Louisiana Purchase Quotes
Jefferson had been very much pro French and anti British, but the rise of Napoleon and French presence on the American continent shifted his views, culminating in the Louisiana Purchase. See {605059} for Jefferson’s view on the military significance of New Orleans.
Actually starting in the Obama Administration, his ship and a NOAAA Government Research ship both were surveying the new undersea areas, However, it would take 20 such ships to do the job in the next decade–so vast was the new territory that we now have.
His ancestors had come to New Orleans from Haiti around 1800 before the United States made the Louisiana Purchase.
Bryant, like most New Englanders did not trust Jefferson and saw anything the President did in its worst possible light. He even believed that Jefferson’s great interest in science was evidence of his lack of respect for religion. Nothing he could do was right, much like the Tea Party and President Barack Obama more than 200 years later.
This is one of the favorite quotations of American isolationists. Try as he and others did, they found the principle easier to utter than implement. Jefferson, having diplomatic experience in Europe knew far more than most Americans about foreign affairs, and he used this knowledge well on many occasions in playing off the French, Spanish and English against each other regarding their interests in America. By purchasing the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, he not only greatly increased the size of the nation but all but eliminated Spanish aspirations in North America. At the same time the money he gave Napoleon increased the French threat to England, Spain and other European countries. So Jefferson and America was in European “broils” as the advantage and necessity outweighed the general principle and dislike for those machinations.
This was the beginning of the Jeffersonian effort culminating in the Corps of Discovery and the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Presidential, confidential memoranda to the Congress were more common then than now when they have become a rarity.
Later, Jefferson’s then Secretary of State, James Monroe, when President, would promulgate the Monroe Doctrine limiting the activities of foreign powers in the Western Hemisphere. Here it was immediately adjacent to the then United States.
This was the classic liberal / conservative dichotomy. Jefferson the visionary with hopes and dreams of the future was willing to spend public money to double the size of the country. Ames a conservative, a member and leading figure of the opposition Federalist party, did not want to use precious public money for land that was not immediately needed for any purpose. The Federalist Party was on its last legs in America despite the fact that George Washington was a Federalist. Americans at the time were looking forward—not back. The new territory was the locus of scientific studies of the day with the Lewis & Clark Expedition so the investment was in much more than land. Security was also a factor as it gave foreign governments less of a foothold on our continent.
