Many things which Jefferson did proved that he was an able statesman, but the one act which stands out above all others as the greatest and wisest of his administration, was the "Louisiana Purchase."
Let us see how this purchase came to be made. Before Jefferson became President many pioneers, we know, had already settled west of the Alleghany Mountains. Most of them lived along the Ohio and the streams flowing into it from the north and the south. In the upland valleys of the Kentucky and Tennessee Rivers settlers were especially numerous.
These lands were so fertile that the people living there became very prosperous. As their harvests were abundant, they needed a market in which to sell what they could not use.
We have seen how in the autumn it was their custom to load the furs on pack-horses, and driving the cattle before them along the forest trail, to make the long journey over the mountains to cities and towns along the Atlantic coast.
[Illustration: A Flatboat on the Ohio River.]
But to send their bulky products by this route was too expensive. Water transportation cost much less. Such produce as corn-meal, flour, pork, and lumber had to go on rafts or flatboats down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Here the cargo and the boat were sold, or the cargo sold and loaded on ocean vessels, which in time reached the eastern market by a cheaper though longer route than that by land. Thus the Mississippi River, being the only outlet for this heavy produce, was very necessary to the prosperity of the west.
But Spain at this time owned New Orleans and all the land about the mouth of the Mississippi River; and as the river became more and more used for traffic Spanish officers at New Orleans began to make trouble. They even went so far as to threaten to prevent the sending of produce to that port.
This threat greatly troubled and angered the western farmers. They proposed wild plans to force an outlet for their trade. But before anything was done, news came that Napoleon, who was then at the head of affairs in France, had compelled Spain to give up Louisiana to France.
Then the westerners grew still more alarmed about their trade. It was bad enough to have a weak country like Spain in control of Louisiana. But it might be far worse to have France, the greatest military power in the world at that time, own it. All this was very plain to Jefferson, and he knew that Napoleon was planning to establish garrisons and colonies in Louisiana.