When in 1801 Thomas Jefferson became third President of the United States the nation was young. The War for Independence had been won only twenty years previous. George Washington himself had been gone but a year and four months. The Capitol was being erected on the site that he had chosen. And the western boundary of the nation was the Mississippi River.

Beyond the Mississippi extended onward to the Rocky Mountains the foreign territory of Louisiana Province. New Orleans was the capital of its lower portion, St. Louis was the capital of its upper portion. It all was assumed to be the property of Spain, until, before President Jefferson had held office a year, there spread the rumor that by a secret treaty in 1800 Spain had ceded Louisiana back to France, the first owner.

Almost another year passed. The treaty transferring Louisiana Province from Spain to France seemed to be hanging fire. The Spanish flag still floated over New Orleans and St. Louis. Then, in October, 1802, the Spanish governor at New Orleans informed the American traders and merchants that their flat-boats no longer might use the Mississippi River. New Orleans, the port through which the Mississippi River traffic reached the Gulf of Mexico, was closed to them.

From the west to the east of the United States swelled a vigorous cry of indignation against this decree that closed the Mississippi to American commerce. Hot words issued, threats were loudly spoken, and the people of the Ohio Valley, particularly, were ripe to seize New Orleans and re-open the big river by force of arms.

However, the Spanish governor was not within his rights, anyway. By that secret treaty, the Island of New Orleans (as it was called), through which the currents of the Mississippi flowed to the Gulf, was French property. So instead of disputing further with Spain, President Jefferson, in January, 1803, sent Robert R. Livingston, United States minister to France, the authority to buy the New Orleans gateway for $2,000,000, or, if necessitated, to offer $10,000,000.

President Jefferson was a gaunt, thin-legged, sandy-haired, homely man, careless of his clothes and simple in his customs, but he passion