130 Preface 



known for fifty years. At the same time the treat- 

 ies of Jay and Pinckney gave us in fact the boun- 

 daries which the peace of 1783 had only given us 

 in name. The execution of these treaties put an 

 end in the North to the intrigues of the British, 

 who had stirred the Indians to hostility against the 

 Americans ; and in the South to the far more treach- 

 erous intrigues of the Spaniards, who showed as- 

 tounding duplicity, and whose intrigues extended 

 not only to the Indians but also to the baser sep- 

 aratist leaders among the Westerners themselves. 



The cession of Louisiana followed. Its true his- 

 tory is to be found, not in the doings of the diplo- 

 mats who determined merely the terms upon which 

 it was made, but in the Western growth of the 

 people of the United States from 1769 to 1803, 

 which made it inevitable. The men who settled and 

 peopled the Western wilderness were the men who 

 won Louisiana; for it was surrendered by France 

 merely because it was impossible to hold it against 

 the American advance. Jefferson, through his 

 agents at .Paris, asked only for New Orleans; but 

 Napoleon thrust upon him the great West, because 

 Napoleon saw, what the American statesmen and 

 diplomats did not see, but what the Westerners felt ; 

 for he saw that no European power could hold the 

 country beyond the Mississippi when the Americans 

 had made good their foothold upon the hither bank. 



It remained to explore the unknown land; and 

 this task fell, not to mere wild hunters, such as 

 those who had first penetrated the wooded wilder- 



