Arizona silver belt., 1890-09-13
The lOass.nna Purchase.
ti5nston Adye,tissf.,

The recent admission to the Union of six States in the far West emphasizes the fact of the immense area of onr country. and when it IS remembered that the great region out of which these and 50 many other States have been carved was bought from France at one stroke for $l6, GOO, 900, the magnitude of the transaction and the compare lively tritiing cost of this territory are equally striking. Less than two cents for each 100 acres of the land conveyed" IS the statement of L, F. Munson, in leading historical Article on "The Louisiana Purchase, in the New Ensiauder for August. Truly may We say that Louisiana cost us next to nothing. The exceedingly interest ing fact Is made prominent in the arti- cle to which We have referred, that France had only nominal possession of Louisiana at the tinio Napoleon sold 1t under treaty to this country. Spain had just previously ceded hack this ter ritory to France by secret treaty of October 1, 1900, but the Spanish flag still Aoated in New Orleans and gener- ally throughout the settlements of Louisiana, and commercial rights were denied the United States in New Or leans by Spanish authorities for two years after this secret treaty Presi- dent Jefferson had. however, learned of the treaty, and it was for the purpose of securing commercial privileges, not for hepurpose ofnegotiating for the pur- chase of Louisiana, that James Munroe was appointed special minister to France. Everything favored the United States tt this time, 1t will be remembered: :: France needed money, not only, but England had twenty warshipsin the Gulf of Mexico waiting for the signal to move ID the Mississippi and seize Louis jana Napoleon was not in position to defend his American possessions, and, seeing that he was bound to lose them if he did not sell them, really played a brilliant part in turning them over to tie United States for an amount large in those days and which enabled him to prepare more suitably for the final struggle with England. II is of inter- est to note that Spain actually gave over the province of Louisiana to France only twenty days before France for mally relinquished the province to the United States. Ii is little difficult to exactly prescribe the limits of the ter ritory included in this purchase, be- cause there was not single boundary line given or referred to in the treaty. Louisiana as 1t came to the United States, was larger than the thirteen original States. It embraced territo- rial area, as Mir Munson points out, 150 times larger than Massachusetts and twenty-six times as large as New York, In the eighty-seyen years since This grasd acquisition there have been admitted to the Union from Louisiana twelve great States east of ihe Rocky Mountains, each nearly twice as large as the Empire State, and the three States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho west of the Rockies. Estimating cur population al 6 900 GOO, there would be less than fifty to the square mile if all were located in the Louis iana purchase, while by the census of 1880 Massachusetts has 22S to the square mile, and New York l06. It is not to be wondered at that Jefferson's purchase impressed itself very favora- bly upon his own generation after very short period of criticism at the extra-eonslitutional nature of the treaty. In our day the purchase of Louisiana appears Co be the most important terri torial acquisition of the kind ever made. Several more States are still to be cre- ated out of this territory ard the rapid development of the States already in existence have made of Louisiana as it was in Eapoleon's day a populous and prosperous region whose like Jefferson himself never dreamed cf.