great powers, for the advantage of his own country,
not underrating the dangers of war, yet ready to engage in it for
the control of the great water-way to the Gulf, the President made
the largest conquest ever peacefully achieved, and at a cost so
small that the total sum expended for the entire territory does
not equal the revenue which has since been collected on its soil
in a single month in time of great public peril. The country thus
acquired forms to-day the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri,
Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota west of the Mississippi, Colorado
north of the Arkansas, besides the Indian Territory and the
Territories of Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Texas was also included
in the transfer, but the Oregon country was not. The Louisiana
purchase did not extend beyond the main range of the Rocky Mountains,
and our title to that large area which is included in the State of
Oregon and in the Territories of Washington and Idaho rests upon
a different foundation, or, rather, upon a series of claims, each
of which was strong under the law of nations. We claimed it first
by right of original discovery of the Columbia River by an American
navigator in 1792; second, by original exploration in 1805; third,
by original settlement in 1810, by the enterprising company of
which John Jacob Astor was the head; and, lastly and principally,
by the transfer of the Spanish title in 1819, many years after the
Louisiana purchase was accomplished. It is not, however, probable
that we should have been able to maintain our title to Oregon if
we had not secured the intervening country. It was certainly our
purchase of Louisiana that enabled us to secure the Spanish title
to the shores of the Pacific, and without that title we could hardly
have maintained our claim. As against England our title seemed to
us to be perfect, but as against Spain our case was not so strong.
The purchase of Louisiana may therefore be fairly said to have
carried with it and secured to us our possession of Oregon.

The acquisition of Louisiana brought incalculable wealth, power,
and prestige to the Union, and must always be regarded as the master-
stroke of policy which advanced the United States from a comparatively
feeble nation, lying between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, to
a continental power of assured strength and boundless promise.
The _coup d'etat_ of the First Consul was an overwhelming surprise
and disappointment to the Eng