Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 | Page 9

formally concluded. Mr. Monroe and Mr. Livingston had no
authority to negotiate for so vast an extent of territory; but the former
was fully possessed of President Jefferson's views, and felt assured that
his instructions would have been ample if the condition of France had
been foreseen when he sailed from America. Communication with
Washington was impossible. Under the most favorable circumstances,
an answer could not be expected in less then three months. By that time
British ships would probably hold the mouths 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