NAPOLEON AND THE UNITED STATES
A Decisive Epoch -- Britain Dominates the Sea -- Napoleon's
Policy -- Trade and Western Empire -- To the West Indies -- Needs
of the Empire -- Great Britain's Sea Rival -- The Imperial Policy
Revealed -- Tempestuous Times in the United States -- Party
Government -- Livingston's Efforts -- Louisiana Purchased --
Effect on American Life -- Change in Constitutional Attitude --
The Kaleidoscope of Party Politics -- Preponderance of the South
and West -- The Louisiana Purchase and the Nation.
A decisive epoch was that of the eighteenth-century revolutions, a
crisis reached after long, slow preparation, precipitated by social
and religious bigotry, dizzy in its consummation, wild and headlong in
its flight, precipitous in its crash. Of this important time the
results have been so permanent that they are the commonplaces of
contemporary history; in what Carlyle called the revolutionary loom
the warp and woof were spun from the past, and the fabric is that from
which our working-clothes are cut. Within those years appeared the
great dominating soul of modern humanity, who displayed first and last
every weakness and every sordid meanness of mankind, but in such giant
dimensions that even his depravity inspires awe. His virtues were
equally portentous because they worked on the grand scale, with
materials that had been threshed and winnowed in the theory and
experience of five generations of mankind. It was well within this
stupendous age and by the act of this representative man that
Louisiana was redeemed from Spanish misrule and incorporated with the
territories of the United States. Nor was this all. A careful
examination of the general political situation at that time will
exhibit the elemental and almost ultimate fact that the sale of
Louisiana was coincident with the turn of the age.
The substance of the treaty of Amiens was that Great Britain
ostensibly abandoned all concern with the continent of Europe, and
that France, ostensibly too, should strictly mind her own affairs in
her colonies and the remoter quarters of the globe. George III removed
from his escutcheon the fleur-de-lis, and from his ceremonial title
the style of king of France. Events narrated in another connection
proved the whole negotiation to have been on both sides purely
diplomatic, an exchange of public and hollow courtesies in order to
gain time for the realities in the struggle for supremacy between the
world powers of the period, a struggle begun with modern history,
renewed in 1688, and destined to last until the exhaustion of one of
the contestants in 1815. Neither party to the treaty had the slightest
intention of observing either its spirit or its letter. While the
paper was in process of negotiation Bonaparte was consolidating French
empire on the Continent, and after its signature he did not pause for
a single instant to show even a formal respect for his obligations.
The reorganization of Holland in preparation for its incorporation
into the French system, the annexation of Piedmont and the defiance to
Russia in the matter of her Italian proteges, the Act of Moderation in
Switzerland, and finally, the contemptuous rearrangement of Germany,
were successive steps which reduced England to despair for her
continental trade. To her it seemed as if there could be no question
about two things: first, that the old order must be restored, in
order to safeguard her commerce; and second, that her colonial policy
must be more aggressive than ever.
It was Samuel Adams who first sneered at his fatherland as a people of
shopkeepers. The winged word soon became a commonplace to all
outsiders, but as it flew every nation that used the gibe girded
itself to enter the struggle for the same goal. France above all was
determined to be a nation of shopkeepers, and the First Consul of what
was still a shaky experiment in government knew well that rather than
abandon that ambition, he must sacrifice every other. After all, a
colonial empire has value only as the home nation has accessible
ports, manufactories for colonial products, and wares to exchange with
the producers. France had neither factories nor manufactures, and was
destitute of nearly the whole machinery of exchange. Her merchant
vessels sailed only by grace of the British fleet. Her home market was
dependent on British traders even in times of war. Bonaparte's
foremost thought, therefore, was for concentration of energy. The
sea-power of the world was Britain's, and her tyranny of the seas
without a real check; even the United States could only spit out
defiant and revengeful threats when her merchantmen were treated with
contempt on the high seas by British men-of-war. Therefore with swift
and comprehensive grasp he framed and announced a new policy. The
French envoy in London was informed that France was now forced to the
conquest of Europe--this of course for the stimulating of French
industries--and to the restoration of her Occidental empire. This was
most adroit. The embers of French patriotism could be fanned into a
white heat by these well-worn but never exhausted expedients--a blast
against perfidious Albion and a sentimental passion for the New France
beyond the Atlantic. The motions were a feint against England by the
formation of a second camp at Boulogne, where a force really destined
for Austria was assembled, and the wresting of Louisiana from the weak
Spanish hands which held it. As an incident of the agitation it seemed
best that the French democracy should have an imperial rather than a
republican title, and the style of emperor and empire was exhumed from
the garbage heap of the Terror for use in the pageantry of a court.
