178 THOMAS JEFFERSON 



the purchase was so generally approved that Jefferson 

 abandoned his half-formed purpose of asking Congress 

 to propose a constitutional amendment to justify him. 

 Perhaps it was not needed. A quarter of a century 

 later Chief Justice Marshall laid down the doctrine 

 that " the Constitution conferred absolutely on the 

 government of the Union the power of making war 

 and of making treaties ; consequently that government 

 possesses the power of acquiring territory either by 

 conquest or by treaty." l In the time of Jefferson's 

 presidency this would have been called loose construc- 

 tion. To the general approval of the Louisiana pur- 

 chase there was one exception. In New England 

 some people feared that in so huge a nation as this 

 portended, their own corner of the country would be 

 reduced to insignificance. The uneasiness continued 

 until after the second war with England. In 1811 

 Josiah Quincy, afterward president of Harvard, de- 

 clared in a fervent speech in the House of Repre- 

 sentatives, that if the state of Louisiana, the first 

 beyond the great river, should be admitted into the 

 Union, it would be high time for the New England 

 states to secede and form a separate confederacy. 



With Jefferson's strong faith in the teachableness 

 of the great mass of people we naturally associate 

 universal suffrage, for his influence went largely in this 

 direction. We often hear, people say that the experi- 

 ment of universal suffrage is a failure, that it simply 



1 Extract from the opinion of Chief Justice John Marshall, p. 542, 

 i Peters (Sup. Court U. S.) Rep., The American Ins. Co. et al. v. Carter, 

 January term, 1828. The case was argued by Mr. Ogden for appellants, 

 Mr. Whipple and Mr. Webster for Carter. This is all that appears in the 

 decision touching the power to acquire territory. 



