to be shed: they prepare ages of happiness for innumerable generations of human creatures. The Mississippi and the Missouri will see them succeed one another and multiply, truly worthy of the regard and care of Providence, in the bosom of equality, under just laws, freed from the errors of superstition and bad government."

This is almost the only prophetic word touching the acquired territory which has come down to us from the time; and even Livingston was writing to Madison at the same moment that perhaps only New Orleans and the country east of it need be kept, in which case the western territory might be sold to some European power, to get back our purchase money. Jefferson for two years thought it not impossible that as a result of this enlargement of our territory a new nation might be born beyond the Mississippi. But in his second inaugural (March 4, 1805) he exclaimed: "But who can limit the extent to which the federative principle may operate effectively? The larger our association, the less will it be shaken by local passions; and, in any view, is it not better that the opposite bank of the Mississippi should be settled by our own brethren and children than by strangers of another family?

The great West and its exploration had long been subjects of commanding interest with Jefferson. Old South Leaflet No. 127 is devoted to illustrations of his many services for the North-west. In Paris, in 1786, he met John Ledyard, the adventurous Connecticut traveller; and he writes in his diary (May 17, 1786): "I suggested to him the enterprise of exploring the western part of our continent, by passing through St. Petersburg to Kamschatka, and procuring a passage thence in some of the Russian vessels to Nootka Sound, whence he might make his way across the continent to America; and I undertook to have the permission of the Empress of Russia solicited. He eagerly embraced the proposition." See also in relation to Ledyard, whose effort failed, Jefferson's letters to Ezra Stiles, Sept. 1, 1786; Charles Thomson, Sept. 20, 1787; and William Carmichael, March 4, 1789. In 1793 Jefferson was the leading promoter of a movement, to be undertaken under the auspices of the American Philosophical Society, for the exploration of the far North-west to the Pacific by André Michaux. The plan miscarried; but Jefferson's instructions to Michaux (January, 1793) are interesting as the expression of an idea later realized in the expedition of Lewis and Clark. That expedition is memorable. It was determined on by Jefferson just as he sent Monroe to Paris to push the Louisiana negotiations. See his message to Congress, Jan. 18, 1803; and his instructions to Lewis, June 20. On July 15, on the eve of Lewis's departure, Jefferson writes to him, "Last night we received the treaty from Paris ceding Louisiana." "Jefferson's Life of Captain Meriwether Lewis is printed in Old South Leaflet No. 44. Jefferson's varied services for the exploration and opening of the West are graphically summarized in Curtis's "The True Thomas Jefferson," p. 370. The account of Louisiana which Jefferson had prepared for Congress in 1803 from the best available surres, to clear up the general ignorance concerning the territory, is published in Old South Leaflet 105. See his queries concerning Louisiana in letters to Ephraim Kirby and William Dunbar, July, 1803.

The best general account of the purchase of Louisiana and of the debates and legislation incident to it is that by Henry Adams in his History of the United States during the Admin. istration of Thomas Jefferson, vol. ii. See also Cooley's "Acquisition of Louisiana," Hosmer's "The Louisiana Purchase," and Barbé Marbois's History of Louisiana. See article on Annexations in Lalor's Cyclopedia, the chapter on "The Six Growths of the United States" in William Barrows's "The United States_of_Yesterday and To-day," and the paper on "The Louisiana Purchase," by Rev. C. F. Robertson, in the American Historical Association's Papers, I. The subject has prominent place in all the biographies of Jefferson. There is an excellent brief account in Gilman's Life of Monroe, in the American Statesmen Series; and the bibliography of the subject, by Professor J. F. Jameson, in the appendix to that volume, is very complete. See also the references in the valuable chapter on "Territorial Acquisitions and Divisions," by Justin Winsor and Professor Edward Channing, in the Narrative and Critical History of America, vol. vii. The place, however, to which the thorough and first-hand student will go is the American State Papers, Foreign Relations, II. Pages 506-66 of this volume should be carefully read, as here are all the official communications which passed between Washington and Paris. The two conventions signed in connection with the treaty of cession appear here; and the student will give special attention to the memoirs prepared by Livingston for Napoleon, Madison's general instructions to Livingston and Monroe, March 2, 1803, Livingston's letters to Madison, April 13 and 17, 1803, giving account of the purchase, and Livingston and Monroe's letter to Madison, May 13, 1803.

FROM MONROE'S SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, NOVEMBER 16, 1818.

Our relations with Spain remain nearly in the state in which they were at the close of the last session. The convention of 1802, providing for the adjustment of a certain portion of the claims of our citizens for injuries sustained by spoliation, and so long suspended by the Spanish Government, has at length been ratified by it, but no arrangement has yet been made for the payment of another portion of like claims, not less extensive or well founded, or for other classes of claims, or for the settlement of boundaries. These subjects have again been brought under consideration in both countries, but no agreement has been entered into respecting them. In the meantime events have occurred which clearly prove the ill effect of the policy which that Government has so long pursued on the friendly relations of the two countries, which it is presumed is at least of as much importance to Spain as to the United States to maintain. A state of things has existed in the Floridas the tendency of which has been obvious to all who have paid the slightest attention to the progress of affairs in that quarter. Throughout the whole of those Provinces to which the Spanish title extends the Government of Spain has scarcely been felt. Its authority has been confined almost exclusively to the walls of Pensacola and St. Augustine, within which only small garrisons have been maintained. Adventurers from every country, fugitives from justice, and absconding slaves have found an asylum there. Several tribes of Indians, strong in the number of their warriors, remarkable for their ferocity, and whose settlements extend to our limits, inhabit those Provinces. These

different hordes of people, connected together, disregarding on the one side the authority of Spain, and protected on the other by an imaginary line which separates Florida from the United States, have violated our laws prohibiting the introduction of slaves, have practiced various frauds on our revenue, and committed every kind of outrage on our peaceable citizens which their proximity to us enabled them to perpetrate. The invasion of Amelia Island last year by a small band of adventurers, not exceeding 150 in number, who wrested it from the inconsiderable Spanish force stationed there, and held it several months, during which a single feeble effort only was made to recover it, which failed, clearly proves how completely extinct the Spanish authority had become, as the conduct of those adventurers while in possession of the island as distinctly shows the pernicious purposes for which their combination had been formed.

