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At Noon on November 30, 1803, at the Cabildo, Pierre Clément de Laussat took formal possession of the Louisiana colony from the Spanish officials, Don Manuel de Salcedo and the Marqués de Casa-Calvo. To mark the event, he issued this proclamation to the "Louisianais" which focused not on the retrocession of the colony to France but on the transfer of Louisiana to the United States, so soon to occur. "They are about to arrive," he says of the United States Commissioners; "I am awaiting them." In the proclamation, Laussat sought to congratulate and reassure the United States' newest citizens. "You are going to form part of a People already numerous & powerful," he wrote, "renowned also for its activity, its industry, its patriotism and its enlightenment, & which, in its rapid advance, promised to fill one of the most splendid places that a people has ever occupied on the face of the globe."
     [Letters, Proclamations, and Decrees from Pierre-Clément de Laussat, 1803-1804, #433]
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