American Minute with Bill Federer
French Louisiana Territory & Napoleon
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Spain claimed most of the Americas from its native inhabitants by virtue of first discovery.
Conquistadors who explored the Americas include:
Ponce de Leon, 1513;
Hernán Cortés, 1519;
Panfilo de Narvaez, 1527;
Desoto, 1539;
Coronado, 1540; and
Cabrillo, 1542.
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Since gold was minimal in North America, the area was of little interest to the Spanish Empire.
Spanish attempts to colonize North America mostly failed.
In 1526,
Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón landed with 600 settlers near
Sapelo Sound, Georgia; but the settlement failed due to the harsh winter, disease, mutiny, and 100 African slaves running off to live with the native tribe of Guales.
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In 1528,
Pánfilo de Narváez landed with 400 settlers near
St. Petersburg, Florida, but this settlement failed due to a hurricane and native attacks. Eighty survivors built rafts and floated along the coast till the Mississippi River current swept them out to sea.
A few landed near present-day
Galveston and were enslaved by natives. Four escaped, including
Cabeza de Vaca, who traveled through the areas of
Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico, preaching the Gospel and praying for sick natives, with reports of miraculous recoveries, till he finally arrived in Mexico City in 1536.
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In 1524, Italian explorer
Giovanni da Verrazzano,
in the service of
King Francis I
of France, was the first European to explore the
Atlantic coast of North America,
sailing from
Florida
to
New York Bay,
to
Narragansett,
to
New Brunswick.
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In 1534, French explorer
Jacques Cartier
claimed Canada as New France.
In 1541,
Roberval
attempted to settle Charlesbourg-Royal near present-day Quebec.
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In 1603,
Good King Henry of Navarre sent
Samuel de Champlain to settle New France (Canada).
In 1605,
Champlain, considered
“the Father of New France,” together with Pierre Du Gua de Monts, founded Port Royal as the first capital of French Acadia.
In 1608,
Champlain founded
Quebec City near the Indian settlement of "Stadacona."
In 1609, he encountered the lake which was named for him –
Lake Champlain – draining north into the Saint Lawrence River Valley of Canada.
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English
settlements began in
Virginia
in 1607, and
Massachusetts
in 1620.
In 1624, the
Dutch
settled
New Amsterdam,
present day
New York.
In 1638,
King Gustavus Adolphus
sent settlers to found
New Sweden,
present day
Delaware
and
New Jersey.
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In 1673, French missionary priest,
Jacque Marquette,
and French explorer
Louis Joliet,
traveled down from
Canada to Lake Michigan.
They then followed the
Fox River
till they reached the
Mississippi,
canoeing as far south as
Arkansas.
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France
claimed
Canada
and the
land west of the Appalachian Mountains,
across the
Mississippi River valley
to the beginning of
the Great Plains.
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The
Louisiana Territory
was named after
Louis XIV, "the Sun King,"
the longest reigning monarch of a major European country.
Louis XIV
had a global empire stretching from the
Far East to the Caribbean, Africa to America.
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Centralizing power,
Louis XIV
was reputed to have said "L'État, c'est moi"
("I am the state").
When told by an administrator that a certain action was illegal,
Louis XIV
replied
"It is legal because I wish it."
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In 1699,
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville,
started the first French settlement, at
Fort Maurepas (now Ocean Springs, Mississippi).
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In 1702,
Sieur de Bienville
settled the area of
Mobile, Alabama,
and in 1718, he started construction of
New Orleans.
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In 1723,
Sieur de Bienville
moved the capital of
French Louisiana
there from its previous locations of
Dauphin Island
and
Biloxi.
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Beginning in 1755 the British drove the French out of
Acadia, Canada,
in
The Great Expulsion.
Thousands of French sailed to the
Caribbean Islands,
and other colonies, but most notably to
Louisiana,
where the name
"acadian"
came to be pronounced
"cajun."
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Describing the expulsion,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
wrote the poem
"Evangeline."
Louis XIV's
grandson was
Louis XV,
who lost the
French and Indian War
in 1763.
This gave
Britain
control of all of America
east of the Mississippi,
with the exception of Spanish Florida.
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As the
French and Indian War
was ending,
France
ceded the
Louisiana Territory
west of the Mississippi to Spain in the
secret Treaty of Fontainebleau,
1762, in order to keep Britain from getting it.
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French
settlers fled the British controlled land, across the Mississippi, to found the
city of St. Louis,
Missouri, in 1764, even though the land was nominally under Spanish control.
In 1780, during the Revolutionary War, the British and Indians led a failed attack on
St. Louis.
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France's new
King, Louis XVI,
sent his navy to help America win the
Battle of Yorktown,
resulting in America's independence from Britain.
France
incurred an enormous
war debt
for helping with the
American Revolution
, which
weakened the monarchy.
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The French Revolution
began in 1789, and on January 21, 1793, a mob beheaded 38-year-old
King Louis XVI.
The Reign of Terror
that followed resulted in 40,000 citizens being beheaded in Paris by the Committee of Public Safety.
Thousands more were killed across France for refusing to embrace the new secular government.
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In the midst of this chaos,
Napoleon
staged a coup d'état in 1799 and installed himself as
First Consul of France.
Napoleon
pressured Spain to sign
another secret treaty, the Treaty of San Ildefonso,
in 1800, which gave the
Louisiana Territory
back to France.
