of volunteers could have been easily raised
in the Mississippi valley to march against New Orleans; but the
prudence of Mr. Jefferson restrained every movement that might
involve us in a war with Spain, from which nothing was to be gained,
and by which every thing would be risked.

THE PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA.

Meanwhile Mr. Robert R. Livingston, our minister at Paris, was
pressing the French Government for concessions touching the free
navigation of the Mississippi and the right of deposit at New
Orleans, and was speaking to the First Consul, as a French historian
observes, in a tone which "arrested his attention, and aroused him
to a sense of the new power that was growing beyond the sea." Mr.
Livingston was re-enforced by Mr. Monroe, sent out by President
Jefferson as a special envoy in the spring of 1803, in order to
effect some adjustment of the irritating questions which were
seriously endangering the relations between France and the United
States. The instructions of Mr. Madison, then secretary of State,
to Mr. Monroe, show that the utmost he expected was to acquire from
France the city of New Orleans and the Floridas, of which he believed
France either then was, or was about to become, the actual owner.
Indeed, the treaty by which France had acquired Louisiana was but
imperfectly understood; and, in the slowness and difficulty of
communication, Mr. Madison could not accurately know the full extent
of the cession made at San Ildefonso. But Mr. Jefferson did not
wait to learn the exact provisions of that treaty. He knew
instinctively that they deeply concerned the United States. He
saw with clear vision that by the commercial disability upon the
western section of the Union its progress would be obstructed, its
already attained prosperity checked; and that possibly its population,
drawn first into discontent with the existing order of things,
might be seduced into new and dangerous alliances. He determined,
therefore, to acquire the control of the left bank of the Mississippi
to its mouth, and by the purchase of the Floridas to give to Georgia
and the Mississippi territory (now constituting the States of
Alabama and Mississippi) unobstructed access to the Gulf.

But events beyond the ocean were working more rapidly for the
interest of the United States than any influence which the government
itself could exert. Before Mr. Monroe reached France in the spring