most of the
inhabitants, a separate territorial government, and annexing the
sparsely settled upper part to the Indiana Territory. The Act of 1804
was roundly abused because it gave to the President the appointment of
all officers in the Territory of Orleans, even the appointment of the
legislative council of thirteen. By the treaty, it was pointed out, the
inhabitants of Louisiana were guaranteed all "the rights, advantages,
and immunities of citizens of the United States." Was not representative
government one of these privileges? The obvious answer was the
unpreparedness of the Spanish inhabitants for Anglo-American
institutions. To the Western American who floated down the Mississippi,
past the cotton-fields and sugar plantations cultivated by African
negroes, and