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dollars from others. He built high-efficiency furnaces, which recovered far more metal from each ton of ore than his predecessors had managed (and allowed him to profitably mine the tailings of previous operations on the site). So efficient was Austin’s operation that other miners in the region brought him their ore to smelt; even after he took his 50 percent cut, they came out ahead. He built a tall tower for the production of shot (molten lead was allowed to dribble from trays at the top of the tower, and in the weightlessness of free fall congealed into spherical beads that were collected at the bottom). Within several years his operation achieved an annual production of eight hundred thousand pounds, making Austin a very wealthy man. In 1810 he estimated his net value at $190,000.

    But nothing stayed the same for long on the frontier—not even the location of the frontier. Within a half decade of his arrival, Austin found himself once more on American soil. In 1800 France’s ambitious new ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte, extorted Louisiana back from Spain, and in 1803, after a sudden change of plans, he sold it to the United States. Moses Austin, having abandoned the country of his birth and sworn fealty to Spain, found himself living again on American territory. Had Austin been more patriotic, he might have celebrated this unexpected reunion; but had he been more patriotic he might never have left American soil. In fact, Austin’s loyalty was as fluid as that of many frontiersmen, who acted like Americans on the American side of the border, like Spanish on the Spanish side, and even like Indians among the Indians.
    In at least one sense, American sovereignty posed a threat to Austin’s position—a threat worse than that of the Indians or the French. His control of Mine à Breton rested on Spanish authority; whether the Americans, who were notorious for ignoring titles granted under predecessor regimes, would accept his control was an open question. Some did; others didn’t. The latter included a Tennesseean named John Smith, who had a murderous temper and the ear of James Wilkinson, the newly appointed governor of Upper Louisiana. Wilkinson had been a general in the Revolutionary War, a land speculator and merchant afterward, and an intriguer all his life. During the 1790s he engaged the Spanish authorities of Louisiana in negotiations that seemed at least faintly treasonous to his many American enemies, but influential friends in the American government deemed his local knowledge essential for a territorial governor and won him the job.
    Between them, Smith and Wilkinson made Austin’s life a trial. Smith stirred the French miners against Austin, challenged the validity of Austin’s title, and apparently attempted to provoke Austin to a duel. “What have I done to this
monster
in society?” Austin moaned to a friend. Austin declined to duel, but he had no effective answer to the campaign of sabotage and character assassination Smith mounted against him, with Wilkinson’s help.
    Austin’s deeper problems derived from the tumultuous state of the American economy, which in turn reflected the unsettled condition of American diplomacy. During Thomas Jefferson’s second term as president the serial fighting between Britain and France became a battle to the death; in their extremity both sides preyed on American shipping, with Britain seizing American vessels bound for France and France waylaying American ships headed for Britain. Jefferson judged that American security required keeping clear of Europe’s wars, and he persuaded Congress to embargo trade with Europe. The embargo proved an economic disaster, plunging American seaports into depression and generating shock waves that spread up American rivers as far as St. Louis. The lead market collapsed, leaving Moses Austin with tons of metal he couldn’t unload and stacks of bonds he couldn’t redeem.
    His