Marietta daily leader. (Marietta, Ohio) 1895-1906, 1901-06-14
The uRIeINAL ExpANsIONIsT.

A claim is made that Hamilton wa!
earlier in the field than Jefferson ir
seeking to get possession of Louisiana
AS early as 1870 Hamilton wrote t
Washington condemning Spain for OBJ
structing the navigation of the Missis.
sippi, and said that when the United
States got strong enough to compel
Spain to open the river to the free
navigation of the country 1--WE ought
not to leave in the possession of any
foreign power the territories at the
mouth of the Mississippi, which are re-
garded as the key to it." Again, in
1898. he was believed to be involved in
the Miranda filibustering plot, by
which Spain was to be driven out by
the cooperation of the United States
and England, the latter country to get
Cuba and the rest of Spain's territory
in the West Indies, while the United
States should get Florida and all of the
ancient Louisiana which was east of
the Mississippi.
1t is true. of course, that Hamilton,
many years before the purchase of
Louisiana. wanted the borders of the
United States to be extended south and
southwest. But Washington and many
others of the American leaders of
those days were also eXpansionists.
None of them, however, had any defi-
mite ideas until about the time of the
acquisition of Louisiana about an ex-
pansion which would carry the coun-
try's boundaries to the Rocky Noun
tains and the Rio Grande. In the Mi
randa plot of 1898 it was contem-
plated to drive Spain away from the
mouth of the Mississippi SO that all
the Spanish territory to the east of the
river, including not only the Florida
of today but the West Florida of that
time. which was strip extending from
Florida proper onward to the Missis-
sippi, should be annexed by the United
States.
Nevertheless the credit for the Lou
isiana acquisition, which was the first
and greatest of all of Americas expan-
sions belongs to Jefferson. Metaphor
ically, jefferson had been looking over
the ground from the Mississippi tn
the Pacific long before Louisiana was
bought. While Minister in France in
1856 he suggested to John Ledyard that
he should drift down from the Russian
possessions on the Pacific to the region
whicn we call Oregon in these days,
and then strike some river which he
believed would be found leading from
the continental divide in the Rocky
to the Pacific, that he
should follow up this river to the high
lands, and then crossing to the Missou-
ri, pass down to the United States.
The river leading to the Pacific which
Jefferson supposed John Ledyard could
find by searching for it the Yankee
skipper Gray discovered (the Columbia)
a few years later in 1892. In the latter
year, when Secretary of State in Wash
ington's cabinet, Jefferson tried to get
the American Philosophical Society to
send some explorers across the conti-
nent to the Pacific. This idea he car
ried out when he became President by
sending Lewis and Clark and their
party up the Missouri and down the
Columbia. Jefferson's original pur
pose in these explorations was CONNER
cial and scientific-to divert to the Tn
tied Gtates some of the Indian trade
then going to England, Russia and
other countries, and to discover the
conformation and the flora
and fauna of the continent. 1t is i'm
possible to strike an American eXpan-
sionist who began earlier than Jeffer-
son unless we go back to Jonathan Car
YER, and his period of activity was in
he colonial days. Moreover, the Gre
lit of actually accomplishing the ex-
1ansion belongs to Jefferson. though he
was not expecting to get Louisiana at
the time, and was seeking to obtain
merely the Floridas and New Orleans.