y dollars
every time you go out and every time you come in this way.

[Illustration: Map showing the extent of the United States at the
close of the Revolution, and also when Jefferson became President
(1801).]

Jefferson saw that so long as the French held the door of New Orleans,
we should not be free to send our cotton down the river and across
the ocean to Europe. He said we must have that door, no matter how
much it costs.

188. Jefferson buys New Orleans and Louisiana for the United
States.--Mr. Robert R. Livingston, one of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence, was in France at that time, and
Jefferson sent over to him to see if he could buy New Orleans for
the United States. Napoleon Bonaparte[5] then ruled France. He said,
I want money to purchase war-ships with, so that I can fight England;
I will sell not only New Orleans, but all Louisiana besides, for
fifteen millions of dollars. That was cheap enough, and so in 1803
President Jefferson bought it.

[Illustration: Map showing how much larger President Jefferson made
the United States by buying Louisiana in 1803. (The Oregon country
is marked in bars to show that the ownership of it was disputed;
England and the United States both claimed it.)]

If you look on the map[6] you will see that Louisiana then was not
simply a good-sized state, as it is now, but an immense country
reaching clear back to the Rocky Mountains. It was really larger than
the whole United States east of the Mississippi River. So, through
President Jefferson's purchase, we added so much land that we now
had more than twice as much as we had before, and we had got the whole
Mississippi River, the city of New Orleans, and what is now the great
city of St. Louis besides.

[Footnote 5: Napoleon Bonaparte (Na-po'le-on Bo'na-part).]

[Footnote 6: See map in this paragraph, and compare map in paragraph
187.]

189. Death of Jefferson; the words cut on his gravestone.--Jefferson
lived to be an old man. He died at Monticello on the Fourth of July,
1826, just fifty years, to a day, after he had signed the Declaration
of Independence. John Adams, who had been President next before
Jefferson, died a few hours later. So America lost two of her great
men on the same day.

Jefferson was buried at Monticello. He asked to have these words,
with some others, cut on his gravestone:--

Here Lies Buried
THOMAS JEFFERSON,
Author of the Declaration of American Independence.

190.