"They are very much interested in obtaining an unlimited slavery": rethinking the expansion of slavery in the Louisiana purchase territories, 1803-1805

By late 1804, discontent with the United States government was growing among the white inhabitants of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase territories. That fall, "the representatives elected by the freemen of their respective districts" in Upper Louisiana met in St. Louis to protest their new territorial government: or, as they deemed it, the "entire privation of some of the dearest rights enjoyed by freemen!" The "freemen" especially feared that the United States might deprive them of their right to buy and hold slaves. They had good reason to worry. The host of restrictions Congress placed on Louisiana slavery seemed "calculated to abolish slavery at a future day altogether."1In 1804 a Republican-controlled Congress defied the testy demands of white Louisianans, the recommendations of Thomas Jefferson, and the interests of southern slaveholders by prohibiting both the international and domestic slave trades to the Louisiana Purchase territories. White Louisianans from New Orleans to St. Louis reacted to these restrictions, which seemed tantamount to a plan of gradual abolition, by insisting that they would consent to American rule only if provided guarantees for slavery. Fearful that white Louisianans might act on their threats of rebellion and disunion, Congress quietly failed to renew the bulk of the restrictions on slavery the following year.The historical literature on slavery and expansion in the early republic makes it difficult to understand the causes and significance of the restrictions passed by Congress in 1804 and then rescinded in 1805. Historians generally agree that southern politicians controlled debates over the expansion of slavery. Upper South planters defended expansion because it opened new markets for their "surplus" slaves, promising relief from their fearfully large slave populations and much needed income to supplement their declining fortunes. Deep South planters, ready to threaten disunion at the first sign of the dreaded entering wedge, resisted efforts to restrict slavery's growth except in the Northwest territories. Southern politicians like Jefferson could afford to temporize on expansion because, unlike discredited New England Federalists, northern Republicans proved unwilling to challenge slaveholders on expansion because of fears of upsetting their fragile, bisectional party.2 When forced to legislate for the Louisianas in 1804, the federal government supposedly did "nothing about slavery," permitting it "to continue in Louisiana under American rule virtually as it had under Spanish and French rule."3The protests of white Louisianans demonstrate that Congress did something rather than nothing about slavery in the Louisianas. Moreover, the Louisiana slavery laws of 1804 involved much more than southern intransigence overwhelming northern Republican indifference in the halls of Congress. While framing legislation for the Louisiana Purchase territories it became clear that a majority in Congress might favor halting the expansion of slavery west of the Mississippi River. Equally important, the antislavery wishes of some congressmen had to compete with larger concerns for incorporating the Louisianas peacefully and permanently into the American Union. For Congress, securing the Louisianas, and with it New Orleans and the Mississippi River, remained the key to securing the entire trans-Appalachian West. Fears centering on the uncertain future of the Louisianas in the Union and the ability of the United States to compete in the "power politics of territorial hegemony" in the Mississippi Valley limited how far certain congressmen were willing to restrict slavery there.4Any plan for prohibiting slavery in the Louisiana Purchase had to involve two elements. First, Congress had to deny white Louisianans access to additional slaves. The Louisiana Ordinance of 1804 prohibited the further introduction of any slaves to the territories, "except by a citizen of the United States, removing into said Territory for actual settlement, and being, at the time of such removal, bona fide owner of such slave or slaves. …