CHAPTER III.
HOSTILITIES WITH FRANCE AND THE ACQUISITION OF LOUISIANA.
THE acquisition of Louisiana was "an opportunity snatched from fate." This terse expression accurately defines the diplomacy by which Louisiana was acquired. The United States did not command the situation, but made skillful use of the opportunity. All the military power which the United States possessed in 1803, and all the diplomatic skill of her statesmen, would have been inadequate to create the conditions which resulted in the acquisition of Louisiana. Two simultaneous revolutions were necessary: a revolution in Europe and a revolution in America. Just in time, the French Revolution swept "like a meteor across the sky of Europe," so involving other nations that it might be called, with little impropriety, the great European Revolution. Simultaneously came the revolution of political parties in the United States.
Napoleon Bonaparte became First Consul of France, and Thomas Jefferson President of the United States. Thus, the two great minds of the world turned at the same time to Louisiana. Napoleon saw in it the means of obtaining a navy, of strengthening the French party in America, and of restraining the power of Great Britain. When the treaty was completed he said: "I have just given to England a maritime rival that will sooner or later humble her pride." Jefferson saw in it the first giant stride of his country to the Pacific ocean, and the permanent triumph of the political party of which he was the father. It was, indeed, "an opportunity snatched from fate."
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