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In 1802,
Jefferson
sent
James Monroe and Robert Livingston
to France to purchase a small area of land near
New Orleans
for docking ships.
Needing cash to fight Britain and the other European countries,
Napoleon
responded by offering to sell the entire
Louisiana Territory
to the United States for
$15 million dollars.
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President Thomas Jefferson
agreed to the purchase and the
size of the U.S. doubled
on APRIL 30, 1803, with the
Louisiana Purchase.
The
828,000 square miles
were purchased at less than three cents an acre - it was the greatest real estate deal in history!
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Jefferson
sent
Lewis and Clark
to explore it.
Not everyone in America was happy. The
State of Massachusetts threatened to secede
from the Union, arguing that the adding of so large a territory would dilute the influence of existing States.
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Jefferson
brokered a compromise with
Daniel Webster
and
Henry Clay,
commenting in his Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1805:
"I know that the acquisition of Louisiana has been disapproved by some from a candid apprehension that the enlargement of our territory would endanger the union, but who can limit the extent to which the Federative principle may operate effectively?"
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The rush to turn the
Louisiana Purchase
into new States, either slave or free, was a factor leading up to the
Civil War.
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Another contributing factor influencing
Napoleon
to sell the
Louisiana Territory
was the
slave rebellion in Haiti.
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Christopher Columbus
discovered
Haiti,
calling the island
Hispanola,
with the capital city of
Santo Domingo
named for Columbus' father, Dominic.
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The French took half of the Island in the year 1660, and calling it
Saint-Domingue,
and later
Haiti.
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It was one of the wealthiest colonies in the world, producing sugar, indigo, cotton and coffee.
Plantations deplorably used slave labor.
While the French Revolution abolished slavery in France, the
French allowed slavery to continue in Haiti.
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Slave revolts
from 1791-1804 resulted in tens of thousands French, Mulattos, Blacks, and even Polish, dying with horrible brutality on all sides.
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After losing
Haiti,
France wanted another tropical colony to compete with Britain's India, so
Napoleon
invaded
Egypt,
1798-1801.
Napoleon's
fear that
Haiti's slave rebellion
might spread to the
Louisiana Territory
was a contributing factor in his rush to sell it.
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When
Napoleon
put his brother
Joseph
on
Spain's throne
in 1808,
Venezuela
declared independence in 1810, followed by
Central American countries of Chile, Argentina, and eventually Mexico.
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On June 23, 1812,
Napoleon
invaded
Russia
with nearly a half million men. Six months later he retreated with less than 50,000.
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This disastrous loss forced him to abdicate the throne and he was
exiled to the Mediterranean Island of Elba.
Napoleon
escaped
Elba
on February 26, 1815, and returned to rule France for 100 days.
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After losing the
Battle of Waterloo,
June 18, 1815, Napoleon was permanently banished to the tiny
South Atlantic island of St. Helena.
During his career,
Napoleon
fought in over 100 battles, conquering large areas of Europe.
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He instituted the
Napoleonic Code on March 21, 1804, which effectively installed him as a dictator, permitted religious freedom, prohibited privileges based on birth.and required government jobs be given to the most qualified.
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The Napoleonic Wars
(1803-1815) had caused an estimated 6 million deaths from battle and related diseases, starvation and exposure.
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On the island of
St. Helena, Napoleon
began to reflect on his life and even began reading the
Bible.
A few years before dying at the age of 52,
Napoleon
commented to General H.G. Bertrand, as recorded in "On St. Helena," 1816:
"The Gospel possesses a secret virtue, a mysterious efficacy, a warmth which penetrates and soothes the heart. One finds in meditating upon it that which one experiences in contemplating the heavens ...
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... The Gospel is not a book; it is a living being, with an action, a power, which invades everything that opposes its extension. Behold it upon this table, this book surpassing all others (here the Emperor solemnly placed his hand upon it):
I never omit to read it, and every day with new pleasure. Nowhere is to be found such a series of beautiful ideas, and admirable moral maxims, which pass before us like the battalions of a celestial army ... The soul can never go astray with this book for its guide ..."
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Napoleon
continued:
"Everything in Christ astonishes me. His spirit overawes me, and His will confounds me. Between Him and whoever else in the world there is no possible term of comparison;
He is truly a Being by Himself. His ideas and His sentiments, the truth which He announces, His manner of convincing, are not explained either by human organization or by the nature of things.
Truth should embrace the universe. Such is Christianity, the only religion which destroys sectional prejudices, the only one which proclaims the unity and the absolute brotherhood of the whole human family, the only one which is purely spiritual; in fine, the only one which assigns to all, without distinction, for a true country, the bosom of the Creator, God."
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Napoleon
concluded:
"Christ proved that He was the Son of the Eternal by His disregard of time. All His doctrines signify one only and the same thing-eternity.
What a proof of the divinity of Christ!
With an empire so absolute, he has but one single end - the spiritual melioration of individuals, the purity of the conscience, the union to that which is true, the holiness of the soul ...
Not only is our mind absorbed, it is controlled; and the soul can never go astray with this book for its guide.
Once master of our spirit, the faithful Gospel loves us. God even is our friend, our father, and truly our God. The mother has no greater care for the infant whom she nurses ..."
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Napoleon
ended by telling General H.G. Bertrand:
"If you do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God, very well: then I did wrong to make you a general."
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
[email protected]
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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