The Process of Americanization: Au Revoir, Creole.

The Louisiana Purchase introduced a new cast of players to the territory,
and forever changed its character. European-Creole cultures were coming
to an end. The American transformation was beginning. More than a land deal,
the Louisiana Purchase changed the character and the ways of life of the region.
A wave of American politicians invaded the territory after the Purchase, setting
off a scramble for position between the French, the Creoles and the new arrivals,
the Americans. 

President Thomas Jefferson appointed William Charles Cole Claiborne governor of the new territory.
The ambitious young man had begun his career as a clerk in the brand-new US House of
Representatives. He then commenced a legal practice in territorial Tennessee, aided by political
appointments and facilitated by his national contacts. As a member of the House of Representatives
from Tennessee, he had voted for Jefferson in 1801 after the electoral college deadlocked. As soon as
Jefferson took office, he appointed Claiborne to be territorial governor of Mississippi, followed in 1803 by
an appointment to Louisiana. Claiborne in turn appointed a large number of Americans to hold the
judicial appointments in the various parishes across the territory. With regard to slave ownership, these
American judges began using English common law forms in substitution for the already established French
legal traditions, such as indentures, in place of acts of sale. The terminology, not to mention the content,
jarred the ears of Creoles and Acadians alike. 

Some Americans appreciated the foreign culture they had joined; they married Creole women.
Edward Livingston of the New York Livingstons was a member of Congress and had served as mayor of
New York before coming to Louisiana in 1803. He married a Creole and learned the civil law so well he
became an articulate spokesman for it. 

However many Americans despised Creole society as a foreign element. They abhorred their foreign tongue,
religion and social customs. American, Wade Hampton, had made a fortune growing cotton in South Carolina. Later the
US government sent him to territorial Louisiana as a general in the army, where he quickly purchased one of the largest
land holdings along the Mississippi River, the Houmas claim, just down river from the new town of Donaldsonville.

The town's founder, William Donaldson, was a merchant from England who spoke the three languages of
Louisiana: English, French and Spanish, like most successful men in the colony. Governor Claiborne selected him
to be one of the first members of the Legislative Council for the new American Territory of Louisiana. The Louisiana Bank
elected him to its board of directors.
A few years after purchasing half of the Houmas tract, he founded the town of the same name at the junction of the
Mississippi River and Bayou Lafourche. This town grew to be the county seat of Ascension Parish, the site of the US
Land Office for Louisiana and for two years the state capital.

While the names of many of the new Americans are recalled in Louisiana history –
Claiborne, White, Donaldson ; their Creole and Acadian hosts are seldom-known: Destrehan,
Livaudais, Hebert. First among them was Jean Noël Destrehan. Destrehan's vigor and
plainness is abundantly evident in the intimate portrait written by Pierre Clément de Laussat, the French
commissioner for the transfer of Louisiana in 1803. On Nov. 10, 1803, Laussat set out on an inspection
tour of the estates of lower Louisiana, riding on horseback up the east bank, passing plantation after
plantation. It was grinding season for the sugarcane crop. When he arrived at Destrehan's
estate, he found Madame Destrehan, Celeste Robin de Logny, with her four daughters, supervising the
salting and preserving of beef.

Destrehan himself took time out from grinding to give Laussat a tour.
They began in the quarters, where the slaves worked under the Creole method, in which, according to
Laussat, "the masters, instead of feeding their slaves and requiring them to work all day, gave them tasks
which occupied about half the time, and the balance of the time they were allowed to provide for themselves
with the necessaries of life."

Balancing power, slave versus master

Laussat observed that each slave had his own garden plot, which he was encouraged to cultivate. He also
noticed that Destrehan did not give clothing to his slaves but instead sold it to them at wholesale prices.
Under this method, slaves worked either in their own gardens on their own time, and sold
the produce both on and off their home plantations, or worked for others for cash. During sugar cane
grinding season, most slaves were working in the sugar mill. It was also typical for the overseer to
be a slave. In that particular grinding season, Destrehan hoped to produce 250,000 pounds of sugar.
He helped cut the cane, part of the process he thought very important. Destrehan managed his affairs
in the typical, practical Creole manner.

The balance of political power in Louisiana was wielded by the foreign French.

These were first-generation Frenchmen like Vincent Ternant master of Parlange plantation, Armand Duplantier,
master of Magnolia Mound Plantation, Marius Bringier, master of White Hall Plantation and Julien Poydras,
master of Pointe Coupée Plantation. The American Revolution had prompted most of them to come to Louisiana.
Ternant, for example, brought some money with him. By 1784, he owned 10 arpents and six slaves. He engaged in
lumbering and indigo planting. He married quickly, an unusual move for a young Frenchman, but an action partially
explained by his acute eye for financial advantage. 

The third French faction in Louisiana was the Acadians. These small farmers had little influence until statehood,
when the vote suddenly made them a political factor. The fourth French faction was the St. Domingue refugees.
Rivaling the Acadians in numbers, about 10,000 French-speaking residents flowed into Louisiana between 1795
and 1810 from the island now called Haiti. They allied with the Creoles. Their leader, Pierre Derbigny, served Claiborne
as a translator (Claiborne was unable to speak, read or write French) and later became governor of Louisiana.

Governor Claiborne called for elections for a territorial House of Representatives to meet November 4, 1805. This was the first
elected body in Louisiana history. Its membership came from 10 large counties. It was two years later before the
Legislature created the 19 parishes. The Legislature's first task was to nominate 10 men so President Jefferson
could choose five to serve on a Legislative Council, the upper house of the Legislature. Four of Jefferson's five
appointments were Creoles, namely Destrehan, Joseph de Ville Bellechasse, Jean Baptiste Macarty and Pierre Sauve.
Only the fifth was a new American, John W. Gurley.

On March 26, 1806, the first American Legislature of the Territory of Orleans assembled.

Creoles and native Frenchmen dominated both the Assembly and the Legislative Council. In May 1806 the Legislature
began to look for a territorial delegate to represent Louisiana in the US Congress. The election was between
John Watkins, representing the American element, and Daniel Clark and Evan Jones, representing old Louisiana.
Clark, an avowed enemy of Claiborne, eventually prevailed. The old Louisianians continued their dominance,
passing several bills to preserve Louisiana's civil-law system. Claiborne used his veto freely; Destrehan
and Sauve resigned from the Legislative Council in protest. Meanwhile, Clark remained in Congress for three years,
where he worked steadily against Claiborne. Claiborne challenged Clark to a duel, which led to a leg wound for the
governor. Clark was eventually forced to resign over charges that he had aided Aaron Burr's treasonous efforts.
On Feb. 1, 1809, the Legislature chose Claiborne's friend Julien Poydras as the territory's new delegate
to Congress. He smoothed the way for Louisiana’s statehood, approved by the US Congress in 1811. Louisiana,
the territory, was about to be whittled down into Louisiana, the state. Ahead was the American experience.