They are engaged in exciting troubles in St. Domingo. They shall
not have the Mississippi which they covet. Louisiana is nothing in
comparison with their conquests in all parts of the globe, and yet the
jealousy they feel at the restoration of this colony to the sovereignty of
France acquaints me with their wish to take possession of it, and it is
thus that they will begin the war.... I think of ceding it to the United
States. I can scarcely say that I cede it to them, for it is not yet in
our possession. If, however, I leave the least time to our enemies, I
shall only transmit an empty title to those republicans whose friendship I
seek. They only ask of me one town in Louisiana, but I already consider
the colony as entirely lost, and it appears to me that in the hands of
this growing power, it will be more useful to the policy and even to the
commerce of France than if I should attempt to keep it." [Footnote:
Marbois, "History of Louisiana," pp. 263-264.]
The United States Commissioner came one day to Paris to purchase New
Orleans, and he went back to America with a deed to more than 800,000
square miles of the region which La Salle had claimed for Louis XIV by
virtue of the commission which he carried in his bosom from the Rue de la
Truanderie more than a century before:
"The First Consul of the French Republic, desiring to give to the United
States a strong proof of friendship, doth hereby cede to the said United
States, in the name of the French Republic, forever and in full
sovereignty, the said territory, with all its rights and appurtenances, as
fully and in the same manner as they might have been acquired by the
French Republic.
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