Some of the Consequences of the Louisiana Purchase

Excerpt from Some of the Consequences of the Louisiana PurchaseThe true history of the cession of Louisiana is to be found, not in the doings of the diplomats, who merely determined upon the terms of the transfer, but in the western growth of the people of the United States from 1769 to 1803. This western growth of population made the accession of Louisiana inevitable. The real conquerors of that vast territory, which in the early times was known by the name of Louisiana, were the men who settled and peopled the western wilderness. France surrendered her vast claims only before the persistent advance of the American settler. Napoleon saw much more clearly than did our ministers at Paris and Madrid that no European power could hold the country beyond the Mississippi when the Americans had made good their foothold upon its banks. It was during the two or three decades following this period that the great part of the United States known as The West rose to its real power in the Union. The boundaries of the old west were made certain and the extreme limits between the Mississippi and the Pacific were added to the national domain....