The great prestige
inuring to the Union from territorial control would thereby cease. But
with the addition of new provinces from time to time, the holding of
territories preliminary to statehood must be indefinitely prolonged.
The functions of the Union would be multiplied instead of diminished.
By the acquisition of Louisiana, Jefferson effectually settled the
twenty years of internal dispute over the navigation of the lower
Mississippi. From source to mouth, it flowed presumably through American
territory. Americans were to be found on both sides the great water
highway. Those west of the river had crossed upon invitation of Spain,
who hoped in this way to people her province without loss to her other
possessions. The colonists taken across the river by Colonel Morgan
and others had caused no little alarm to statesmen in the Confederation
days, lest the population of the United States be drawn off to people
a Spanish possession and so weaken the Republic. Among the thirty-five
thousand or more people to be found about the city of New Orleans and
along the lower Mississippi and the Red rivers was a small percentage
of Americans; but a much larger proportion was to be found in the six
thousand inhabitants of St.
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