The Coolidge examiner., 1933-11-03

NVEN one with the widest i'm
n aginatiOn finds it difficult,
- while strOlling down San
Francisco's Market street, or Chi
cagO's Michigan boulevard, to visu-
alize the former city as a sleepy
Mexican village and the latter as
tiny frontier town around a stock
ade-encircled fort a century ago.
Then the Mississippi was way
out West" 1t was as late as 1892
that separate statehood made the
momentous first step west of the
Alleghenies, as Kentucky's lines
ran out in their own right (the area
had been a part of Virginia), the
first state to reach the once remote
river.
With the beginning of the Nine
teenth century, however, the Union
seriously took up the real estate
business in a large way.
Ohio's outlines had barely taken
map form in 1903 when huge ter
ritory was pegged out for future
states, the Louisiana Purchase,
which more than doubled the area
of the original Union.
This taking over Of 909,130
square miles by the stroke of a
pen was probably the greatest real
estate transaction in all history.
For this potential empire the Unit
ed States paid France in all-prin-
cipal, interest, and debts assumed
S23,213,567.74. 1t works out at lit
tie less than 4 cents an acre!
The purchase was a happy acci-
dent-a bit of high-handed patriot
ism that lawyers have said strained
the Constitution"
Robert Z. Livingston was sent in
1901 by the United States as minis
ter to France TO attempt to buy
the Island Of New Orleans" on
both sides of the Mississippi, and so
to gain control of the mouth of the
river. He was authorized to offer
100000 and if necessary, as high
as S10,0O0,000 for the patch of land.
Negotiations dragged on for two
years, when suddenly war was de-
clared on France by Great Britain.
More to embarrass Great Britain
than to accommodate the United
States, Napoleon decided to sell the
entire Louisiana territory. The his
toric decision was reached while the
first consul was in his bath.
Napoleon Decides to Sell.
James Monroe had joined Living
ston as a special commissioner, and
to them was made the proposal to
sell. The French negOtiatOrs asked
15,OOO,O00-an amount once and a
half as great as the highest author
lied figure.
The two Americans were aghast.
Cables and steamships did not ex-
ist. To get word to America and
an answer back would require many
weeks. Napoleon was in hurry. SO
the two ENJOYS tiguratively threw
their instructions out the window
and signed the agreement.
Nobody knew. enough about the
new domain west Of the Mississippi
to draw an ineligible map of it.
They knew only that there were
prairies and deserts; that beyond
were mountains of some sort; and
that somewhere farther on, may
be hundreds, maybe thousands of
leagues away, lay the half mythical
South sea.
Lewis and Clark, and soon after
them Capt. ZebulOn Pike, struck
into the new country to see
what it was like. and as a result of
their explorations Americans began
to learn a few things about their
vast West.
When Powell led his party of ad
venturers by boat down the Colo
RADIO river, in 1869, they were the
first to navigate the stream through
its long canyons, although the
early Spanish explorers had seen
the Grand canyon from above 800
years before.
The Florida Purchase, in 1919, in
yolved a relatively small area. That
ACQUISITION really made the United
States smaller than it was before.
The treaty with Spain definitely
marked the eastern and northern
Spanish boundary all the way from
the southeast point of Texas to the
northwest point of California.
Parts of present Oklahoma, Kan
sas and Colorado. draining to the
Arkansas-areas which had been
thought to be in the Louisiana ter
ritory-were lost to the United
States by the treaty and had to be
bought back from Texas later.
More territory came to the United
States in the decade 1S40-1S5O than
during any other ten years in it's
history. Texas was added in 1S45;
tho title to Oregon territory was eS-