HOW WE BOUGHT LOUISIANA
BY HELEN LOCKWOOD COFFIN
It is a hard matter to tell just how much power a little thing has,because little things have the habit of growing. That was the troublethat France and England and Spain and all the other big nations had withAmerica at first. The thirteen colonies occupied so small andunimportant a strip of land that few people thought they would everamount to much. How could such insignificance ever bother old England,for instance, big and powerful as she was? To England's great loss shesoon learned her error in underestimating the importance or strength ofher colonies.
France watched the giant and the pygmy fighting together, and learnedseveral lessons while she was watching. For one thing, she found outthat the little American colonies were going to grow, and so she said toherself: "I will be a sort of back-stop to them. These Americans aregoing to be foolish over this bit of success, and think that justbecause they have won the Revolution they can do anything they wish todo. They'll think they can spread out all over this country and grow tobe as big as England herself; and of course anybody can see that that isimpossible. I'll just put up a net along the Mississippi River, andprevent them crossing over it. That will be the only way to keep themwithin bounds."
And so France held the Mississippi, and from there back to the RockyMountains, and whenever the United States citizen desired to go west ofthe Mississippi, France said: "No, dear child. Stay within your own yardand play, like a good little boy," or something to that effect.
Now the United States citizen didn't like this at all; he had pushed hisway with much trouble and expense and hard work through bands of Indiansand through forests and over rivers and mountains, into Wisconsin andIllinois, and he wished to go farther. And, besides, he wanted to havethe right to sail up and down the Mississippi, and so save himself thetrouble of walking over the land and cutting out his own roads as hewent. So when France said, "No, dear," and told him to "be a goodlittle boy and not tease," the United States citizen very naturallyrebelled.
Mr. Jefferson was President of the United States at that time, and hewas a man who hated war of any description. He certainly did not wish tofight with his own countrymen, and he as certainly did not wish to fightwith any other nation, so he searched around for some sort of acompromise. He thought that if America could own even one port on thisuseful river and had the right of Mississippi navigation, the matterwould be settled with satisfaction to all parties. So he sent JamesMonroe over to Paris to join our minister, Mr. Livingston, and see ifthe two of them together could not persuade France to sell them theisland of New Orleans, on which was the city of the same name.
Now Napoleon was the ruler of France, and he was dreaming dreams andseeing visions in which France was the most important power in America,because she owned this wonderful Mississippi River and all this"Louisiana" which stretched back from the river to the Rockies. Healready held forts along the river, and he was planning to strengthenthese and build some new ones. But you know what happens to the plans ofmice and men sometimes. Napoleon was depending upon his army to helphim out on these plans, but his armies in San Domingo were swept away bywar and sickness, so that on the day he had set for them to move up intoLouisiana not a man was able to go. At the same time Napoleon had onhand another scheme against England, which was even more important thanhis plans for America, and which demanded men and money. Besides this,he was shrewd enough to know that he could not hold this far-awayterritory for any long time against England, which had so many moreships than France. He suddenly changed his mind about his Americanpossessions, and nearly sent Mr. Monroe and Mr. Livingston into a stateof collapse by offering to sell them not only New Orleans but also thewhole Province of Louisiana.
MAP OF THE
UNITED STATES
SHOWING
THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE
AND OTHER
ACCESSIONS OF TERRITORY.]
There was no time to write to President Jefferson and ask his advice,and this was before the days of the cable; so Monroe and Livingston tookthe matter into their own hands, and signed the contract whichtransferred the Louisiana territory to the United States for aconsideration of $15,000,000. They were severely criticized by many oftheir own countrymen, and they had some doubts of their own about thewisdom of their action. You see, nobody knew then that corn and wheatwould grow so abundantly in this territory, or that beyond theMississippi there were such stretches of glorious pasture-lands, or thatunderneath its mountainous regions were such mines of gold, silver, andcopper. Americans saw only the commercial possibilities of the river,and all they wanted was the right of navigating it and the permission toexplore the unknown country to the westward.
But Jefferson and Monroe and Livingston builded better than they knew.All this happened a hundred years ago; and to-day that old Louisianaterritory is, in natural resources, the wealthiest part of the wholeUnited States. Without that territory in our possession we should haveno Colorado and no Wyoming, no Dakotas, or Nebraska, or Minnesota, orMontana, or Missouri, or Iowa, or Kansas, or Arkansas, or Louisiana, orOklahoma, or Indian Territory.
For all these reasons we owe our most sincere and hearty thanks to thepatriotic and far-sighted men who were concerned in buying thisterritory for the United States.