After the United States purchased Louisiana, many inhabitants of
the new American territory believed that Louisiana would quickly be
incorporated into the Union and that they would soon enjoy rights
as citizens. In March of 1804, however, Congress passed the Act for
the Organization of Orleans Territory, which divided Louisiana into
two sections: Orleans Territory, which lay southwest of the
Mississippi Territory; and the Louisiana District. Under this act,
President Jefferson possessed the power to appoint the government
of Orleans Territory and its thirteen-man legislative council. The
act also prohibited importation of most slaves. Anxieties about
their livelihoods and an unrepresentative government drove some
Louisiana merchants and planters to organize protests. At first
this group used petitions and newspaper editorials to demand
revisions; later they pressed for reforms as a political faction
within the territorial government. Outside of Louisiana, the
conflict became a harbinger for the obstacles to westward expansion
and clashes ahead. American politicians became alarmed about the
future of American governance, territorial expansion, and the
growth of slavery, all issues raised by the Orleans protesters.
John Quincy Adams, for example, worried that the government
established for Louisianans violated the principles of the American
Revolution. Federalist Fisher Ames believed that Jefferson's power
over Louisiana would allow him to establish a western Republican
empire ensuring the national demise of the Federalist Party.
Slaveholders and supporters of slavery in the Congress attacked the
restrictions on importation of slaves, using arguments in debates
with opponents of slavery that were repeated until the outbreak of
the Civil War. Because they caused politicians in the Congress to
reconsider how people in areas acquired by the United States should
be governed and because they reinvigorated the national discussion
about the future of slavery in the United States, the Orleans
protesters played a significant role in influencing the shape of
American territorial expansion.
General
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