Expansion and Land Hunger.-The first of the great measures which drove the Republicans out upon this new national course-the purchase of the Louisi-ana territory-was the product of circumstances rather than of their deliberate choosing.It was not the lack of land for his cherished farmers that led Jeffer-son to add such an immense domain to the original possessions of the United States.In the Northwest territory,now embracing Ohio,Indiana,Illinois,Mich-igan,Wisconsin,and a portion of Minnesota,settlements were mainly confined to the north bank of the Ohio River.To the south,in Kentucky and Tennessee,where there were more than one hundred thousand white people who had pushed over the mountains from Virginia and the Carolinas,there were still wide reaches of untilled soil.The Alabama and Mississippi regions were vast Indian frontiers of the state of Georgia,unsettled and almost unexplored.Even to the wildest imagination there seemed to be territory enough to satisfy the land hunger of the American people for a century to come.
The Significance of the Mississippi River.-At all events the East,then the center of power,saw no good reason for expansion.The planters of the Carolinas,the manufacturers of Pennsylvania,the importers of New York,the shipbuilders of New England,looking to the seaboard and to Europe for trade,refinements,and sometimes their ideas of government,were slow to appreciate the place of the West in national economy.The better educated the Easterners were,the less,it seems,they comprehended the destiny of the nation.Sons of Federalist fathers at Williams College,after a long debate decided by a vote of fifteen to one that the purchase of Louisiana was undesirable.
On the other hand,the pioneers of Kentucky,Ohio,and Tennessee,unlearned in books,saw with their own eyes the resources of the wilderness.Many of them had been across the Mississippi and had beheld the rich lands awaiting the plow of the white man.Down the great river they floated their wheat,corn,and bacon to ocean-going ships bound for the ports of the seaboard or for Europe.The land journeys over the mountain barriers with bulky farm produce,they knew from experience,were almost impossible,and costly at best.Nails,bolts of cloth,tea,and coffee could go or come thatway,but not corn and bacon.A free outlet to the sea by the Mississippi was as essential to the pioneers of the Kentucky region as the harbor of Boston to the merchant princes of that metropolis.
Louisiana under Spanish Rule.-For this reason they watched with deep solicitude the fortunes of the Spanish king to whom,at the close of the Seven Years'War,had fallen the Louisiana territory stretching from New Orleans to the Rocky Mountains.While he controlled the mouth of the Mississippi there was little to fear,for he had neither the army nor the navy necessary to resist any invasion of American trade.Moreover,Washington had been able,by the exercise of great tact,to secure from Spain in 1795a trading privilege through New Orleans which satisfied the present requirements of the frontiersmen even if it did not allay their fears for the future.So things stood when a swift succes-sion of events altered the whole situation.
Louisiana Transferred to France.-In July,1802,a royal order from Spain instructed the officials at New Orleans to close the port to American produce.About the same time a disturb-ing rumor,long current,was c onfirmed -Napoleon had coerced Spain into returning Louisiana to France by a secret treaty signed in 1800."The scalers of the Alps and con-querors of Venice"now looked across the sea for new scenes of adventure.The West was ablaze with excitement.A call for war ran through the frontier;expe-ditions were organized to pre-vent the landing of the French;and petitions for instant actionflooded in upon Jefferson.
A Courtyard in Old New Orleans
Jefferson Sees the Danger.-Jefferson,the friend of France and sworn en-emy of England,compelled to choose in the interest of America,never winced."The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France,"he wrote to Livingston,the American minister in Paris,"works 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 Or-leans through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass tomarket....France,placing herself in that door,assumes to us an attitude of defi-ance.Spain might have retained it quietly for years.Her pacific dispositions,her feeble state would induce her to increase our facilities there....Not so can it ever be in the hands of France....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 the 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....This is not a state of things we seek or desire.It is one which this measure,if adopted by France,forces on us as necessarily as any other cause by the laws of nature brings on its necessary effect."