stitution had reference to States, not territories. Indiana and Mississippi were cited as precedents, in which territories presidential appointees, governors and judges, exercised the three powers, and none had complained. The opposition were voted down with little. ceremony. The bill for a provisional government became a law October 31st. Soon after a bill was passed authorizing the creation of stock to the amount of $11,250,000. The decision left New England especially full of discontent, and nearly ready for secession. The balance of power was inclining, they thought, quite too strongly toward the South and West. Federalists and Republicans battled fiercely, but the doctrines of both had this in common: they were fatal to the old status of things. The interpretation of the Constitution became enlarged, so that henceforth the spirit and not the letter was appealed to. That it possessed latent powers became admitted, so that it grew at once elastic, adaptable therefore to a nation constantly growing in numbers and might, a change in the American point of view destined to affect the future profoundly.

CHAPTER X

THE UNITED STATES IN POSSESSION

JUST as the year 1803 was ending, New Orleans became the scene of an ever-memorable ceremony. Following the pleasant and picturesque account of Miss Grace King,* we are told that the proclamation of Pierre Clement Laussat had filled the people with "the delirium of extreme felicity"; but taking note of Laussat's republican denunciation of the Spanish régime, the address of welcome continued: "We should be unworthy of what is to us a source of much pride if we did not acknowledge that we have no cause of complaint against the Spanish Government. We have never groaned under the yoke of an oppressive despotism. We have become bound together by family connections and by the bonds of friendship. Let Spaniards

* New Orleans, Chapter IX.

have the untrammeled enjoyment of all the property they may own on the soil that has become the land of freedom, and let us share with them like brothers the blessings of our new position."

A month or so later, the Marquis of Casa Calvo arrived, to assist the governor, Salcedo, in turning the province over to France. A time of festivity followed, the traditions of which still persist, the courtly Spanish grandees being determined to make the latter day of their rule brilliant; and Laussat and his wife, well versed in the ways of Paris, vieing with their hosts in the social rivalry. But the Ursuline nuns were afflicted, feeling only terror at the prospect of passing under the sway of a power which a few years before had ostentatiously driven out religion and maltreated its ministers. The Mother Superior begged to be allowed to retire with her sisterhood to some point under the protection of his Catholic Majesty of Spain, and Havana was assigned. Laussat tried in vain to explain and palliate, while promising for the future full protection; an aged nun denounced him and what he was supposed to

represent. The people, too, pleaded, the mayor going down upon his knees to beg that the children and the city might not be abandoned. But nine nuns, however, out of the twenty-five could be won. On Whitsunday, at the firing of the evening gun, the sixteen who were to go, came forth hooded and veiled. Their old pupils thronged the garden as they passed through; their slaves knelt about the gateway; the dignitaries and the humbler people followed them tearfully to the waterside.

Victor was expected any day, and each man and woman had ready the tricolored cockade, which was to be assumed as soon as the Spanish flag descended. But like thunder out of a clear sky came at last, by a vessel from Bordeaux, the news that the province had been sold to the United States; and no one was more surprised than Laussat, who presently read in a formal document his appointment to conduct the ceremony of surrender. It was felt that the colony had no recourse, and the prefect faced his task valiantly. On November 30th came the ceremony of the cession by Spain to France, a

French mayor and municipal council taking the place of the alcalde and his suite. Seventeen days later arrived the American commissioners with an escort of troops, encamping two miles outside the city.

In New Orleans still stands a building which one hundred years ago surpassed probably in beauty every other civic structure in America-the old Cabildo, the meeting-place of the municipal council, which also bore the name Cabildo. Miss Grace King says it is still picturesque and imposing, a dignified meeting-place for the Supreme Court of the State. The great stone stairways, majestic and easy of ascent, are now blackened and worn, the noble front channeled and pitted like an old man's face. The council chamber of the Cabildo and the balcony adjacent, were the scene of the formal retrocession of Louisiana from Spain to France, and also of the event so much more momentous to us, the ceremony in which France delivered Louisiana into the keeping of the United States. The French had taken possession of the city, the tricolor replacing on the tall flagstaff in the Place d'Armes the