In Europe thus, as in the neighboring continents, the rearrangement of
politics, territorial boundaries, social, economic, and diplomatic
relations, a change which has made possible the modern system, was
really dependent on the events which led to the adoption of the policy
just described. But this policy involved a reversal of every sound
historical principle in Bonaparte's plans. For twelve years longer he
was to commit blunder upon blunder; to trample on national pride; to
elevate a false system of political economy into a fetish; to conduct,
as in the Moscow campaign, great migrations to the eastward in
defiance of nature's laws; to launch his plain, not to say vulgar and
weak, family on an enterprise of monarchical alliances for which they
had no capacity; to undo, in short, as far as in him lay, every
beneficent and well-conceived piece of statesmanship with which he had
so far been concerned. It has been well said that had he died in
midsummer, 1802, his glory would have been immaculate and there would
have been no spots on his sun. The Napoleonic work in Europe was
destined to have its far-reaching and permanent results, but the man
was ere long almost entirely eliminated from control over them. The
very last of his great constructions was the sale of Louisiana. He
needed the purchase-money, he selected his purchaser and forced it on
him, with a view to upbuilding a giant rival to the gigantic power of
Great Britain.
When we turn therefore to America, we shall at once observe on how
slender a thread a great event may depend, how great a fire may be
kindled by a spark adroitly placed. While yet other matters were
hanging in the balance, he selected his own brother-in-law, General
Leclerc, such was his deep concern, to conduct an expedition to the
West Indies. There were embarked 35,000 men, and these the very flower
of the republican armies, superb fighters, but a possible thorn in the
side of a budding emperor at home. Their goal was San Domingo, where a
wonderful negro, Toussaint Louverture, noting the attractive example
of the benevolent despots in Europe, had, under republican forms, not
only abolished slavery, but had made himself a beneficent dictator.
The fine but delicate structure of his negro state was easily crushed
to the earth, but the fighting was fierce and prolonged, the climate
and the pest were enabled to inaugurate and complete a work of
slaughter more baleful than that of war, and two-thirds of the French
invaders, including the commander and fifteen of his generals, fell
victims to the yellow fever. The French were utterly routed, the sorry
remnant sailed away, and the blacks fell into the hands of the
worthless tyrant Dessalines, whose misrule killed the germs of order
planted by Toussaint. One of our historians thinks this check of
France by black soldiers to have been a determinative factor in
American history, for thereafter there could be no question of a Gulf
and Caribbean empire for France. Louisiana, he indicates, became at
once a superfluous dependency, costly and annoying. This is a
far-fetched contention: great as have been the services of the negro
to the United States since he first fought on the battle-field of
Monmouth under Washington, the failure of France in San Domingo was
not through the sword of the blacks, but was an act of God through
pestilence.
The circumstances that forced Louisiana upon the United States, then a
petty power with revenues and expenditures less than those of many
among the single states which now compose the federation, arose from
Napoleon's European necessities. The cession from Spain included all
that Spain had received from France, the whole Gulf coast from St.
Mary's to the Rio Grande, and the French pretensions not only
northwestward to the Rockies but even to the Pacific. The return made
to Spain was the insignificant kingdom of Etruria and a solemn pledge
that, should the First Consul fail in his promise, Louisiana in its
fullest extent was to be restored to Spain. France therefore might not
otherwise alienate it to any power whatever. The exacting and
suspicious spirit shown both by Charles IV and his contemptible
minister Godoy, Prince of the Peace, had exasperated Bonaparte beyond
endurance. The Spanish Bourbons were doomed by him to the fate of
their kinsfolk in France; a pledge to a vanishing phantom of royalty
was of small account. It was during the delay created by the punctilio
of Godoy that the failure of the San Domingo expedition extinguished
all hope of making Louisiana the sole entrepot and staple of supplies
for the West Indies. And simultaneously it grew evident that the truce
negotiated at Amiens as a treaty could not last much longer, that
either France must endure the humiliation of seeing her profits
therefrom utterly withheld, or herself declare war, or goad Great
Britain into a renewal of hostilities. This last, as is well known,
was the alternative chosen by Napoleon.
