4840. LOUISIANA, Mission to France respecting.—
The urgency of the case, as well
as the public spirit, induced us to make a
more solemn appeal to the justice and judgment
of our neighbors, by sending a Minister
Extraordinary to impress them with the
necessity of some arrangement. Mr. Monroe
has been selected. His good dispositions
cannot be doubted. Multiplied conversations
with him, and views of the subject taken in
all the shapes in which it can present itself,
have possessed him with our estimates of
everything relating to it, with a minuteness
which no written communication to Mr.
Livingston could ever have attained. These
will prepare them to meet and decide on every
form of proposition which can occur, without
awaiting new instructions from hence, which
might draw to an indefinite length a discussion
where circumstances imperiously
oblige us to a prompt decision. For the occlusion
of the Mississippi is a state of things
in which we cannot exist. He goes, therefore,
joined with Chancellor Livingston, to aid in
the issue of a crisis the most important the
United States have ever met since their Independence,
and which is to decide their future
character and career.—
To Dupont de Nemours. Washington ed. iv, 456.
Ford ed., viii, 204.
(W.
Feb. 1803)
See Monroe.
