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to his son-in-law, Jack Eppes, dated September 27, 1811:

"I am so far, in that case, from believing that our reputation will be tarnished by our not having mixed in the mad contests of the rest of the world, that, setting aside the ravings of pepper-pot politicians, of whom there are enough in every age and country, I believe it will place us high in the scale of wisdom to have preserved our country tranquil and prosperous during a contest which prostrated the honor, power, independence, laws, and property of every country on the other side of the Atlantic. Which of them have better preserved their honor? Has Spain, has Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Prussia, Austria, the other German powers, Sweden, Denmark, or even Russia? And would we accept the infamy of France or England in exchange for our honest reputation, or the result of their enormities despotism to the one, and bankruptcy and prostration to the other in exchange for the prosperity, the freedom, and independence which we have preserved safely through the wreck?"

There was ever present for Jefferson, and there is ever present for the true Jeffersonian since, a broad vision of world democracy and world peace.

Henry Adams splendidly says:

"Jefferson aspired beyond the ambition of a nationality and embraced in his view the whole future of man. . . . He wished to begin a new era. Hoping for a time when the world's ruling interest would cease to be local and should become universal . . . he set himself to the task of governing with this golden age in view. Few men have dared to legislate, as though eternal peace were at hand, in a world torn by wars and convulsions and drowned in blood; but this was what Jefferson aspired to do. As he conceived a true American policy; war was a blunder, an unnecessary risk; and even in case of robbery and aggression the United States, he believed, had only to stand on the defensive in order to obtain justice in the end. He would not consent to build up a new nationality merely to create more armies and navies, to perpetuate the crimes

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and follies of Europe. The central Government at Washington should not be permitted to indulge in the miserable ambitions, that had made the Old World a hell, and frustrated the hopes of humanity."

Shall we permit what Jefferson would not? Is the spirit of peace to continue permanently, as the indwelling soul of our body politic?

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Jefferson, the republican expansionist, had been all his life looking across the Blue Ridge from the plantation porch towards the Western country. During the Revolutionary war he realized the value of having possession of it. A Treaty of Peace would be based upon the principle of uti possidetis, and it was for this reason that George Rogers Clark, whom John Randolph of Roanoke subsequently called, in his high-flown style, the "Hannibal of the West," was sent to take possession of the northwestern country. Sufficient attention has never been paid by historians to the effect of the success of this movement upon the subsequent extent of our national domain.

When Jefferson was Secretary of State in 1790, it looked at one time as if Great Britain were about to seize New Orleans. Jefferson advised President Washington then, that the United States ought to go to war to prevent it. In the same year he gave a warning to France upon the same subject through the American Minister at Paris, saying that such an act would be regarded as unfriendly to the United States, and, in the long run, "not beneficial to France." Remember this was as early as 1790.

Let us take up the story of Louisiana.

The information came to America of the cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France. In so far as the Floridas were concerned it was error, but if the reader will keep in his mind the fact that the news came that way it will unravel some tangles. At once, Mr. Jefferson wrote to Mr. Livingston, our Minister at Paris, a letter dated April 18, 1802, which was strong and uncompromising.

In connection with the effort that has been made in some quarters to give an over-share of the credit of the purchase of Louisiana to Livingston, Mr. Morse is, at any rate, not deluded. He says in his "Life of Jefferson":

"Jefferson put on foot the movement for the purchase of Louisiana.... But that minister [meaning Livingston], before he had learned the executive purpose, had unfortunately expressed very different views of his own. He had told the French government that the United States cared not at all whether their neighbor at the mouth of the Mississippi was to be France or Spain, provided the right of navigation and privileges of deposit should not be interfered with. After correction, indeed, he began to discuss a purchase, and in time would probably have concluded it; but Jefferson, for many reasons, chose to send a special emissary."

Even later Livingston wrote to Madison these words:

"I would rather have confined our views to smaller objects, and I think that if we succeed, it would be good policy to exchange the west bank [of the Mississippi] with Spain for the Floridas, reserving New Orleans."

To this proposition Jefferson expressed his opposition, shrewdly believing that we would obtain Florida any

how, when the fruit was ripe; that is, whenever Spain involved in war would want or need to sell; and that the thing of chief value to us was the free and exclusive navigation of the Mississippi, which could not well consist with the possession by any power of territories upon its western bank, or even upon its western tributaries.

As late as the afternoon of April 11, 1803, Talleyrand astounded Livingston with these words: "Does the United States wish the whole of Louisiana?" Livingston replied: "No; we only want New Orleans and the Floridas." That evening Monroe arrived in Paris. He came with verbal instructions from the President, and the pathway for American negotiators was simplified.

Jefferson had said:

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"The day that France takes possession of New Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her low water mark. It seals the union of two nations, who in conjunction can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation. first cannon, which shall be fired in Europe, [will be] the signal for tearing up any settlement she may have made, and for holding the two continents of America in sequestration for the common purposes of the united British and American nations."

...

Professor Hart in his "Making the American Nation," says:

"Never in all his long and varied career did Jefferson's fox-like discretion stand him in better stead. Instead of following the public clamor, he calmly formulated a policy and carried it through to a most successful termination.

"The first thing to do was to quiet the public mind; the second was to regain the right of deposit; the third was to steer a tortuous

course between France and England and to take advantage of every possible opening to secure possession of New Orleans and the Gulf coast, and in this way to put an end forever to all chances of similar trouble in the future."

If it had been anybody but Jefferson the adjective above would have been "wise," not "tortuous."

In the preface of a little book entitled "The Louisiana Purchase," by Winship and Wallace, I find this language:

"Little did either France or the United States dream, on that eventful last day of April, 1803, of all that lay in the sale by the one and the purchase by the other of the vast and unknown territory called Louisiana."

If by that is meant that not many people in France, or in the United States dreamt all that it meant for the future, the statement is, of course, a truism. That is true, at the time of its happening, of almost any great transaction; but if it is meant that the men possessing the great guiding minds on both sides, Jefferson and Napoleon, did not fully realize why they did what they did, and what it all meant then and for the future, it is a great mistake.

Napoleon knew that he had made up his mind to go to war with England again; that, if he did, the chances of his being able to retain Louisiana were one in ten; that even if the United States did not stir a foot, Great Britain, if earnestly intent upon it, could capture New Orleans and hold it, and that holding New Orleans and the mouths of the river, she would control the interior, at least as against France. But he knew more than that, for Jefferson had told him so, that the United States, in the event of his keeping Louisiana, must

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