Our government had been in despair. The establishment of French empire
in the West Indies would have destroyed our lucrative trade with the
islands. It was trying enough that a feeble power like Spain should
command the outlet of the Mississippi basin, but intolerable that
such a mastery of the continent should fall into the hands of a strong
and magisterial power like France. We were in dismay, even after the
departure of the French from San Domingo. Bonaparte, however, was
scarcely less disturbed; for Jefferson, despite his avowed Gallicism,
spiritedly declared both to the First Consul and to Livingston, our
minister to Paris, that the occupation of Louisiana by the great
French force organized to that end could only result in an alliance of
the two English-speaking nations which would utterly banish the French
flag from the high seas. Bonaparte preserved an outward calm for those
about him and went his way apparently unperturbed. But inwardly his
mind seethed, and without long delay he took his choice between the
courses open to him. It was the first exhibition to himself and his
family of the imperial despot soon to be known as Napoleon I, Emperor
of the French. If Britain was the tyrant of the seas, he would be
despot of the land. To French empire he would reduce Germany, Italy,
and Spain in subjection, and with all the maritime resources of the
Continent at his back he would first shut every important port to
English commerce, and then with allied and dependent fleets at his
disposal try conclusions with the British Behemoth for liberty of the
seas and a new colonial empire. By the second camp at Boulogne and the
occupation of Hanover, Napoleon threw England into panic, while
simultaneously he began the creation of his grand imperial army and
thereby menaced Austria, the greatest German power, in her coalition
with Russia, Sweden, Naples, and Great Britain. The latter, he was
well aware, could face a hostile demonstration on her front with
courage, if not with equanimity; and he determined to add a double
stroke--to gain a harvest of gold and on her rear to strengthen her
exasperated transatlantic sea rival by selling Louisiana to the
United States.
[Illustration: Photograph in the collection of Dr. Charles J. Cooper
NAPOLEON I
From the bust by Chaudet, after the death-mask. The bust marks the
place where stood the bed on which Napoleon died.]
That determination was the turning-point in his career, just as the
sudden wheel and about-face of the splendid force at Boulogne, when he
hurled it across Europe at Vienna, displayed at last the turning-point
in his policy. His brother Lucien had been an influential negotiator
with Spain and plumed himself on the acquisition of the great domain
which had been for long the brightest jewel in the crown of France.
His brother Joseph had negotiated the treaty of Amiens as a step
preparatory to regaining a magnificent colonial empire for his
country, an empire of which an old and splendid French possession was
to be the corner-stone. Both were stunned and then infuriated when
they learned their brother's resolution, sensations which were
intensified to fury when they heard him announce that he would work
his will in spite of all constitutional checks and balances. There is
no historic scene more grotesque than that depicted by Lucien in his
memoirs when he and Joseph undertook to oppose Napoleon. The latter
was luxuriating in his morning bath on April seventh, 1803, in the
Tuileries when the brothers were admitted. After a long and intimate
talk on general politics the fateful subject was finally broached by
Napoleon, as he turned from side to side and wallowed in the perfumed
water. Neither of the brothers could control his feelings, and the
controversy grew hot and furious from minute to minute until Joseph,
leaning over the tub, roared threats of opposition and words of
denunciation. Brother Napoleon, lifting himself half-way to the top,
suddenly fell back and clenched his arguments by splashing a full
flood in the face and over the body of Joseph, drenching him to the
skin. A valet was summoned, entered, and, paralyzed by the fury of the
scene, fell in a dead faint. New aid was called and, the fires of
passion being quenched for the time, the conflict ended until
Napoleon and Joseph were decently clothed, when it was renewed in the
office of the secretary Bourrienne. Ere long hot words were again
spoken, violent language was succeeded by violent gestures, until at
last Napoleon in a theatrical rage dashed his snuff-box on the floor,
and the contestants separated. Disjointed and fierce as was the stormy
argument, it revealed the whole of the imperial policy.
Meanwhile events in America, if not so picturesque and majestic, were
equally tempestuous. The peace policy of Jefferson was rapidly going
to pieces in the face of a westward menace, the Federalists were
jubilant, and in the Senate James Ross, of Pennsylvania, called for
war. When the intendant of Spain at New Orleans denied Americans the
storage rights they had enjoyed in that city since 1795, the French
politics of the President fell into general disrepute and contempt,
for men reasoned _a fortiori_, if such things be done in the green
tree, what shall be done in the dry? It mattered not that Spain's
highest official, the governor, disavowed the act, the fire was in the
stubble. The intendant was stubborn and the fighting temper waxed hot.
