government. In eight years, under his management of the treasury, the United States paid off about half of the national debt of eighty million dollars. Danger in the interior.-Soon after Jefferson was inaugurated, Spain withdrew from the United States the right of depositing goods at New Orleans and of shipping them on ocean-going vessels. The American settlers in the interior were ready to go to war with Spain to take New Orleans. When Jefferson feared that he would have a war on his hands, he was astonished to find that Spain had by a secret treaty agreed to cede Louisiana to France. It would have been hard enough to fight a weak power like Spain, but France was far stronger. Jefferson thought for a time that he would be compelled to seek British aid to keep the Mississippi open for American produce. For such aid he would have been willing to give Great Britain all rights to the west bank of that river and to the lands beyond it. Course of the French Revolution. The most serious troubles of Jefferson's administration were due to foreign war. To understand his difficulties, we must know something of the later course of the French Revolution (p. 234) and of the rise of Napoleon, the new ruler of France. The French had, indeed, cut off the head of their king and established a republic, but these acts did not bring liberty. The Revolution passed into a Reign of Terror. A small governing committee of extremists, more despotic than the king had ever thought of being, was in authority, and in Paris alone it sometimes sent to the guil'lotine more than a hundred victims a week. At last people could endure such a state of things no longer, and the committee was overthrown and replaced by a temporary government. Napoleon Bonaparte.—One day in 1795 (during Washington's second administration), an artillery officer twenty-seven years old was commissioned to defend the Convention which then governed France. He used his cannon so skillfully that he mowed down an advancing mob. People were astonished by his activity and energy. He seemed "to be everywhere at once." Mob rule ceased. This artillery officer was Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), who soon became one of the greatest generals of all time. In 1799 he made himself the ruler of France, and a few years later was crowned emperor. Napoleon's most enduring work was the Code Napoléon, a system of laws for France. The influence of this code may be seen to-day in Italian, German, Spanish, and South American law. Before the French Revolution, France had had one law for the nobleman, another for the peasant. Napoleon's code enacted the same law for both. He insisted on legal equality as firmly as Jefferson on political equality. The Code Napoléon thus continued the work of the French Revolution. It helped to abolish serfdom and to give to western Europe a more liberal social system. After Napoleon became a prisoner on St. Hele'na, he gave this just estimate of his work: "My true glory is not that I have gained forty battles. Waterloo will efface the memory of those victories. But that which nothing can efface, which will live forever, is my civil code." A maker of American history. The reason why we should know something of Napoleon is because he is one of the great makers of American history. Those who have noted the frequency of the appearance of historical names in our popular literature say that Napoleon's name is mentioned more often than that of any other person who has been dead for half a century. After Spain had ceded Louisiana to France, Jefferson asked Robert Livingston, our minister to France, to try to purchase New Orleans and part of the strip of land known as West Florida, extending along the coast east of the Mississippi. Jefferson secured from Congress an appropriation of $2,000,000 to offer for this territory. He would have been willing to confirm France in possession of the land west of the Mississippi, for he did not think that region had much value. Napoleon then appeared on the scene as a great actor in the drama of American history. "What would you give for all Louisiana?" asked Napoleon's foreign representative of the surprised American minister. Although he and James Monroe', a special envoy to France to assist in the purchase, had no authority from their government, they agreed to pay $15,000,000 for all of Louisiana, on both sides of the Mississippi. In spite of the fact that the Constitution makes no definite statement about Statue at the St. Louis Exposition, 1904. Marbois was the representative of the French government, as Monroe and Livingston were of the American. any right to purchase foreign territory, Jefferson had the good sense to buy it. One political party has often done what it has severely censured the other for doing. Chief Justice Marshall, whom Jefferson disliked, thought such a purchase constitutional. Thus, by a stroke of his pen, Napoleon nearly doubled the area of the United States by deeding to it all Louisiana. The purchase price of $15,000,000 was an average of about three cents an acre for the entire tract, an amount less than the cost of a war of a few months' duration. It is not possible to estimate Napoleon's influence, through the Louisiana cession, on the development of our country. So far as the United States is concerned, it is fortunate that he was then master of France and had to consult no one about the sale of Louisiana. He knew that war was coming with Great Britain, and he wanted money to prepare for it. He also feared that the British might take all Louisiana. If they had seized it, there might have been another permanent Canada west of the Mississippi, blocking our way to the Pacific. The transfer of the Louisiana territory took place in 1803. A jury of historians has called this year the sixth most important date in American history (Appendix, p. xxiv). The Louisiana Purchase was far the greatest event in Jefferson's two administrations. Extent of the Louisiana Purchase.-The Louisiana Purchase added 828,000 square miles to the area of 892,000 square miles in the United States after the treaty following the Revolution. It included New Orleans and, according to the interpretation of the United States, other territory east of the Mississippi between the American possessions and the Gulf. It also gave the United States the title to the vast tract west of the Mississippi, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the British possessions on the north, to the Rocky Mountains on the west, and to the Spanish possessions on the southwest (maps following pp. 250, 322). From the Louisiana Purchase have been formed the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and the greater part of Minnesota, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. The Lewis and Clark expedition.-Jefferson wished to have his new purchase explored, and to find an overland route “by the way of the Missouri and Columbia rivers to the Pacific Ocean" through Oregon, as the northwest territory beyond the Rocky Mountains was called. No white man had ever made this journey. Jefferson's private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, a young Virginian under thirty, and his friend, Captain William Clark, a brother of George Rogers Clark (p. 202), were the capable leaders of the greatest exploring expedition ever made by Americans. This expedition of forty-five people started from St. Louis in the spring of 1804, and went up the Missouri River in three boats. After a voyage of 1600 miles they encamped for the winter at Fort Mandan, near the present city of Bismarck, North Dakota. When they continued (April, 1805) the ascent of the Missouri, Lewis and Clark took with them a French interpreter and his Indian wife, named Sakakawea (sä-kå-kä'we-ȧ), or |