to a desire for war in which many eastern people shared.
Jefferson's plan to buy New Orleans and West Florida. Jefferson was by nature strongly averse to war, and would sometimes yield a great deal in order to preserve peace. In this case, however, his mind seems to have been made up. We must go to war rather than permit France to take and keep possession of the mouth of the Mississippi. But it would be best, he thought, to delay the armed conflict as long as possible, and meantime he would try to gain the control of the river for the United States by the arts of diplomacy, in the use of which he was a master hand. The plan was to frighten Napoleon with a threat that the United States would join Great Britain in a war against France, and thus induce him, as a condition of peace, to sell us the island and city of New Orleans, together with West Florida. This would give the United States both banks of the Mississippi at its mouth, and insure the control of the river. Jefferson had already instructed Robert R. Livingston, our minister to France, to undertake this purchase of territory from Napoleon; and when the war spirit ran high in Congress, during the winter of 1802-1803, he sent James Monroe to Paris as a special commissioner to assist in carrying out this plan. At the same time Congress took measures to place the country in as good condition as possible to bear the shock of a future war.
The special message of January 18, 1803. It was under these circumstances, when the country was ex
