"The era of the Louisiana Purchase represents one of the foundation epics in America's nineteenth century and links the South with the subsequent history of the western frontier. William C. C. Claiborne, the first governor of Orleans Territory, was at the hub of officials who grappled with the political, diplomacy and administrative challenges that arose following the Purchase.

Letters both to and from Claiborne 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. Among the individuals featured are Dr. John Watkins; Judge James Workman; Lewis Kerr; George T.

Ross; George Pollock; Evan Jones; Benjamin Morgan; William Donaldson; Richard Claiborne; Eugene Dorsiere; the malleable Joseph Deville Degoutin Bellechasse; the inflexible Marques de Casa Calvo; the irascible Vicente Folch y Juan; Abraham R. Ellery, the Federalist friend of Alexander Hamilton; and the opportunistic Samuel Fulton. For most of the men, Bradley's is the first published study of their lives.".

"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 ensnared 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. His essays joined with 218 of Claiborne's letters makes Interim Appointment of incalculable value.

It provides a superb bibliography of, and fresh insights into, the events and personalities of the years 1803-1815 and beyond, amplifying the political, constitutional, and social histories of both Louisiana and the United States."--BOOK JACKET.