This country had, in fact, become the theater of every species of lawless adventure. With little population of its own, the Spanish authority almost extinct, and the colonial governments in a state of revolution, having no pretension to it, and sufficiently employed in their own concerns, it was in a great measure derelict, and the object of cupidity to every adventurer. A system of buccaneering was rapidly organizing over it which menaced in its consequences the lawful commerce of every nation, and particularly of the United States, while it presented a temptation to every people, on whose seduction its success principally depended. In regard to the United States, the pernicious effect of this unlawful combination was not confined to the ocean; the Indian tribes have constituted the effective force in Florida. With these tribes these adventurers had formed at an early period a connection with a view to avail themselves of that force to promote their own projects of accumulation and aggrandizement. It is to the interference of some of these adventurers, in misrepresenting the claims and titles of the Indians to land and in practising on their savage propensities, that the Seminole war is principally to be traced. Men who thus connect themselves with savage communities and stimulate them to war, which is always attended on their part with acts of barbarity the most shocking, deserve to be viewed in a worse light than the savages. They would certainly have no claim to an immunity from the punishment which, according to the rules of warfare practiced by the savages, might justly be inflicted on the savages themselves.

If the embarrassments of Spain prevented her from making an indemnity to our citizens for so long a time from her treasury for their losses by spoliation and otherwise, it was always in her power to have provided it by the cession of this territory. Of this her Government has been repeatedly apprised, and the cession was the more to have been anticipated as Spain must have known that in ceding it she would in effect cede what had become of little value to her, and would likewise relieve herself from the important obligation secured by the treaty of 1795, and all other compromitments respecting it. If the United States, from consideration of these embarrassments, declined pressing their claims in a spirit of hostility, the motive ought at least to have been duly appreciated by the Government of Spain. It is well known to her Government that other powers have made to the United States an indemnity for like losses sustained by their citizens at the same epoch.

There is nevertheless a limit beyond which this spirit of amity and forbearance can in no instance be justified. If it was proper to rely on amicable negotiation for an indemnity for losses, it would not have been so to have permitted the inability of Spain to fulfill her engagements and to sustain her authority in the Floridas to be perverted by foreign adventurers and savages to purposes so destructive to the lives of our fellow-citizens and the highest interests of the United States. The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals, and whether the attack be made by Spain herself or by those who abuse her power, its obligation is not the less strong. The invaders of Amelia Island had assumed a popular and respected title under which they might approach and wound us. As their object was distinctly seen, and the duty imposed on the Executive by an existing law was profoundly felt, that mask was not permitted to protect them. It was thought incumbent on the United States to suppress the establishment, and it was accordingly done. The combination in Florida for the unlawful purposes stated, the acts perpetrated by that combination, and, above all, the incitement of the Indians to massacre our fellowcitizens of every age and of both sexes, merited a like treatment and received it. In pursuing these savages to an imaginary line in the woods it would have been the height of folly to have suffered that line to protect them. Had that been done the war could never cease. Even if the territory had been exclu

sively that of Spain and her power complete over it, we had a right by the law of nations to follow the enemy on it and to subdue him there. But the territory belonged, in a certain sense at least, to the savage enemy who inhabited it; the power of Spain had ceased to exist over it, and protection was sought under her title by those who had committed on our citizens hostilities which she was bound by treaty to have prevented, but had not the power to prevent. To have stopped at that line would have given new encouragement to these savages and new vigor to the whole combination existing there in the prosecution of all its pernicious purposes.

In suppressing the establishment at Amelia Island no unfriendliness was manifested toward Spain, because the post was taken from a force which had wrested it from her. The measure, it is true, was not adopted in concert with the Spanish Government or those in authority under it, because in transactions connected with the war in which Spain and the colonies are engaged it was thought proper in doing justice to the United States to maintain a strict impartiality toward both the belligerent parties without consulting or acting in concert with either. It gives me pleasure to state that the Governments of Buenos Ayres and Venezuela, whose names were assumed, have explicitly disclaimed all participation in those measures, and even the knowledge of them until communicated by this Government, and have also expressed their satisfaction that a course of proceedings had been suppressed which if justly imputable to them would dishonor their cause.

In authorizing Major-General Jackson to enter Florida in pursuit of the Seminoles care was taken not to encroach on the rights of Spain. I regret to have to add that in executing this order facts were disclosed respec:ing the conduct of the officers of Spain in authority there in encouraging the war, furnishing munitions of war and other supplies to carry it on, and in other acts not less marked which evinced their participation in the hostile purposes of that combination and justified the confidence with which it inspired the savages that by those officers they would be protected. A conduct so incompatible with the friendly relations existing between the two countries, particularly with the positive obligation of the fifth article of the treaty of 1795, by which Spain was bound to restrain, even by force, those savages from acts of hostility against the United States, could not fail to excite surprise. The commanding general was