and of pledging the
credit of the government for a sum which, rated by the ability to
pay, was larger than a similar pledge to-day for five hundred
millions of dollars.

The price agreed upon was eleven million two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars in six per cent United States bonds, the interest
of which was made payable in London, Amsterdam, and Paris, and the
principal at the treasury in Washington in sums of three millions
per annum, beginning fifteen years after the bonds were issued.
In a separate treaty made the same day, the United States agreed
to pay twenty million francs additional, to be applied by France
to the satisfaction of certain claims owed to American citizens.
Thus the total cost of Louisiana was eighty millions of francs,
or, in round numbers, fifteen millions of dollars.

No difficulty was experienced in putting the United States in
possession of the territory and of its chief emporium, New Orleans.
The French Government had regarded the possession of so much
consequence, that Bernadotte, afterwards King of Sweden, was at
one time gazetted as Captain-general; and, some obstacles supervening,
the eminent General Victor, afterwards Marshal of France and Duke
of Belluno, was named in his stead. But all these plans were
brushed aside by one stroke of Bonaparte's pen; and the United
States, in consequence of favoring circumstances growing out of
European complications, and the bold and competent statesmanship
of Jefferson, obtained a territory larger in area than that which
was wrested from the British crown by the Revolutionary war.

It seems scarcely credible that the acquisition of Louisiana by
Jefferson was denounced with a bitterness surpassing the partisan
rancor with which later generations have been familiar. No abuse
was too malignant, no epithet too coarse, no imprecation too savage,
to be employed by the assailants of the great philosophic statesman
who laid so broad and deep the foundations of his country's growth
and grandeur. President of a feeble republic, contending for a
prize which was held by the greatest military power of Europe, and
whose possession was coveted by the greatest naval power of the
world, Mr. Jefferson, through his chosen and trusted agents, so
conducted his important negotiation that the ambition of the United
States was successfully interposed between the necessities of the
one and the aggressive designs of the other. Willing to side with
either of these