True or false? Jefferson ordered the removal of Native Americans into the trans Mississippi region to pressure France into the Louisiana Purchase?

by MockingSoul
fragilebandwidth

This is going off largely what I remember from my French history class and what information is available at the museum I work at part time, which covers the Lewis and Clark expedition. If anything seems unclear, feel free to ask. If anything seems wrong, feel free to correct.

France, specifically Napoleon, was already pressured enough without Jefferson needing to do much. Around 1803, Britain and France seemed to be at the verge of war (again). The Louisiana territory was hugely coveted by many countries at the time, mainly for the port city of New Orleans, and thus access the very successful trade routes based around the Mississippi river. Britain and America especially wanted it. Even though he had happily aquired it only a while before, Napoleon quickly found himself spread out a bit thin across the globe. He was preparing to invade Britain, which is no easy feat considering their navy. He couldn't spare the thousands of troops required to protect Louisiana. Selling the Louisiana territory to Jefferson would solve two problems right away: America would be the ones to defend that territory, and if the British wanted it, they would probably find themselves on a "two front" war as it were (assuming that, remembering their help from the Revolutionary war, America would ally with France.) Second, he could relatively quickly get a lot of money to fund his upcoming campaigns. Jefferson gave him about $15 million for it, which is over $200 million today. There was also the problems Napoleon was having in the Caribbean at the time. There was a massive and very successful slave revolt in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) that he tried to crush, and when that failed, reconquer. That didn't work either, and he lost a sufficient income from the sugar trade there, which is another reason why he couldn't financially hold Louisiana and wanted to sell it.

Now onto Jefferson. While many presidents didn't particularly like the Natives and would force them Westward (I'm looking at you Jackson), Jefferson wasn't really proactive in forcing them out. Americans did most of the work as we continued to push West. Besides, forcing the natives into Louisiana wouldn't work much anyway, considering that they were a major part of the trade routes, especially in fur trading. There's a long history of French-Native American trade, mostly from Canada down along the Mississippi, so more wouldn't be much of a problem, it would just mean more chances for trade. As far as foreign policies, Jefferson was an isolationist, or rather, non-involvement-ist. As he said, "Commerce with all nations, alliance with none." Trade with Europe = awesome, politics/war/drama with Europe = bad. So does it make sense that he jumped at the chance to more than double America's size and gain a large and valuable trade route, even if it meant dealing briefly with Europe? Yes. Would he actively fight for it by getting involved with Europe's drama? No. Sending a couple of diplomats to France (Robert Livingston and future president James Monroe) was about as pushy as he got.

It's also interesting to note that Jefferson later felt that by buying Louisiana, he was actually going against the Constitution. He felt that Congress should have made the major decisions, not him. Although, Livingston and Monroe were actually the ones who made the preliminary agreement.

tl;dr Most likely false, Napoleon didn't need any extra forcing, Jefferson wasn't that pushy anyway.

Further reading: Monticello's official website has a great article on it here: http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/louisiana-purchase

Here are photo copies from the Library of Congress of several relevant documents to the Purchase as well: http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Louisiana.html

hatari_bwana

I have never heard this theory before. What's your source for it? While Jefferson did advocate for (some) Indian removal, it doesn't seem aimed at subtly pressuring France into relinquishing their New World claims; it's more about making sure land is available for white settlement. France needed the money due to the cost of the Haitian Revolution and weren't terribly concerned about the powerful, sovereign Native nations that lived on the North American land they claimed.