Interim Appointment: W.C.C. Clairborne Letter Book, 1804-1805

Rediscovered letters and new essays illuminate the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase William C. C. Claiborne, the first governor of Orleans Territory, was at the hub of officials who grappled with the political, diplomatic, and administrative challenges that arose following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. His letters during the critical months of 1804-1805, mysteriously excluded in 1917 from Dunbar Rowland’s Official Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801-1816, are now made widely accessible, over half of them published here for the first time. To enhance appreciation of the letters, Jared William Bradley has furnished biographical sketches of thirty-one heretofore little known individuals crucial to Claiborne’s correspondence, delineating their personalities and their contributions to the development of law and the establishment of American government in the French Creole society. Bradley also treats in four essays the origins and growth of the Municipal, or the New Orleans city council; two organizations of New Orleans businessmen that were ensured in the so-called Burr Conspiracy in 1807; and the early history of Fort St. Philip, which guarded Mississippi River access to New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico. Bradley’s essays joined with 218 of Claiborne’s letters makes Interim Appointments of incalculable value. It provides a superb bibliography of, and fresh insights into, the political, constitutional, and social histories of both Louisiana and the United States. This book is the first title to be published in a new series called The Louisiana Purchase Collection, edited by Paul E. Hoffman, professor of history at LSU.