Competing dreams of empire collided in the vast wilderness of
Louisiana in the early 1800s. The region had been a consolation
prize for Spain in 1763 after the disastrous Seven Years' War. Spain,
however, found the area an imperial liability -- costly to administer and
difficult to defend. As settlers from the newly independent United States
penetrated the area, Louisiana once again became part of the French
empire. In 1800 Spain returned the area to France as part of Napoleon's
scheme to resurrect the French empire in North America and reconquer
the rebellious French colony of St. Domingue ( Haiti). In exchange for
Louisiana, Spain received territory in Italy and a promise that France
would not transfer Louisiana to a third party. Although the transaction
was secret, President Thomas Jefferson learned of the deal in May 1801.
Jefferson realized the significance of the transfer of Louisiana from a
weak and passive Spain to a strong and aggressive France, commenting
that French control of the mouth of the Mississippi meant that "we
must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation."

The French threat and presence disappeared almost as rapidly as it
had appeared. Confronted with military problems in reconquering
Haiti, an impending war with Britain, and unrelenting U.S. hostility to
a French Louisiana, Napoleon decided to unload the property to one of
his antagonists, the United States. U.S. and French interests were rapidly
converging; in January 1803 Jefferson dispatched James Monroe to Paris
to try to purchase New Orleans and the Floridas because the U.S. gov-
ernment incorrectly assumed that Spain had transferred the Floridas

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