Even the people of the Atlantic States were accused by westerners as late
as 1786 of threatening secession and of being as ignorant of the trans-
Alleghany country as Great Britain had been of America, and as
inconsiderate. The western half, urged by the minister of Louis XV upon
Spain after sixty or seventy millions of francs had been spent fruitlessly
upon it by France, recovered by Napoleon and sold to the United States for
one-fourth of the amount that was expended a century later for the
celebration of the purchase, was regarded at the time of the purchase,
even by many seacoast Americans, as useless, except as it secured control
of the mouth of the Mississippi. An important New York paper said
editorially:
"... As to the unbounded region west of the Mississippi, it is, with the
exception of a very few settlements of Spaniards and Frenchmen bordering
on the banks of the river, a wilderness through which wander numerous
tribes of Indians. And when we consider the present extent of the United
States, and that not one-sixteenth part of its territory is yet under
occupation, the advantage of the acquisition, as it relates to actual
settlement, appears too distant and remote to strike the mind of a sober
politician with much force.
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