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As the St. Domingan refugees disembarked in New Orleans, whether at the port of New Orleans on the Mississippi River, the depot at Bayou St. Jean, or the Carondolet Canal basin, they were entering a world that was both different and familiar. On the one hand, the region was the territory of an English-speaking republic rather than a colony of a French- or Spanish-speaking empire. If St. Domingue had been the “jewel of the Antilles” due to its unprecedented production of cash crops, the lower Mississippi valley was still on the American frontier. And New Orleans, though seemingly destined for commercial greatness, was much less refined than the well-established port cities of the Caribbean such as Le Cap, Port-au-Prince, Havana, or even St. Iago de Cuba. On the other hand, these differences were small compared with the similarities. Although officially inhabitants of the United States, most of the residents in New Orleans spoke French as their primary language—there was no language barrier for the refugees. Indeed, because the refugees themselves made up a significant portion of the population in the late territorial period, many of the sights and sounds would have been familiar. Most important, however, the refugees’ new home in New Orleans, like their previous homes in St. Domingue, Jamaica, and Cuba, was a slave society. Once they had been in the city for a few days, possibly even a few hours, they would have likely encountered both the slave market and the courthouse. The slave market was symbolic of the material structure that dominated the lower Mississippi valley—the commerce in slaves and slave-grown products. The courthouse was symbolic of the legal structure that supported this material structure. The legal structure is the subject of the next chapter.
2
A Legal System in Flux
When Jean Baptiste sued for his freedom in the New Orleans City Court in 1811, he was invoking Spanish law before a francophone judge in an American court. The petitioner, a thirty-year-old black man, admitted to being a slave but claimed a legal right to purchase his own freedom based on a contract formed when Louisiana was still a Spanish colony. His petition alleges that on July 4, 1789, Andres Almonaster, his master, contracted with Coffi, his father, to grant liberty to all four of Coffi’s children for a total sum of 2,400 pesos.1 Coffi had paid a total of 316 pesos before he died in the late 1790s. Shortly thereafter, Almonaster also died. In 1811, Jean Baptiste asked the City Court to order Almonaster’s widow, Louise Laronde Castillon, to accept the sum of 284 piastres and grant him his freedom.2 Thus, the case involved complex issues of not only contract law but also slave law, estate law, and conflict of laws from different jurisdictions. More important for Jean Baptiste, it would determine whether or not he would legally gain his freedom.3
The judge in the case, a white refugee of the Haitian Revolution named Louis Moreau-Lislet, denied Jean Baptiste’s claim. Although he did not provide a written rationale for his decision, Moreau-Lislet could have based his judgment on any number of factors. Jean Baptiste did not provide the original contract or proof of the payments made by Coffi but instead had the agreement’s terms and the payment schedule transcribed in the petition. He also did not offer a reason as to why he deserved the entire credit of 316 piastres—he never explained what happened to his three siblings who also stood to gain their freedom. The defendant’s lawyer, a former congressman from the Orleans Territory and future justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court named Pierre Derbigny, answered the petition by claiming that Louise Laronde Castillon did not inherit the obligation of her late husband. Perhaps most important, Jean Baptiste claimed his right to freedom by virtue of the Spanish policy of coartacion, which had been expressly overturned by the territorial legislature. Whatever his reasoning, the judge was well equipped to deal with all the complicated issues in Jean Baptiste’s case. Since he arrived in New Orleans from revolutionary St. Domingue after the Louisiana Purchase, Moreau-Lislet had spent a good part of his time familiarizing himself with both the laws of Spanish Louisiana and the legal system of Anglo-America.
This chapter examines the legal structure of New Orleans in the years following the Louisiana Purchase. It explores the interrelated juridical contests between civil law and common law jurists, between proponents and opponents of slavery, and between national and local rule of the lower Mississippi valley. It further illustrates the influence of West Indian refugees on the territory’s legal system and the way its laws treated free people of African descent. The legal system that emerged from these struggles was a reflection of the ideals of the Age of Revolution converging with the material conditions of plantation slavery. While the laws supported slavery, racism, and patriarchy, they also, above all else, protected property rights. The legal structure, therefore, allowed those free people of color with property to undercut some of the power structures created by slavery and racism.
The Many Legalities of the Louisiana Purchase
Jean Baptiste’s pursuit of his freedom was interrupted by the Louisiana Purchase, which raised a plethora of juridical questions. In this treaty, signed on April 30, 1803, the Republic of France agreed to transfer the “Province of Louisiana” to the United States of America for a total sum of 78 million francs (the equivalent of $15 million), thereby doubling the size of the United States. While the Louisiana Purchase was later seen as a coup for President Jefferson, in part because it secured westerners unfettered access to the Mississippi River and, through it, the Gulf of Mexico, it met strong opposition at the time. Federalists opposed the treaty out of fear that it would strain relations with Great Britain, while some members of Jefferson’s own party feared that it set a dangerous precedent for expansive powers of the national government. Many believed that the treaty was unconstitutional. Jefferson himself, who had previously favored limitations on the power of the central government, temporarily set aside his idealism to tell his supporters in Congress that “what is practicable must often control what is pure theory.” The majority of Congress agreed, and the treaty narrowly passed a House vote, 59 to 57.4
In addition to the issue of its constitutionality, the treaty raised questions regarding how the newly acquired territory would be organized, who would govern, and under what law.5 The U.S. Congress addressed some of these questions on March 26, 1804, when it passed “An Act Erecting Louisiana into Two Territories and Providing for the Temporary Government Thereof.” Under this act, all of the Louisiana Purchase territory south of the thirty-third parallel (roughly all of the present-day state of Louisiana on the right bank of the river plus New Orleans) became the Orleans Territory. The law gave the president of the United States the power to appoint, among others, the governor, secretary, judges, and legislators of the territory. The legislative council was to be composed of “thirteen of the most fit and discreet persons of the territory … from among those holding real estate therein, and who shall have resided one year at least, in the said territory.” Together, the governor and legislative council had the “power to alter, modify, or repeal the laws which may be in force at the commencement of this act … but no law shall be valid which is inconsistent with the constitution and laws of the United States.” Finally, the March 26 law incorporated a total of twenty-one other laws of Congress so as to apply to the Territory of Orleans, among them, the Fugitive Slave Law and “An Act to Prohibit the Carrying