any claim which Spain might have made. The territory with this extent, including the Texas re-annexation, was specifically known as Louisiana. It had been in the possession of France for eighty years prior to 1762;-and whatever France ceded to Spain at that time, she again ceded to the United States in 1803. It is evident, therefore, that the "Texas re-annexation" of 1845, was, in 1803, part of the Louisiana Purchase.

VIEWS OF CONGRESSMEN.

It is not surprising that the public men of that day should have feared the consequences of enlarging our republican do. main. It looked to them like the renewal of the troubles which they had just escaped, by the purchase of New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi. It unsettled the ideas they had formed of a Constitutional Government. They could not see, as we can in this day of railroads and swift postal service, and of telegraphs, giving immediate information concerning the affairs of the nation, how such an immense territory was to be subordinated to the control of a single General Government. Hence we find such men as John Quincy Adams, Timothy Pickering, Rufus Griswold, James White, and Uriah Tracy, all men of enlarged, statesmanlike views, opposing the bill entitled "An Act authorizing the erection of a stock to the amount of eleven millions two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, for the purpose of carrying into effect the convention of the 30th of April, 1803, between the United States and the French Republic."

The speech of Mr. White against the passage of the bill is a fair reflex of the views entertained by the leading public men of that day. Speaking of the treaty, he says:

I wish not to be understood as predicting that the French will not cede to us the actual and quiet possession of the territory. I hope to God they may, for possession of it we must have:-I mean of New Orleans and of such other portions on the Mississippi as may be necessary to secure to us forever the complete and uninterrupted navigation of that river. This I have ever been in favor of. I think it essential to the peace of the United States and the prosperity of our Western country. But as to Louisiana, this new, immense, unbounded world, if it should be ever incorporated into this Union, which I have no idea can be done but by altering the Constitution, I believe it will be the greatest curse that could at present befall us;-it may be productive of innumerable evils, and especially of one that I fear even to look upon. Gentlemen on all sides, with very few exceptions, agree

that the settlement of the country will be highly injurious and dangerous to the United States; but as to what has been suggested of removing the Creeks and other nations of Indians from the eastern to the western banks of the Mississippi, and making the fertile regions of Louisiana a howling wilderness, never to be trodden by the foot of civilized man, it is impracticable. * * To every man acquainted with the adventurous, roving, and enterprising temper of our people, and with the manner in which our Western country has been settled, such an idea must be chimerical. The inducements will be so strong, that it will be impossible to restrain our citizens from crossing the river. Louisiana must and will be settled, if we hold it, and with the very population that would otherwise occupy part of our present territory. Thus our citizens will be removed to the immense distance of two or three thousand miles from the capital of the Union, where they will scarcely ever feel the rays of the General Government; their affections will become alienated; they will gradually begin to view us as strangers; they will form other commercial connections; and our interests will become distinct.

These, with other causes that human wisdom may not now foresee, will in time effect a separation, and I fear our bounds will be fixed nearer to our houses than the water of the Mississippi. We have already territory enough, and when I contemplate the evils that may arise to these States from this intended incorporation of Louisiana into the Union, I would rather see it given to France, to Spain, or to any other nation of the earth, upon the mere condition that no citizen of the United States should ever settle within its limits, than to see the territory sold for a hundred millions of dollars, and we retain the sovereignty. * And I do say that, under existing circumstances, even supposing that this extent of territory was a desirable acquisition, fifteen millions of dollars was a most enormous sum to give.

This "enormous sum" was less than three cents an acre for this immense domain, which had, in 1890, as shown by the U. S. census, a population of over 11,000,000 people, and to say nothing of its yield of gold, silver, copper, coal and lumber, whose agricultural products alone in 1896, amounted to $345,000,000.

The dread of the disastrous consequences which Mr. White feared would follow the crossing of the Mississippi river for the purposes of settlement, found expression at that time in a resolution presented in Congress, declaring that any American citizen who should cross the Mississippi river for the purpose of settlement, should, by that act, forfeit all claim to the protection of his Government.

We can to-day readily see that the questions which are now engrossing the attention of the country concerning the acqui

sition of new territory in the Philippines are not new questions. The history of one hundred years ago is to-day repeating itself in every essential feature. The arguments of to-day are those of a century ago. The question of the constitutional right of our Government to purchase Louisiana, and the larger question of the expediency of forming an Anglo-American alliance should France attempt openly to take possession of the vast region which she had acquired under the secret treaty with Spain, were, in their immediate results as well as in their distant consequences, fully discussed on the floor of Congress and in the diplomatic correspondence of President Jefferson. Some of the New England members of Congress, foreseeing that in a brief period of time many new States would be formed out of the Louisiana purchase, and deprecating a loss of the political supremacy of their own States in the national Legislature, were ready to dissolve the Union on this issue. Even after the Louisiana treaty was ratified by the payment of the purchase money and the country at large had begun to realize the value of its new possessions, there was seemingly no abatement of this feeling;-and eight years later, when the bill admitting Louisiana into the Union as a State was under discussion in the United States Senate, Josiah Quincy, then Senator from Massachusetts, uttered these words:

I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion, that if this bill passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved;-that the States which compose it are free from their moral obligations;-and that as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some to prepare, definitely, for a separation;-amicably if they can, violently if they must.