Both the governor and the Spanish envoy at Washington disavowed the
act again and rebuked the subordinate. Congress was soothed, but not
so the people of the West and South. They were fully aware, as have
been all our frontiersmen and pioneers from the beginning, that the
Mississippi and all the lands it waters are the organic structure of
unity and successful settlement on this continent. The Pacific and
Atlantic coast strips, even the great but bleak valley of the St.
Lawrence, are mere incidents of territorial unity and political
control when compared with the great alluvion of the Mississippi. This
was unknown, utterly unknown, and worse yet, entirely indifferent to
our statesmen. Madison certainly, and possibly Jefferson, believed
that western immigration would pause and end on the east bank of the
Father of Waters.
Yet party government was a necessity under the American system, and
Jefferson's ladder, the Republican party, would be knocked into its
component parts should the West and South, noisy, exacting, and
turbulent, desert and go over to the expiring faction of the
Federalists; nay, worse, it might be forced into almost complete
negation of its own existence by a forced adoption of the
Federalist policy, alliance with Great Britain--monarchic and
aristocratic--rather than with radical and democratic France. What
could a distracted partizan do? Jefferson was adroit and inventive.
He sent James Monroe to negotiate with Bonaparte for the purchase
of New Orleans and both Floridas at the price of two millions, or
upward to ten, for all or part, whatever he could get; he was not
even to disdain the deposit or storage right, if nothing else could
be had, and if he could get nothing, he was to await instructions.
With such credentials he sailed on March eighth, 1803. A
peace-lover must sometimes speak low and small, even as cowards
sometimes do. Three weeks later appeared in New Orleans Laussat,
the advance agent of French occupation; Victor and his troops were
to follow. It is not possible to conceive that a foreign policy
could be more perplexing, confused, or uncertain than that of the
philosophic theorist who is the hero of the strict-constructionist
party in these United States.
Robert R. Livingston, the regular American envoy at Paris, had, under
his instructions from home, worked with skill and zeal on the
spoliation claims and incidentally on the question of the Mississippi
and the Floridas. While the colonization schemes of Bonaparte seemed
feasible, Livingston made no headway whatever, except to extort an
admission that the spoliation claims were just. Neither Talleyrand nor
Livingston was much concerned about the great Northwest. The American
was clear that the importance of any control lay in the possession of
New Orleans, and on April eleventh, 1803, he said so to the French
minister, vigorously and squarely declaring further that a persistent
refusal of our request would unite us with Great Britain to the
serious discomfiture of France in her colonial aspirations. This was
said with some asperity, for Livingston had been aware that the First
Consul wanted all negotiation transferred to Washington under the
guidance of a special envoy, the wilful Bernadotte, sent for the
purpose; and now, worse yet, he himself was to be superseded by
Monroe. He had been a diligent and even importunate negotiator; it was
a ray of comfort in later days to recall that the first suggestion for
the sale of all Louisiana was made to him in that momentous interview.
What had occurred Livingston could not know. It was this. On the
morning of that very day there reached the Tuileries despatches giving
in full detail an account of the tremendous preparations making in
England for the renewal of war both by land and sea. Bonaparte's
impatience knew no bounds. Hitherto he had concealed his true policy
of sale behind a scheme to spend the purchase-money on internal
improvements in France, and he had on his work-table map-outlines for
five great canals. Now, at daybreak, he summoned Barbe-Marbois,
sometime French consul-general in the United States, an official of
state with a thorough knowledge of our affairs, and ordered that a
negotiation for the sale, not of the Floridas and New Orleans, but of
all Louisiana, should immediately be opened with Livingston. He fixed
the price at fifty million francs. The envoy could of course do
nothing, but he thought thirty millions enough. Next day Monroe
arrived at Havre, and reaching Paris on the thirteenth, that very same
day Barbe-Marbois and our two great statesmen began to treat. Upon
Monroe and Livingston devolved a momentous responsibility. To Monroe
by a most indefinite implication was left a certain liberty, for under
no circumstances whatsoever was he to end a negotiation if once it was
begun. And here, instead of minimizing terms, was, so to speak, a
great universe of land tender. But we had not so easily thrown off the
bright and glistening garment of righteousness as had Napoleon
Bonaparte, and in the minds of both Americans was the question,
non-existent for the First Consul, as he himself squarely said, of
whether the inhabitants of the district, men and women, human souls,
could be dealt in as chattels are.
