een formed out of the great Northwestern Territory.
Ohio was organized as an independent territory in the year 1800, and in
the fall of 1802, it was admitted into the Union as a State. Long before
the Northwestern Territory had been divided into different territories,
the present limits of Ohio and Kentucky had already become quite
populous. Emigrants like Albert Stevens were pushing out on the frontier
and building up a great commonwealth.

About 1802, there was great excitement in the country west of the
Alleghany Mountains, in consequence of a violation of the treaty made
with Spain in 1795, by the governor of Louisiana in closing the port of
New Orleans against American commerce. There was a proposition before
congress for taking forcible possession of that region, when it was
ascertained that, by a secret treaty, Spain had retroceded Louisiana to
France. The United States immediately began negotiations for the
purchase of that domain from France. Robert R. Livingston, the American
minister at the court of the First Consul, found very little difficulty
in making a bargain with Bonaparte, for the latter wanted money and
desired to injure England. He sold that magnificent domain, stretching
from the Gulf of Mexico northward to the present State of Minnesota, and
from the Mississippi westward to the Pacific Ocean, for fifteen million
dollars. The bargain was made in the spring of 1803, and in the fall the
country, and the new domain, which added nine hundred thousand square
miles to our territory, was taken possession of by the United States.
When the bargain was closed, Bonaparte said:

"This accession of territory strengthens forever the power of the United
States, and I have just given to England a maritime rival that will
sooner or later humble her pride."

It was the prevailing opinion in the country, that the Spanish
inhabitants, who were forming states in the great valley, would not
submit to the rule of American government. Aaron Burr, a wily and
unscrupulous politician, who, having murdered the noble Hamilton in a
duel, was an outcast from society, began scheming for setting up a
separate government in the West. Burr was unscrupulous and dishonest and
at the same time shrewd. The full extent of his plans were really never
known, and the historian is in doubt whether he intended a severance of
the Union, or an invasion of Mexico. Herman Blennerhassett, an excellent
Irish gentleman, became his ally and suffere