characteristics which fitted it to do the one work may have unfitted it to do the other. As between Adams and Jefferson, personally, there is no such comparison to be made as may be drawn between their parties. Both were identified with the independence and the organization of the nation, and both were qualified in the highest degree for its chief magistracy.

Acquisition of

Theoretically, the federalists had gone for increasing the authority of the general government, Louisiana. while the republicans had made a stand to check it. But the chief measure of Jefferson's administration implied a readiness to stretch the powers of the government, and particularly of the executive branch, far beyond federalist theories. This was the acquisition of Louisiana, by which we are to understand, not the present state, but a region extending indefinitely to the west and north on the farther side of the Mississippi. Spain had acquired this territory from France in 1763; she restored it to France in 1800. Before the Spanish authorities withdrew, they excluded the citizens of the United States from New Orleans as a depot for the commerce of their western states, and France was credited with entertaining the same unfavorable designs. It was proposed in the United States Senate to seize New Orleans; but this was too extreme a course. Left to his own counsels, the president instructed the envoys to France, Robert R. Livingston and James Monroe, to purchase the part of Louisiana which included New Orleans; but finding the French government disposed to sell the whole, they bought the whole for fifteen millions of dollars, (April 30, 1803.) Jefferson allowed this to be

an act beyond the Constitution," and hinted at a constitutional amendment which should justify it. The great importance of the acquisition, securing the Mississippi to its mouth, and freeing the western territory from all possi

ble interference from France or Spain, was a convincing argument, and the Senate confirmed the negotiation, (October 20.) The chief argument that might have been brought against it was the extension of slavery by the annexation of foreign territory containing upwards of fifty thousand slaves, and open to fifty times as many in the future; but this was hardly touched. The federalists opposed the purchase simply as a republican measure, and as the republicans themselves were divided upon it, party bitterness was intensified.

Organiza

territories.

The immense region thus acquired was divided tion of into two portions, (1804.) The southern, in which Louisiana all the settlements of any importance were included, was called the Territory of Orleans. It comprehended the present State of Louisiana, but with very indefinite boundaries on the west. North of this lay the District of Louisiana, embracing the present Arkansas and Missouri, with as much more as could be brought within its elastic limits on the north and west, its principal settlement being St. Louis. This district was made a part of the same jurisdiction with the Indiana Territory, from which, however, it was soon detached, (1805.) At the same time, the provisions for the Territory of Orleans, complained of by some of the inhabitants, were rendered more liberal. The terms of the treaty concluding the purchase had been these: "The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the mean time shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess." Treaties of this kind were not every-day

occurrences with Napoleon. But the inhabitants for whom he required this pledge were only a part, and a small part, of the Louisianiaus ; he did not interfere in behalf of their fifty thousand slaves.

Other ter

organiza

The new State of Ohio was already admitted to ritorial the Union, (November 29, 1802.), New territo and state ries-Michigan (1805) and Illinois (1809) tions. were subsequently formed from out of the Indiana Territory. The signs of expansion were written every where, but nowhere so strikingly as along the western plains.

Burr's There they were such as to kindle projects of a projects. new empire. Aaron Burr, vice president during Jefferson's first term, but displaced in the second term by George Clinton, (1805,)-branded, too, with the recent murder of Alexander Hamilton in a duel, was generally avoided amongst his old associates. Turning his face westward, he there drew into his net various men, some of position and some of obscurity, with whose aid he seems to have intended making himself master of the Mississippi valley, or of Mexico, one or both, (1806.) Whatever his schemes were, they miscarried. A handful only of followers were gathered round him on the banks of the Mississippi, a hundred miles or more above New Orleans, when he surrendered himself to the government of the Mississippi Territory, (January, 1807.) Some months afterwards he was brought to trial for high treason before Chief Justice Marshall, of the Supreme Court, with whom sat the district judge for Virginia; the reason for trying Burr in that state being the fact that one of the places where he was charged with having organized a military expedition was within. the Virginian limits. The trial, like every thing else in those days, was made a party question; the administration and its supporters going strongly against Burr, while its

opponents were disposed to take his part. He was acquitted for want of proof; and for the same reason he was again acquitted when tried for undertaking to invade the Spanish territories.

Difficul

Frowning high above all these domestic dangers ties with were those from abroad which sank in one direcGreat tion only to rise the more threateningly in another. Britain. Great Britain was now extending impressment even to the American navy, whose vessels were once and again plundered of their seamen by British men-of-war. Another subject on which Great Britain set herself against the claims of the United States, was the neutral trade, of which the latter nation engrossed a large and constantly increasing share during the European wars. France was equally adverse to American commerce. If Great Britain led off by declaring the French ports, from Brest to the Elbe, closed to American as to all other shipping, (May 16, 1806,) France retorted by the Berlin decree, so called because issued from Prussia, prohibiting any commerce with Great Britain, (November 21.) That power immediately forbade the coasting trade between one port and another in the possession of her enemies, (January 7, 1807.) Not satisfied with this, she went on to forbid all trade whatsoever with France and her allies, except on payment of a tribute to Great Britain, each vessel to pay in proportion to its cargo, (November 11.) Then followed the Milan decree of Napoleon, prohibiting all trade whatsoever with Great Britain, and declaring such vessels as paid the recently demanded tribute to be lawful prizes to the French marine, (December 17.)

Affair of

The heaviest blow was struck by Great Britain. the Ches- The American frigate Chesapeake, sailing from apeake. Hampton Roads, was hailed off the capes of Chesapeake Bay by the British frigate Leopard, the captain of

which demanded to search the Chesapeake for deserters. Captain Barron, the commander of the Chesapeake, refused; whereupon the Leopard opened fire. As Barron and his crew were totally unprepared for action, they fired but a single gun, to save their honor; then, having lost several men, struck their flag. The British commander took those of whom he was in search, three of the four being Americans, and left the Chesapeake to make her way back dishonored, (June 22, 1807.) The president issued a proclamation, ordering British men-of-war from the waters of the United States. Instructions were sent to the American envoys at London, directing them, not merely to seek reparation for the wrong that had been done, but to obtain the renunciation of the pretensions to a right of search and of impressment, from which the wrong had sprung. The British government recognized their responsibility, by sending a special minister to settle the difficulty at Washington. It was four years, however, before the desired reparation was procured, (1811.) The desired renunciation was never made. One can scarcely credit his eyes, when he reads that the affair of the Chesapeake was made a party point. But so it was. friends of Great Britain, the capitalists and commercial classes, generally, murmured at the course of their government, as too decided, too French, they sometimes called it; as if resistance to Great Britain were subordination to France.

tion

war.

The

The ad- "In the present maniac state of Europe," wrote ministra- Jefferson, a little later, "I should not estimate the against point of honor by the ordinary scale. I believe we shall, on the contrary, have credit with the world for having made the avoidance of being engaged in the present unexampled war our first object." To this end, the president hit upon the most self-denying of plans. The