Livingston had already seen darkly as in a glass what possession of
the west might do for the United States. Bonaparte's contributions to
the discussion were terse and trenchant. If he did not transfer the
title right speedily, a British fleet would take possession almost in
a twinkling; the transfer, he said, might in three centuries make
America the rival of Europe; why not? it was a long way ahead; but, on
the other hand, there never had been an enduring confederation, and
this one in America was unlikely to begin the series; finally, he
wanted the cash, as the United States wanted the land. Let there be no
delay. And there was none. The terms of the sale and the facts of the
transfer do not concern us here. In Bonaparte the United States had no
friend; but what the ancient regime began in helping to establish
American independence, the First Consul completed; for, thanks to him,
the war of 1812 was fought for commercial liberty, while the
exploitation of Louisiana has made the nation what it is to-day. The
great territory, with all its responsibilities and possibilities, made
the United States a world power; a puny enough power at first, but it
has grown. Jefferson and his agents were primarily statesmen for the
purpose of existing conditions, and in Monroe's mission desired a
remedy solely and entirely for party evils. They had, however, the
courage to accept the fortune forced upon them, even though in their
case, as in that of Bonaparte, it entailed, we repeat, a complete
reversal of all the political and party principles of the platform on
which they had hitherto stood.
The change wrought by the Louisiana purchase in American life and
culture was simply revolutionary. Hitherto in our weakness we had
faced backward, varying between two ideas of European alliance. We
virtually had British and French parties. Jefferson, who represented
the latter, thought of no other alternative in his trouble than to
strike hands with England. With Louisiana on our hands, we turned our
faces to our own front door. The Louisiana we bought had no Pacific
outlet in reality, but the Lewis and Clark expedition gave it one, and
that we have broadened by war and by purchase until we control the
western shore of the continent. Under such engrossing cares we ceased
to think of either French or British ties, except as exasperating, and
became not merely Americans, but, realizing Washington's aspirations,
turned into real continentals, with a scorn of all entanglements
whatever. In the occupation and settlement of Louisiana the slavery
question became acute, and the struggle to expand that system over
Louisiana soil precipitated the Civil War.
But if the change in national outlook was radical, that in
constitutional attitude was even more so. The constitutions of our
original states were the expression of political habits in a
community, the Federal Constitution was in the main a transcript of
those elements which were common in some degree to all the British
colonies. It was an age of written constitutions, because the flux of
institutions was so rapid that men needed a mooring for the
substantial gains they had made. The past was so recent that statesmen
were timid, and they wanted their metes and bounds to be fixed by a
monument. Nothing was more natural than to pause and fall back on the
record thus made permanent, and strict construction was and long
continued to be a political fetish. The Louisiana purchase was a
circumstance of the first importance in party struggle. Yet neither
Federalist nor Republican dared, after mature deliberation, to urge
the question of constitutional amendment as essential to meet the
crisis thus precipitated. The enormous price entailed what was felt to
be an intolerable burden of taxation, and in the uproar of spoken and
printed debate played no small part. But the vital question was
whether the adjustment of new relations was constitutional.
Never did the kaleidoscope of politics display a more surprising
reversal of effect. The loose-construction party lost its wits
entirely, while the strict constructionists suddenly became the
apostles not of verbal but of logical construction. Jefferson violated
his principles in signing the treaty, but he was easily persuaded that
amendment was not necessary, that on the contrary the treaty-making
power covered the case completely. This was not conquest, which would
have been covered by the war power, but purchase, which is covered by
the treaty power, surrendered, like the other, by the states to the
federal government. The Federalists were represented in the House by
Gaylord Griswold; in the Senate by Ross and Pickering. Their
resistance was identical in both factious to the highest degree. They
contended that the executive had usurped the powers of Congress by
regulating commerce with foreign powers and by incorporating foreign
soil and foreign people with the United States, this last being a
power which it was doubtful whether Congress possessed. Supposing,
however, that New Orleans became American, how could a treaty be valid
which gave preferential treatment to that single port in admitting
French and Spanish ships on equal terms with those owned by Americans?
