wer to a class,
there would grow up an oligarchy, resting on ownership in negroes,
which, within sixty years, would have to be uprooted at an enormous
cost. But his aim was to secure the peaceful possession of the
Mississippi territory on both its banks, as a permanent settlement of a
question which, so long as it remained open, was a perpetual menace of
war with one or another European power. That danger would always involve
the possibility of the Appalachian range becoming the western boundary
of the United States; in which case the valley of the Mississippi, and
the vast region west of it, would fall into the power of an alien
people. So far was plain to Mr. Jefferson; but the result of the
rebellion of 1861 proves that he was wiser than he knew when he acquired
the territory stretching to the Sabine and the foot of the Rocky
Mountains for the occupation of a free people.

It is not necessary to repeat here the story of the purchase. The news
of it reached Washington in July and was received with enthusiasm. That
there was no warrant in the Constitution for an acquisition of territory
by purchase was manifest; and Mr. Jefferson's opponents were not in the
least backward in heaping reproaches and ridicule upon the great
champion of strict construction, who had no hesitation in violating the
Constitution when it seemed to him wise to do so. Both the President and
his secretary frankly met the accusation by acknowledging its entire
justice; but at the same time they put in, as a sufficient defense, the
plea of the general welfare. This did not abate the ridicule, though the
argument was a hard one for the Federalists to withstand; for it could
not be forgotten that it was on this ground that Hamilton, as secretary
of the treasury, had justified the imposition of certain taxes, and the
Republicans had maintained that the plain limitations of the
Constitution could not be overstepped on such a plea, even for the
general good. Jefferson was so sensitive to this constitutional
objection that he proposed to meet it by an amendment to the
Constitution; but it was soon evident that the unwritten law of manifest
destiny did not need the appeal to the ballot-box. "The grumblers,"
Jefferson wrote to a friend soon after the news of the treaty was
received, "gave all the credit of the acquisition to the accident of
war." "They would see," he added, in records on file, "that though we
could not say when war would arise, yet we said