Elihu Stout, whose family moved from New Jersey to Kentucky in 1793, probably learned printing as an apprentice to Kentucky's first printer, John Bradford. He is known to have been in Bradford's employ at Lexington in 1798, and later he worked at Nashville. Invited by Governor William Henry Harrison to do the official printing for the Indiana Territory, Stout settled at Vincennes and began publishing his newspaper, the Indiana Gazette, on July 31, 1804.[58]

The Library of Congress' Indiana holdings begin with a copy of the second known imprint excepting newspaper issues, printed by Stout late in 1804: Laws for the Government of the District of Louisiana, Passed by the Governor and Judges of the Indiana Territory, at Their First Session, Uegun [sic] and Held at Vincennes, on Monday the First Day of October, 1804.[59] In March 1804 Congress had divided the lands of the Louisiana Purchase into two parts, the southern part becoming the Territory of Orleans (ultimately the State of Louisiana), the northern and larger part becoming the District of Louisiana. As explained in the preamble to the first law in this collection, "the Governor and Judges of the Indiana Territory [were] authorized by an act of Congress to make Laws for the District of Louisiana." They possessed this special authority from March 1804 until March 1805.

Fifteen laws make up the 136-page work. They are written in plain language, and the 10th, "Entitled a law, respecting Slaves," is a particularly engrossing social document. To illustrate, its second provision is

A subsequent compilation of laws made after the District became the Territory of Louisiana is described on p. 45, below.

The Library has handsomely rebound its copy in ruby morocco. Formerly it must have been in a wretched state, evidenced by the extreme marginal deterioration of its now laminated pages. It contains the signature of James Mackay (1759-1822), a Scottish fur trader, surveyor, and explorer who was later remembered at St. Louis as "the first English speaking white man who ever came west of the Mississippi river," and who was appointed "Commandant of the territory of Upper Louisiana" in 1803.[60] When the territory passed from Spanish to American rule in 1804, he became a judge of the Court of Quarter Sessions,[61] in which capacity he would have needed the volume of laws. The Library's copy is one of six unrelated volumes that were purchased together for $750 from the Statute Law Book Company of Washington, D.C., in 1905.