Louisiana Purchase’s Heroes Bound Over for (Mock) Trial

The patriotic rah-rah is everywhere in this 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.

Tributes to Thomas Jefferson pour out. Re-enactors trace the route of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who were dispatched to the Northwest to explore the new territory. And writers burn through pages about how the purchase catapulted the U.S. onto the world stage.

But in the din of celebration, some descendants from the gumbo of colonial Louisiana ask: Was the 1803 deal really that great? Or even legal?

Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte -- the heroes behind “the greatest real estate deal in history” -- are going on trial April 2 in a federal courthouse in Lafayette, the capital of Cajun America.

Of course, they won’t be on trial in person. Rather, Cajun lawyers will bring back their personas at a mock trial.

“It’s more of a play to make people think about issues that they haven’t probably thought about,” said David Marcantel, a lawyer crafting the trial’s script. “I’m sure that anything that is said that is not just a celebration of the sale will be offensive to some people.”

Two lines of legal argument are under consideration:

* Did the sale -- $15 million for 828,000 square miles -- violate the Louisiana Civil Code that states a sale can be rescinded for being less than half of the fair market value? If so, then Louisiana ought to be returned to France.

* Should France pay for the damage it caused to Louisiana’s culture, language and heritage by abandoning the French colonials?

“Two hundred years ago, people and the land were sold and there was no consideration to protect the language, the culture, the people. It was a tragedy,” said lawyer John Hernandez III, the trial’s organizer.

“What right did Napoleon have to sell the inhabitants of Louisiana to the United States?” Marcantel asked. “Under modern law, I’d say he didn’t have a right. And there isn’t anything in the Constitution that really authorizes Jefferson to do this.”

These Cajun lawyers are right on the money, according to some historians.

“We think of the Louisiana Purchase as bringing freedom to this part of the world, but in fact the peoples here enjoyed less freedom,” said Daniel Usner, a Vanderbilt University professor who specializes in colonial history. He is not affiliated with the mock trial.

“Jefferson himself knew at the time that he was doing something constitutionally problematic and socially troublesome,” Usner said.

When the Americans took New Orleans and the scattered French outposts, they were met with silence and resentment. More than 200 years of snail-paced French colonization was at an end.

“There was a concerted effort to Americanize the former colony. Linguistic and ultimately cultural diversity were lost,” said Carl Brasseaux, an Acadian historian with the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.

The French language was attacked and officially banned in 1921, Brasseaux said. A 1974 state constitution revived it.

“If you talk to older Cajuns now, the story will come up again and again about how they were punished for speaking French on the school grounds. This marked an entire generation,” Marcantel said.

A more insidious legacy grew out of the Louisiana Purchase, Brasseaux said. Since the purchase, Louisiana’s French have been characterized as decadent and lazy, he said.

“When you look at the traditional canon of American virtues -- such as industrialism, frugality -- see how many times those turn up in popular modern descriptions of New Orleans,” Brasseaux said. “Why is New Orleans called the Big Easy, first of all? ... It’s not called the Crescent City anymore.”

Some soul-searching is in order, then -- across the board.

Raphael Cassimere Jr., a black historian at the University of New Orleans, said the purchase perpetuated slavery.

“An event like this mock trial will raise questions about inevitability and the desirability of U.S. expansion,” Usner said. “Four cents an acre -- that was just the beginning of the costs.”

Marcantel said the mock trial may end with closing arguments in New Orleans around Dec. 20, the day the king of Spain and the presidents of the United States and France have been invited to hold a ceremony to celebrate the transfer of power 200 years ago.

“I remember a cartoon about a court jester who was about to have his head chopped off and the executioner said to him: ‘You didn’t just tell jokes; you really made us think.’ So that’s what may happen to us -- people may want to chop off our heads, but we hope to make them think,” Marcantel said.