and be checked by a close and positive adherence to facts, it may easily degenerate into the old "reason of state" and furnish an excuse for any political crime. It is a grand thing to soar over epochs and periods of history, deducing political generalizations and sweeping "laws of history," but it is futile and to be condemned unless it is done upon a basis of mature scholarship and with great reserve and care. Such deductions deserve no attention unless they are restricted to simple phenomena and are above all suspicion of party interest.
The acquisition of Louisiana by the United States was a clear and simple case of life necessity. If Spain claimed that, as possessor of New Orleans, she might of right close the Mississippi River, it was a life necessity of the people of the United States to take New Orleans from her by purchase or war. Her views of public law and international rights and colonies then brought her into collision with us. The purchase of the whole western half of the valley was never contemplated by anybody here; it was proposed by France. If the purchase was wise, it was because the city could not be obtained otherwise, and we have a case which establishes the doctrine of "meeting the consequences" at the same time that it limits and defines it. The arguments of the Federalists against the purchase were all good, so far as they were not partisan, at that time, but the railroad and the telegraph took away all their force afterwards. Neither party could foresee the railroads or telegraphs. The purchase of Louisiana entailed the question of extending slavery, but the statesmen of 1803, doing what our interests then required, could properly leave the consequences to be met when they arose, and they are not to be blamed if those consequences were unwisely met when they came.
