Louisiana and Aaron Burr 319 



gress were the same in kind as those in which many 

 cultivated men of the East always indulged when- 

 ever we enlarged our territory, and in which many 

 persons like them would now indulge were we at 

 the present day to make a similar extension. The 

 people of the United States were warned that they 

 were incorporating into their number men who were 

 wholly alien in every respect, and who could never 

 be assimilated. They were warned that when they 

 thus added to their empire, they merely rendered 

 it unwieldy and assured its being split into two or 

 more confederacies at no distant day. Some of the 

 extremists, under the lead of Quincy, went so far 

 as to threaten dissolution of the Union because of 

 what was done, insisting that the Northeast ought 

 by rights to secede because of the injury done it by 

 adding strength to the South and West. Fortu- 

 nately, however, talk of this kind did not affect the 

 majority; the treaty was ratified and Louisiana be- 

 came part of the United States. 



Meanwhile the Creoles themselves accepted their 

 very rapidly changing fates with something much 

 like apathy. In March, 1803, the French Prefect 

 Laussat arrived to make preparations to take pos- 

 session of the country. He had no idea that Na- 

 poleon intended to cede it to the United States. 

 On the contrary, he showed that he regarded the 

 French as the heirs, not only to the Spanish terri- 

 tory, but of the Spanish hostility to the Americans. 

 He openly regretted that the Spanish Government 

 had reversed Morales' act taking away from the 



