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"marry themselves," to use Mr. Jefferson's language in the negotiations, "to the British fleet and nation." He knew that Jefferson was only waiting, until the war broke out, for the co-operation of a British fleet, to turn loose the land-hungry and warlike frontiersmen of Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Mississippi Territory to seize the French possessions all the way down the river, including New Orleans.

That Jefferson fully understood the importance of the entire matter is indicated by his language:

"Every eye in the United States is now fixed on the affairs of Louisiana. Perhaps nothing since the Revolutionary War has produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation."

And this:

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"The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France works most sorely on the United States. It completely reverses all the political relations of the United States, and will form a new epoch in our political course. . . . There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market, which from its fertility will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce, and contain more than half of our inhabitants.

"France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific dispositions, her feeble state, would induce her to increase our facilities there, so that her possession of the place would be hardly felt by us. And it would not be very long, perhaps, when some circumstance might arise which might make the cession of it to us the price of something of more worth to her.

"Not so can it ever be in the hands of France; the impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us, and our character, which is as high-minded, enterprising and energetic as that of any nation on

earth, ... render it impossible that France and the United States can long continue friends, when they meet in so irritable a position. They, as well as we, must be blind if they do not see this; and we must be very improvident if we do not begin to make arrangements on that hypothesis."

As far as this particular great transaction was concerned, there were simply two parties to it: one, Napoleon the Great, and the other, Jefferson, the Seer the see-er.

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When the treaty was signed Napoleon said: "A few lines of a treaty restored to me the Province of Louisiana and repaired the fault of the French negotiator, who abandoned it in 1763. But scarce have I recovered it when I must lose it again." (Italics are always mine.) It was a case of "must," and Napoleon knew it. He realized fully what he was parting with. He also saw that, by its cession, he not only prevented a present alliance between these two English-speaking countries, but that he dealt a blow, which would, in the long run, possibly count very much against his arch enemy, England.

The only reason why his prophecy about "our humbling Britain's pride on the ocean" has not come to pass is that we have grown to be such a stupendous people in resources and reserved power, that nobody wishes to challenge us to a contest. If there were the slightest need, we would be in command of the seas.

Jefferson began to buy Louisiana without consulting Congress. Well does Mr. Bryce, in his "American Commonwealth," say: "This was the boldest step that a President of the United States has ever yet taken."

The committee report, which recommended the legislation appropriating $2,000,000 declared that it was

"to enable the executive to commence with more effect a negotiation with the French and Spanish Governments relative to the purchase from them of the Island of Orleans and of East and West Florida." Remember that it was at that time thought in America that New Orleans and East and West Florida were the lands ceded by Spain to France.

Upon the question how far Jefferson had in contemplation the possibility of securing all of the Louisiana territory, there have been many words written. The truth seems to be that the minimum of his desire, without which an English alliance and war must be our recourse, was the city and island of Orleans, to which he would have preferred these plus East and West Florida, but that he would have preferred above all else the purchase of everything, which Spain had ceded to France, of the exact extent of which he was then ignorant. Further, to sum it up, it appears that Monroe was sent with only verbal instructions to join Livingston, expressly in order that the American negotiators might be prepared for any contingency, which might present itself.

Few men were quicker to take a hint of any description than Napoleon the Great. No man ever lived who saw the end of a military, or naval, situation in advance, as completely as he. A man with a very much smaller military insight could have foreseen that while England remained the mistress of the seas, and the United States of America remained the mistress of their own land and, except for England, of their local waters, it would be impossible for him to land a single soldier at

the mouth of the Mississippi river, or, if landed, afterwards to withdraw him.

It has been frequently said that Napoleon "by one of his sudden impulses, changed his whole policy," and concluded to sell Louisiana. Lucien Bonaparte, in his half-serious, half-humorous, description of the conversation, which he and Joseph had with Napoleon, while the latter was in the bath tub, has spread this notion over the world.

Napoleon never acted by "sudden impulses." He sometimes pretended to do it. You may depend upon it that he traveled in thought all over this Louisiana question and found himself in a cul de sac, with no way out, except either the surrender of Louisiana in war, or its sale in peace. The only way he could have kept Louisiana was to have kept the peace. This he either could not do, or desired not to do. Hence, the moment he made up his mind to renew war with England, he wanted to sell Louisiana before he declared war and before his enemy could declare it. He even antedated the treaty. If he could sell it and get the money in his pocket, then he could leave England to do what she pleased either acquiesce, or take on a new enemy.

No great judge, or lawyer, nor any of Jefferson's friends, agreed with him in his doubt of the Constitutional right to acquire territory by treaty. Indeed, the sole contention even of the Federalists, in their subsequent effort to embarrass the administration was that Congress had no power to acquire territory "to be formed into States of the Union."

The threats of dissolution of the Union made by the New Englanders were not based so much upon the

ground of the acquisition of the territory, as on the declared intention of carving it up into States to be admitted to the Union, as a part of the governing power of the United States. The third article of the treaty of cession contained this language:

"The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated into the union of the United States and admitted, as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States."

It was when that part of the Louisiana Territory, which we now call the State of Louisiana, knocked at the doors of Congress for admission as a State and nine years after the purchase, that Josiah Quincy made that noted speech, in which he said:

"I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion, that if this bill passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved; that the states, which compose it, are free from their moral obligations; and that as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some to prepare definitely for a separation; amicably, if they can; violently, if they must."

It is rather curious, and a good deal of an impeachment of Mr. Jefferson's usual clearness of thought, that he should have permitted the character of our Government with regard to domestic affairs and its character with regard to foreign affairs to become mixed in his mind. The States delegated to the general Government all the power they ever possessed with regard to foreign affairs, consequently reserved none. All "the powers not delegated" to the Federal Government are reserved to the States, and to the people," but with regard to our relationship to foreign governments all power

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