A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 5, part 3: Franklin Pierce
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 5, part 3: Franklin Pierce
Pierce, Franklin, 1804-1869; Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government
That such, and such only, was the true meaning and effect of the
transaction; that it was not, and was not intended to be, a
relinquishment by the United States of any existing claim on France, and
especially that it was not an abandonment of any claims of individual
citizens, nor the set off of these against any conceded national
obligations to France, is shown by the fact that President Jefferson did
at once resume and prosecute to successful conclusion negotiations to
obtain from France indemnification for the claims of citizens of the
United States existing at the date of that convention; for on the 30th
of April, 1803, three treaties were concluded at Paris between the
United States of America and the French Republic, one of which embraced
the cession of Louisiana; another stipulated for the payment of
60,000,000 francs by the United States to France; and a third provided
that, for the satisfaction of sums due by France to citizens of the
United States at the conclusion of the convention of September 30, 1800,
and in express compliance with the second and fifth articles thereof,
a further sum of 20,000,000 francs should be appropriated and paid by
the United States. In the preamble to the first of these treaties, which
ceded Louisiana, it is set forth that--
The President of the United States of America and the First Consul of
the French Republic, in the name of the French people, desiring to
remove all source of misunderstanding relative to objects of discussion
mentioned in the second and fifth articles of the convention of the 8th
Vendémiaire, an 9 (30th September, 1800), relative to the rights claimed
by the United States in virtue of the treaty concluded at Madrid the
27th of October, 1795, between His Catholic Majesty and the said United
States, and willing to strengthen the union and friendship which at the
time of the said convention was happily reestablished between the two
nations, have respectively named their plenipotentiaries, ... who ...
have agreed to the following articles.
Here is the most distinct and categorical declaration of the two
Governments that the matters of claim in the second article of the
convention of 1800 had not been ceded away, relinquished, or set off,
but they were still subsisting subjects of demand against France. The
same declaration appears in equally emphatic language in the third of
these treaties, bearing the same date, the preamble of which recites
that--
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