Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 | Page 9

of the Mississippi, and the flag of St. George be waving over New Orleans. Monroe and Livingston both realized that hesitation would be fatal; and they boldly took the responsibility of purchasing a territory of unknown but prodigious extent, and of pledging the credit of the government for a sum which, rated by the ability to pay, was larger than a similar pledge to-day for five hundred millions of dollars.
The price agreed upon was eleven million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in six per cent United States bonds, the interest of which was made payable in London, Amsterdam, and Paris, and the principal at the treasury in Washington in sums of three millions per annum, beginning fifteen years after the bonds were issued. In a separate treaty made the same day, the United States agreed to pay twenty million francs additional, to be applied by France to the satisfaction of certain claims owed to American citizens. Thus the total cost of Louisiana was eighty millions of francs, or, in round numbers, fifteen millions of dollars.
No difficulty was experienced in putting the United States in possession of the territory and of its chief emporium, New Orleans. The French Government had regarded the possession of so much consequence, that Bernadotte, afterwards King of Sweden, was at one time gazetted as Captain-general; and, some obstacles supervening, the eminent General Victor, afterwards Marshal of France and Duke of Belluno, was named in his stead. But all these plans were brushed aside by one stroke of Bonaparte's pen; and the United States, in consequence of favoring circumstances growing out of European complications, and the bold and competent statesmanship of Jefferson, obtained a territory larger in area than that which was wrested from the British crown by the Revolutionary war.
It seems scarcely credible that the acquisition of Louisiana by Jefferson was denounced with a bitterness surpassing the partisan rancor with which later generations have been familiar. No abuse was too malignant, no epithet too coarse, no imprecation too savage, to be employed by the assailants of the great philosophic statesman who laid so broad and deep the foundations of his country's growth and grandeur. President of a feeble republic, contending for a prize which was held by the greatest military power of Europe, and whose possession was coveted by the greatest naval power of the world, Mr. Jefferson, through his chosen and trusted agents, so conducted his important negotiation that the ambition of the United States was successfully interposed between the necessities of the one and the aggressive designs of the other. Willing to side with either of these great powers, for the advantage of his own country, not underrating the dangers of war, yet ready to engage in it for the control of the great water-way to the Gulf, the President made the largest conquest ever peacefully achieved, and at a cost so small that the total sum expended for the entire territory does not equal the revenue which has since been collected on its soil in a single month in time of great public peril. The country thus acquired forms to-day the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota west of the Mississippi, Colorado north of the Arkansas, besides the Indian Territory and the Territories of Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Texas was also included in the transfer, but the Oregon country was not. The Louisiana purchase did not extend beyond the main range of the Rocky Mountains, and our title to that large area which is included in the State of Oregon and in the Territories of Washington and Idaho rests upon a different foundation, or, rather, upon a series of claims, each of which was strong under the law of nations. We claimed it first by right of original discovery of the Columbia River by an American navigator in 1792; second, by original exploration in 1805; third, by original settlement in 1810, by the enterprising company of which John Jacob Astor was the head; and, lastly and principally, by the transfer of the Spanish title in 1819, many years after the Louisiana purchase was accomplished. It is not, however, probable that we should have been able to maintain our title to Oregon if we had not secured the intervening country. It was certainly our purchase of Louisiana that enabled us to secure the Spanish title to the shores of the Pacific, and without that title we could hardly have maintained our claim. As against England our title seemed to us to be perfect, but as against Spain our case was not so strong. The purchase of Louisiana may therefore be fairly said to have carried with it and secured to us our possession of Oregon.
The acquisition of Louisiana brought incalculable wealth, power, and prestige to the Union, and must always