At this point in the debate he was called to order by Mr. Poindexter, delegate in Congress for Mississippi (which was then a Territory), for the utterance of these words of treason against the United States Government.

Just fifty years later the conditions were changed, and it was Mississippi and not Massachusetts that sought to separate herself from the Union.

Following this remarkable declaration, Mr. Quincy said:I have already heard of six States, and some say there will be, at no great distance of time, more.

Were Mr. Quincy in the United States Senate to-day, he would be greeted by forty of his Senatorial colleagues, and

nearly one hundred members of the lower house of Congress, from twenty States in the Union formed out of the Louisiana purchase and other and later acquisitions of territory.

Mr. Tracy, after delivering an elaborate argument on the subject, in which he arrives at the conclusion that the purchase itself is constitutional, says:

We can hold the territory;-but to admit the inhabitants into the Union, to make citizens of them, and to make States by treaty, we cannot constitutionally do;-and no subsequent act of legislation, or even ordinary amendment to our Constitution, can legalize such a measure. If done at all, they must be done by universal consent of all the States or partners of our political association;—and this universal consent I am positive can never be obtained to such a pernicious measure as the admission of Louisiana,—of a world,-and such a world,-into our Union. This would be absorbing the Northern States and rendering them as insignificant in the Union as they ought to be, if by their own consent the new measure should be adopted.

Senator Plumer of New Hampshire also said:

Admit this Western world into the Union, and you destroy at once the weight and importance of the Eastern States, and compel them to establish a separate independent Empire.

These declarations indicate that local interests and jealousies measured, in a great degree, the patriotism of many of the statesmen of that day.

LETTERS OF JEFFERSON.

We frequently hear it alleged to-day that Thomas Jeffer son stood upon the ground which is taken by many of his party at this time, that the United States had no constitutional power to purchase Louisiana. Jefferson, however, held that view in theory only. He was sufficiently sagacious to see that Louisiana would become essential to the United States in its future development, and, without awaiting the action of Congress, he made the purchase regardless of the constitutional inhibition which he declared existed. It was a sublime act of statesmanship;-a master stroke for which he is and ever will be more renowned than as the author of the Declaration of Independence. He acknowledged that he, as the Executive, had gone beyond the letter of the Constitution;-yet he used his utmost endeavor to have the treaty ratified promptly, and the purchase money provided with the least possible discussion

of the constitutionality of the purchase, which he regarded as the crowning event of his administration, and for the consummation of which he was ready to proceed to any extreme. On August 30, 1803, he wrote to Levi Lincoln:

The less that is said about any constitutional difficulty, the better; and it will be desirable for Congress to do what is necessary, in silence.

On Sept. 7, 1803, Jefferson wrote to Wilson C. Nicholas:Whatever Congress shall think it necessary to do should be done with as little debate as possible, and particularly so far as respects the constitutional difficulty. * As the constitution expressly declares itself to be made for the United States, I cannot help believing the intention was not to permit Congress to admit into the Union new States to be formed out of the territory, for which, and under whose authority alone they were then acting. * * I had rather ask

*

an enlargement of power from the Nation where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our power boundless. * * Let us go on then, perfecting it, by adding, by way of amendment to the Constitution, those powers which time and trial show are still wanting. * I think it important, in the present case, to set an example against broad construction, by appealing for new power to the people. If, however, our friends shall think differently, certainly I shall acquiesce with satisfaction;-confiding, that the good sense of our country will correct the evil of construction when it shall produce its ill effects.

On August 12, 1803, Jefferson wrote to Mr. Breckenridge:

*

This treaty must of course be laid before both Houses. They, I presume, will see their duty to the country in ratifying and paying for it; * but I suppose they must then appeal to the Nation for an additional article to the Constitution, approving and confirming an act which the Nation had not previously authorized. The Constitution has made no provision for our holding foreign territory, still less for incorporating foreign nations into our Union. The Executive, in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so much advances the good of his country, has done an act beyond the Constitution. The Legislature, in casting behind them metaphysical subtleties, and risking themselves like faithful servants, must ratify and pay for it, and throw themselves on their country for doing for them unauthorized, what we know they would have done for themselves had they been in a situation to do it. It is the case of a guardian investing the money of his ward in purchasing an important adjacent territory, and saying to him when of age, 'I did this for your good; I pretend to no right to bind you; you may disavow me, and I must get out of the scrape as I can; I thought it my duty to risk myself for you.' But we shall