BOOK REVIEWS
The Territorial Papers of the United
States. Compiled and
edited by Clarence E. Carter. Vol. XIII,
The Territory of Louisi-
ana-Missouri, 1803-1806. (Washington, Government Printing Office,
1948. xi + 641p. $3.50.)
This is the first of three volumes
devoted to what the editor
calls, for lack of a simpler name, the
Territory of Louisiana-
Missouri-the part of the Louisiana
Purchase to the north of the
present state of Louisiana, called
officially the District of Louisiana
(1804-5), the Territory of Louisiana
(1805-12), and the Territory
of Missouri (1812-21). Most of the
documents pertain to the for-
mation of the new units and to the
administration of Governor
James Wilkinson. The collection is an
unusually rich one. As is
his custom, Professor Carter pays his
respects to other editors and
series in his invaluable footnotes and
devotes his space to hitherto
unpublished and (to most persons)
otherwise inaccessible materials.
The Burr conspiracy, which has been
fully documented elsewhere,
is left aside; in fact, there are only
two references to Burr, both
concerned with the appointment of a
territorial secretary.
Though Governor Wilkinson contrasted the
populations of
Michigan and Louisiana as well as their
climates (p. 370), those
who have followed Professor Carter's
volumes on the Old North-
west will note striking similarities.
Jefferson himself noted "the
same [violent dissensions] in the
territories of Louisiana and
Michigan" as in Mississippi (To
Governor Robert Williams, Novem-
ber 1, 1807, Writings [memorial
ed., 20 vols., Washington, 1903-4],
XI, 390). While officials exchanged the
usual charges of Federalism
and of private improprieties, the
citizens adapted themselves
quickly to their new country's
representative forms and to their
new leaders' partisanship. Jefferson was
soon justified in his hope
that the governor and judges might
"draw their laws & organiza-
tion to the mould of ours by degrees as
they find practicable"
(p. 101), whether because of the
population's readiness or the
officers' skill and tact or "their
utmost tenderness to the civil rights
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118
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
of individuals" (p. 53). Jefferson
was careful, as in Orleans and
Michigan, to make use of residents and
of men who knew the West
or the languages of the West, but even
before officers arrived the
citizens of St. Louis had chosen a
committee to give information to
the governor. How, asked a newly arrived
lawyer, "after having
witnessed this Republican conduct . . .,
can it be argued that the
Louisianians, are not prepared for the
reception of a Republican
government?" (pp. 30-31). The
processes of assimilation were
complicated, however, by the usual
differences over land titles and
mining and fur-trading privileges; the
land question, wrote the
same lawyer some months later, was
"the rock on which the parties
in Louisiana orriginally [sic] split"
(p. 324). In appointing Wil-
kinson to the governorship of Louisiana
in 1805, Jefferson "con-
ceived it not as a civil government, but
merely a military station"
(p. 504). It was no longer that when
Wilkinson left for New
Orleans in 1806, if it ever had been,
but it was an extraordinarily
difficult political problem, ultimately
solved by the people of
Missouri maturing politically rather
than by the government of the
United States devising an efficient
colonial system.
Students of politics throughout the
United States may learn a
great deal by examining Professor
Carter's volumes. Ohio history
appears more clearly in the larger
picture. The origins of Western
political parties and of Western
liberalism and conservatism soon
should be clarified and answers
presented to some of the questions
raised by Schlesinger, Jr., and others
who have, to the general
profit, challenged older views of the
West on the basis of Eastern
materials.
The editorial work is of the high
quality of the preceding vol-
umes. Though one may regret that his
enormous undertaking has
not left time to Professor Carter to
present his own interpretation
of the territorial history of his own
state and other Western states,
certainly it would be difficult to
expect so sound and useful an
editorial job from anyone else.
EARL S. POMEROY
Assistant Professor of History
Ohio State University