Louisiana and Aaron Burr 307 



he loved the French with a servile devotion. But 

 his party was strongest in precisely those parts of 

 the country where the mouth of the Mississippi 

 was held to be of right the property of the United 

 States; and the pressure of public opinion was too 

 strong for Jefferson to think of resisting it. The 

 South and the West were a unit in demanding that 

 France should not be allowed to establish herself on 

 the lower Mississippi. Jefferson was forced to tell 

 his French friends that if their nation persisted in 

 its purpose America would be obliged to marry itself 

 to the navy and army of England. Even he could 

 see that for the French to take Louisiana meant war 

 with the United States sooner or later ; and as above 

 all things else he wished peace, he made every effort 

 to secure the coveted territory by purchase. 



Chancellor Robert R. Livingston of New York 

 represented American interests in Paris; but at the 

 very close of the negotiation he was succeeded by 

 Monroe, whom Jefferson sent over as a special en- 

 voy. The course of the negotiations was at first 

 most baffling to the Americans. 5 Talleyrand lied 

 with such unmoved calm that it was impossible to 

 put the least weight upon anything he said; more- 

 over, the Americans soon found that Napoleon was 

 the sole and absolute master, so that it was of no 



5 In Henry Adams' "History of the United States," the ac- 

 count of the diplomatic negotiations at this period, between 

 France, Spain, and the United States, is the most brilliant 

 piece of diplomatic history, so far as the doings of the diplo- 

 mats themselves are concerned, that can be put to the credit 

 of any American writer. 



