for some years against American attack, and might even have captured one or two of the American posts on the Mississippi, such as Natchez; but the instant it had landed in New Orleans the entire American people would have accepted France as their deadliest enemy, and all American foreign policy would have been determined by the one consideration of ousting the French from the mouth of the Mississippi.  To the United States, France was by no means as formidable as Great Britain, because of her inferiority as a naval power.  Even if unsupported by any outside alliance the Americans would doubtless in the end have driven a French army from New Orleans, though very probably at the cost of one or two preliminary rebuffs.  The West was stanch in support of Jefferson and Madison; but in time of stress it was sure to develop leaders of more congenial temper, exactly as it actually did develop Andrew Jackson a few years later.  At this very time the French failed to conquer the negro republic which Toussaint Louverture had founded in Hayti.  What they thus failed to accomplish in one island, against insurgent negroes, it was folly to think they could accomplish on the American continent, against the power of the American people.  This struggle with the revolutionary slaves in Hayti hindered Napoleon from immediately throwing an army into Louisiana; but it did more, for it helped to teach him the folly of trying to carry out such a plan at all.

    Report of Pontaiba.

A very able and faithful French agent in the meanwhile sent a report to Napoleon plainly pointing out the impossibility of permanently holding Louisiana against the Americans.  He showed that on the Western waters alone it would be possible to gather armies amounting in the aggregate to twenty or thirty thousand men, all of them inflamed with the eager desire to take New Orleans. [Footnote:  Pontalba’s Memoir.  He hoped that Louisiana might, in certain contingencies, be preserved for the French, but he insisted that it could only be by keeping peace with the American settlers, and by bringing about an immense increase of population in the province.] The Mississippi ran so as to facilitate the movement of any expedition against New Orleans, while it offered formidable obstacles to counter-expeditions from New Orleans against the American commonwealths lying farther up stream.  An expeditionary force sent from the mouth of the Mississippi, whether to assail the towns and settlements along the Ohio, or to defend the Creole villages near the Missouri, could at the utmost hope for only transient success, while its ultimate failure was certain.  On the other hand, a backwoods army could move down stream with comparative ease; and even though such an expedition were defeated, it was certain that the attempt would be repeated again and again, until by degrees the mob of hardy riflemen changed into a veteran army, and brought forth some general like “Old Hickory,” able to lead to victory.