Slavery in the colonial United States in the Caribbean: Guadeloupe and especially Saint-Domingue.) After the port of New Orleans was founded in 1718 with access to the Gulf Coast, French colonists imported more African slaves to the Illinois Country for use as agricultural or mining laborers. By the mid-eighteenth century, slaves accounted for as many as a third of the limited population in that rural area. Slavery was much more extensive in colonial Louisiana, where the French developed sugar cane plantations along the Mississippi river. Slavery was maintained during the French (1699 – 1763, and 1800 – 1803) and Spanish (1763 – 1800) periods of government.
History of St. Louis (1763–1803) Louisiana to an egalitarian French government. In a show of strength, the Spanish governor sent a fleet of galleys and soldiers with military supplies to reinforce Spanish control of St. Louis. However, even while the Spanish colonial officials were trying to maintain control of Louisiana, the Spanish government was attempting to transfer the territory to France. The Spanish government secretly returned the unprofitable Louisiana territory to France in October 1800 in the Treaty of San Ildefonso. After a promise by French leader Napoleon Bonaparte not to sell Louisiana without giving Spain the right of first refusal, the Spanish officially transferred