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RECENT ADDITIONS
acknowledges that authorities will have to persuade inhabitants to leave their homes by appealing to their patriotism and their distaste for English customs and religion, and by extolling the advantages of living in a milder climate with greater agricultural opportunities. According to the plan, the Canadians would be offered a large number of inducements to move south, including generous land grants, complete freedom of trade with Indians, exemption from taxes and fees, the rescinding of certain trade monopolies, and the permission to sell Louisiana tobacco in France. In the most surprising incentive mentioned ia the document, colonists would have been able to form deliberative assemblies to ensure equitable distribution of their privileges, with a special deputy at court who would voice their opinions and complaints to the Minister of the Navy. This arrangement would have given them a much more fair and democratic existence than any of their brethren in France at that time could have hoped for.
Compelling as this document is in its broad strokes, it is often most fascinating in its details: the lament that France spent five million pounds a year importing tobacco from Holland and England; the admission that French sea captains charged double the going rate to transport slaves to the New World; and the suggestion— clearly unsubstantiated—that silkworms, cochineals, and camels would all thrive in the Louisiana climate. Several of the observations on flora and fauna—not all of them chimeric—match almost verbatim reports made by French Louisiana officials to the new French intendant, Pierre-Clement de Laussat, more than 40 years later. Did these cliches originate with the early French naturalists and writers of travel memoirs, then make their way to Laussat’s era via retransmission in documents like this one? —HOWARD MARGOT
Louisiana Purchase Announcement, Bicycle Songs, and Merieult s Trade Woes
Telegraphe Extraordinary
2014.0039
The Telegraphe, a newspaper published in Baltimore between 1795 and 1807, issued a special broadside extra on Saturday morning, October 22, 1803. Less than 48 hours earlier, the United States Senate had formally approved the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, immediately doubling the size of the young nation as well as obtaining the strategically important port city of New Orleans. This recently acquired special issue is likely the second printing of the momentous news, preceded only by the printing of the treaty in the capital city’s leading newspaper, the National Intelligencer, and Washington Advertiser, on October 21.
Entitled Telegraphe Extraordinary, the broadside states, “Yesterday at about
5	o’clock, P. M. the Senate ratified the LOUISIANA TREATY; twenty four votes in the affirmative, and seven in the negative. . . . We congratulate our fellow-citizens on the prompt approbation given by the Senate to this important act.” The full text of the treaty follows, giving the names of its architects, Robert R. Livingston, James Monroe, and Fran£ois Barbe-Marbois.
Despite the gravity of the news related in this broadside, there was still space available in the lower right corner for three Baltimore merchants to promote their wares.
Broadsides printed on large sheets of paper were meant to disseminate information quickly, were intended for wide distribution, and were soon discarded.
These ephemeral announcements rarely survived past their immediate release, and no other extant copies of this one are known. —PAMELA D. ARCENEAUX
Carta de las Costas de... el Colfo de Mexico
2014.0250
This rare Spanish admiralty chart of the Gulf Coast dates to 1846. The extent of the map runs from the old province of Nuevo Santander, in northern Mexico, along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico to St. Joseph’s Peninsula in northern Florida. Despite its publication date, the engraving itself must have been completed prior to the United States’ annexation of Texas, in December 1845, because “Republica de Texas” appears in the northwest corner of the map.
The longitude and latitude of the entire northern Gulf Coast is used to delineate the various bays and rivers detailed in the engraving. Bays from the northern Gulf Coast of modern-day Mexico and southern Texas—Corpus Christi, Matagorda, and Galveston—are included, along with a
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