accomplished within this vast region during the century.

An executive committee was appointed, of which Hon. David R. Francis, of
St. Louis, was made chairman. The aid of the United States Government
was sought, and, after preliminary work on the part of the members of
the committee in raising the $10,000,000, which Congress had made a
condition should be secured before rendering material assistance, a bill
was passed March 3, 1901, appropriating $5,000,000 toward "celebrating
the one hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase Territory by the
United States by holding an international exhibition of arts,
industries, manufactures, and the products of the soil, mine, forest,
and sea in the city of St. Louis, in the State of Missouri."

This enormous tract of land that for a century had been steadily
contributing to the material advancement of the world was now to show
that it was ready and able to assume its full share not only in
practical life and progress but in the deeper phases of science and art,
and to demonstrate the nature of its resources by participation in the
greatest universal exposition ever held. By this exposition it was not
only above all else to illustrate the marvelous development of the
territory whose acquisition it was meant to celebrate, but it was
likewise "to provide for a comparative display of the products, natural
and artificial, of the nations of the world, to be arranged in
classified groups, the exhibits of each nation in every class to be set
down by the side of those of all other nations, thereby better to insure
comparison and an intelligent verdict as to merit by the direct and
practical contrast thus secured." It was to demonstrate the feasible
combination of the artistic with the useful, the beautiful with the
enduring, the graceful with the strong.

The three most significant dates historically connected with the
acquisition of the magnificent domain known as Louisiana are April 30,
1803, when the great treaty was signed; October 19, when the treaty was
ratified in the Senate of the United States by a vote of 24 to 7; and
December 20, of the same year, when our Government received formal
possession at New Orleans from the French prefect, Laussat. The council
chamber of the Cabildo (which building was so ably reproduced at the
exposition) and the balcony adjacent were the scene of the formal
retrocession of Louisiana from Spain to France, and also of the event so
much more m