tory from
the mouth of the Great Miami to Fort Recovery and thence to Canada.
Three years afterward, the territory thus defined was admitted to the
Union as the State of Ohio. The Indiana Territory included the portion
west of the line named, with Vincennes as the capital. The Mississippi
Territory was organized so as to extend from the western boundaries of
Georgia to the Mississippi.

The punishment administered to France in 1798 naturally gave that
country a respect for the United States, and in 1802 our relations with
her became quite friendly. Bonaparte, having established a truce with
the nations around him, found time to give some attention to the
American republic. He seemed to believe he could establish a French
colonial empire, not only in the West Indies, but in the immense
province of Louisiana. Had Bonaparte succeeded, he would have acquired
control of the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing would have
pleased England more than to see so serious a check placed upon our
growth, and nothing would have displeased our countrymen more than to be
shut off from the Father of Waters and the right to emigrate westward.
They were ready to go to war before submitting to such deprivation.

PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA.

No one was more keenly alive to the situation than Jefferson. He
carefully instructed our envoy at Paris to make the strongest possible
representations to the French ruler of the grave mistake of the course
he had in mind, which must inevitably result in an alliance with Great
Britain in sweeping France from the seas and driving her from the West
Indies. Bonaparte was too wise not to perceive that this was no empty
threat, and that his visionary French empire in the West would prove an
element of weakness rather than strength. Nothing was plainer than the
truth that the stronger the United States became, the more dangerous
would it be for his traditional enemy, England. He, therefore, proposed
to sell Louisiana to the United States.

This was the very thing for which Jefferson had been skillfully working
from the first. The bargain was speedily completed. On April 30, 1803,
Louisiana came into our possession for the sum of $11,250,000, we
agreeing at the same time to pay certain debts due from France to
American citizens, amounting to $3,750,000, so that the total cost of
Louisiana was $15,000,000.

It must not be forgotten that the Territory of Louisiana, as purchased
by us, was vastly more ex