became the possessor of both banks of the lower Mississippi and a near neighbor to the United States.

The natural uneasiness of the Americans, when in 1802 they heard of this change, was heightened when the Spanish governor withdrew the privilege of sending goods through New Orleans free of duty, which had been secured by the treaty of 1795. Plainly, he meant to turn over the province to France with the river blocked to American trade. Hence it was that Jefferson wrote to Robert R. Livingston, our minister in France: "There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of Contemporaries, III. 363 which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans. The day that France takes possession of New Orleans . . . from that moment, we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation."

220. Pur

chase of

A party in Congress wanted to take New Orleans by military force; and an act passed authorizing 80,000 volunteers. Jefferson was cooler. He instructed Livingston to Louisiana attempt the purchase of the Island of Orleans and the (1803) strip to the eastward between the southern boundary of the United States and the Gulf. In January, 1803, he designated his friend James Monroe as a special envoy to France to aid Livingston. Fortunately for America, Napoleon was already tired of his own plan, for war with Great Britain was about to break out again, and it would be impossible for him to protect the sea route to Louisiana. Meanwhile he failed to reconquer the necessary halfway station of Haiti, where Toussaint L'Ouverture, a negro general, aided by fever, had the impertinence to destroy 10,000 of his best troops. Therefore, while Livingston was trying to buy West Florida and New Orleans, suddenly the French foreign office asked him what he would give for the whole of Louisiana.

One day later Monroe arrived, and the two ministers did not hesitate to go beyond their instructions by accepting the offer, but for some weeks haggled over the price. The treaty

was completed April 30, 1803; the United States was to pay $11,250,000 in cash and $3,750,000 to American claimants against the French government, a total of $15,000,000; in return Napoleon ceded the Island of Orleans and the whole western half of the valley of the Mississippi, with an area of 900,000 square miles (§ 223). Livingston, Monroe, and Jefferson each thought that he was responsible for this splendid addition to the territory of the United States. Louisiana came like a plum dropping from the tree; but Jefferson is fairly entitled to the credit of seeing more clearly than any other man of his time the danger of having France as a neighbor, and the possibilities of the West.

Since there was nothing in the Constitution on the question of annexing territory, Jefferson asked for a constitutional amendment; but his friends found authority in the old 221. IncorFederalist doctrine of implied powers, and the treaty was poration of promptly ratified. Notwithstanding factious protests by (1803-1812) some of the New England Federalists, the next step was to take possession of the new country; New Orleans was turned

Louisiana

over by the Spanish
commander to a French
officer (November 30,
1803), and twenty days
thereafter by the
Frenchman to the
United States; though
the distant Spanish
post of St. Louis was
not transferred till
March, 1804.

The population of
the new acquisition was

about 40,000, almost entirely settled along the water front of the Mississippi and Red rivers. Congress speedily passed an

act organizing the lower part of Louisiana as the Territory of Orleans, with an appointed legislature. The people of New Orleans were in an uproar. They did not like the new laws, the new language, or the new governor, and Congress goodnaturedly gave them a territorial government with an elective legislature (March, 1805). Seven years later an act was passed for the admission of this small part of the old province of Louisiana as "Louisiana," an equal state in the Union.

Jefferson's far sight early penetrated into the northwestern Pacific coast, where in 1792 Captain Gray, in the ship Colum222. Reach- bia of Boston, had found the mouth of a great river, ing out for and named it for his ship. As soon as Jefferson became Oregon (1792-1811) President, he induced Congress to provide for an overland expedition to the Oregon country, under the command of William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, Jefferson's private secretary. The whole Missouri valley had become part of the United States by the annexation of Louisiana when this expedition left St. Louis with forty-five men (May 14, 1804). In the course of six months they ascended the Missouri 1600 miles; they camped all winter, and in the spring of 1805 started

northwest, under the guidance of the Indian "Bird Woman," who carried her child on her back. In August, 1805, they reached a point on the Missouri River where a man could bestride it; and then they struck across the mountains on horseback and found a westward-flowing river; following down, they reached the mouth of the Columbia River (November 15, 1805), 4000 miles from St. Louis.

This expedition through a country absolutely unknown to white men opened up half a continent; and it was the second link (next to Gray's discovery) in the chain which bound Oregon to the United States. Eventually it gave the United States a Pacific sea front, and opened a broad window toward the Pacific islands and Asia. In 1811 John Jacob Astor forged the third link of our possession, by establishing a fur-trading post at Astoria, on the south side of the Columbia.

Meanwhile, in 1806, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, with a command of United States troops, reached the northern boundary of Louisiana in an exploration up the Mississippi River to find its source. He then made his way overland, discovered Pikes Peak, and came out beyond our boundaries in New Mexico.

Florida question

The annexation of Louisiana soon led to serious boundary controversies with Spain. The treaty of 1803 contained no description of Louisiana except the phrase of the treaty 223. West of San Ildefonso: "with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France pos- (1803–1813) sessed it"; but "in the hands of Spain" Louisiana did not include West Florida; while "as France possessed it" Louisiana extended to the Perdido. The Spanish government insisted that their cession of Louisiana in 1800 was not intended to include West Florida, and Talleyrand supported that contention. Yet Livingston, who had started out to purchase West Florida, could not give up the idea that he had secured it as part of Louisiana, and Jefferson soon took up that belief.

Spain was in possession of the disputed strip, and refused to

give it up. In 1810 the United States annexed part of the region, and in 1811 Congress passed a secret act authorizing the President to take East Florida also, but it was not till 1814 that the whole even of West Florida was occupied. In the latest official map of the United States, West Florida does not appear as part of Louisiana.

224. Burr insurrec

tion

Our relations with Spain in 1806 were further disturbed by difficulties along the southwest boundary of Louisiana. Aaron Burr's willingness to accept the presidency in 1801 was never forgiven by Jefferson, and in the presiden(1804-1807) tial election of 1804 George Clinton of New York was put in his place for Vice President. Jefferson and Clinton swept the country; the Federalist candidates got only 14 electoral votes. Meanwhile Burr was defeated as independent candidate for governor of New York, and laid this defeat to Alexander Hamilton, who had warned his friends that Burr was dangerous and untrustworthy. Burr therefore forced a duel on Hamilton and killed him (July 11, 1804).

When his term as Vice President expired in 1805, Burr was a desperate man. Being indicted for the murder of Hamilton, he thought it prudent to go west for a time, and returned with vague schemes for settling or conquering a region in the Southwest on, or more probably beyond, the Spanish boundary. In 1806 he raised a few score men, who in his absence were drawn up in a kind of warlike array on Blennerhasset Island, in the Ohio River. He joined this force and floated down the river (December, 1806), and turned into the Mississippi. His friend, and, as he hoped, his partner, James Wilkinson, general of the United States army, played him false. Hastily making an agreement that the Sabine River should be the temporary boundary of Louisiana, Wilkinson hurried to New Orleans, arrested some of Burr's followers, and forwarded to Jefferson a letter in which Burr proposed to seize New Orleans, where "there would be some confiscation." Jefferson had been wait