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N0KFQ > TODAY 20.12.16 15:07l 66 Lines 3080 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 16371_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Dec 20
Path: IW8PGT<CX2SA<N0KFQ
Sent: 161220/1256Z 16371@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ6.0.13
1803
The French surrender Orleans to the U.S.
Without a shot fired, the French hand over New Orleans and Lower
Louisiana to the United States.
In April 1803, the United States purchased from France the
828,000 square miles that had formerly been French Louisiana. The
area was divided into two territories: the northern half was
Louisiana Territory, the largely unsettled (though home to many
Indians) frontier section that was later explored by Lewis and
Clark; and the southern Orleans Territory, which was populated by
Europeans.
Unlike the sprawling and largely unexplored northern territory
(which eventually encompassed a dozen large states), Orleans
Territory was a small, densely populated region that was like a
little slice of France in the New World. With borders that
roughly corresponded to the modern state of Louisiana, Orleans
Territory was home to about 50,000 people, a primarily French
population that had been living under the direction of a Spanish
administration.
These former citizens of France knew almost nothing about
American laws and institutions, and the challenging task of
bringing them into the American fold fell to the newly appointed
governor of the region, twenty-eight-year-old William Claiborne.
Historians have found no real evidence that the French of Orleans
Territory resented their transfer to American control, though one
witness claimed that when the French tri-color was replaced by
the Stars and Stripes in New Orleans, the citizens wept. The
French did resent that their new governor was appointed rather
than elected, and they bridled when the American government tried
to make English the official language and discouraged the use of
French.
It didn't help matters that young Claiborne knew neither French
nor Spanish. Claiborne soon found himself immersed in a complex
sea of ethnic tensions and political unrest that he little
understood, and in January he wrote to Thomas Jefferson that the
population was "uninformed, indolent, luxurious-in a word,
ill-fitted to be useful citizens for a Republic." To his dismay,
Claiborne found that most of his time was spent not governing,
but dealing with an unrelenting procession of crises like riots,
robberies, and runaway slaves.
Despite his concerns, Claiborne knew that somehow these people
had to be made into American citizens, and over time he gradually
made progress in bringing the citizenry into the Union. In
December 1804 he was happy to report to Jefferson that "they
begin to view their connexion with the United States as permanent
and to experience the benefits thereof." Proof of this came eight
years later, when the people of Orleans Territory drafted a
constitution and successfully petitioned to become the eighteenth
state in the Union. Despite Claiborne's doubts about whether the
French would ever truly fit into their new nation, the approval
of that petition meant that the people of Louisiana were
officially Americans.
73 - K.O., n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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