The treaty, they asseverated, was therefore unconstitutional and, even
worse, impolitic, because we were unfitted and did not desire to
incorporate into our delicately balanced system peoples different in
speech, faith, and customs from ourselves. They were, however, only
mildly opposed to expansion; they were determined and captious in the
interpretation of the Constitution. The party in power were avowedly
expansionist; their retort was equally dialectic and vapid. The whole
discussion would have been empty except for Pickering's contention
that there existed no power to incorporate foreign territory into the
United States, as was stipulated by the treaty. The House had
resolved, ninety to twenty-five, to provide the money and had
appointed a committee on provisional government; the Senate ratified
the treaty, twenty-six to five.
What made the debates and action of Congress epochal was the
Federalist contention that Thomas Jefferson as provisional and interim
governor was nothing more or less than an American despot in
succession to a Spanish tyrant. Where was the Constitution now; where
would it be when in appointing the necessary officials--executive,
judicial, and legislative--he would usurp not merely Spanish despotism
but the powers of both the other branches of the federal government?
The Republicans quibbled, too; to appoint these three classes of
officials was not to exercise their powers. But they confirmed in
unanswerable logic a distinction thus far only mooted in our political
history--that between states and territories. Already presidential
appointees were exercising all three powers in Mississippi and
Indiana. This clenched the contentions of the Republicans, and the
bill for provisional government passed by an overwhelming vote on
October thirty-first. Both parties throughout the struggle had tacitly
abandoned the position that Congress possessed merely delegated powers
and nothing further except the ability to carry them into effect. Both
therefore admitted the possible interpretation of the Constitution
under stress of necessity, and the Federalists in their quibbling
contentions lost hold everywhere except in New England. That section
saw its influence eclipsed by the preponderance of Southern and
Western power and ere long was ripe for secession.
Volumes have been written and more will be on the romance of the
Louisiana purchase; Josiah Quincy threatened the dismemberment of the
Union when the present state of Louisiana was admitted in 1812; but
for Jefferson's wisdom in exploration it might have remained a
wilderness long after settlement began; Great Britain coveted it in
1815 when Jackson saved it; Aaron Burr probably coveted an empire
within it; Napoleon III had dreams of its return to the new France he
was to found in Mexico. Excluding the Floridas, which Spain would not
concede as a part of it, and the Oregon country, the territory thus
acquired was greater than that of Great Britain, Germany, France,
Spain, Portugal, and Italy combined. Its agricultural and mineral
resources were, humanly speaking, inexhaustible. No wonder it excited
the cupidity as it stirred the imagination of mankind; no wonder if
men avid to retain their power were dismayed at the preponderance it
was sure to exert eventually in a federal union of states. At the
present moment fourteen of our commonwealths, with a population of
about sixteen millions and a taxable wealth of seven billions, occupy
its soil. By the time we are fifty years older, at the present rate of
settlement, these will contain about a third of the power in the Union
as determined by numbers and prosperity. All of them, however, were
from the first administrative districts, never states, and by the
retroactive influence of this fact state sovereignty has thus been
made an empty phrase.
And this leads us to remember that, if the Louisiana purchase
revolutionized our national outlook, our constitutional attitude, and
our sectional control, it quite as radically changed our national
texture. From that hour to this we have called to the masses of Europe
for help to develop the wilderness, and they have come by millions,
until now the men and women of Revolutionary stock probably number
less than fifteen millions in the entire country. These later
Americans have, like the migrations of the Norsemen in central and
southern Europe, proved so conservative in their Americanism that they
outrun their predecessors in loyalty to its essentials. They made the
Union as it now is, in a very high sense, and there is no question
that in the throes of civil war it was their blood which flowed at
least as freely as ours in its defense. It is they who have kept us
from developing on colonial lines and have made us a nation separate
and apart. This it is which has prevented the powerful influence of
Great Britain from inundating us, while simultaneously two
English-speaking peoples have reacted one upon the other in their
radical differences to keep aflame the zeal for exploration,
beneficent occupation, and general exploitation of the globe in the
interests of a high civilization. The localities of the Union have
been stimulated into such activities that manufactures and agriculture
have run a mighty race; commerce alone lags, and no wonder, for
Louisiana gave us a land world of our own, a home market more valuable
than both the Indies or the continental mass of the Far East.