Victories of Mixed Nature.

In yet other cases the action is more mixed.  Statesmen and diplomats have some share in shaping the conditions under which a country is finally taken; in the eye of history they often usurp much more than their proper share; but in reality they are able to bring matters to a conclusion only because adventurous settlers, in defiance or disregard of governmental action, have pressed forward into the longed-for land.  In such cases the function of the diplomats is one of some importance, because they lay down the conditions under which the land is taken; but the vital question as to whether the land shall be taken at all, upon no matter what terms, is answered not by the diplomats, but by the people themselves.

It was in this way that the Northwest was won from the British, and the boundaries of the Southwest established by treaty with the Spaniards.  Adams, Jay, and Pinckney deserve much credit for the way they conducted their several negotiations; but there would have been nothing for them to negotiate about had not the settlers already thronged into the disputed territories or strenuously pressed forward against their boundaries.

    Louisiana Really Acquired by the Western Settlers.

So it was with the acquisition of Louisiana.  Jefferson, Livingston, and their fellow-statesmen and diplomats concluded the treaty which determined the manner in which it came into our possession; but they did not really have much to do with fixing the terms even of this treaty; and the part which they played in the acquisition of Louisiana in no way resembles, even remotely, the part which was played by Seward, for instance, in acquiring Alaska.  If it had not been for Seward, and the political leaders who thought as he did, Alaska might never have been acquired at all; but the Americans would have won Louisiana in any event, even if the treaty of Livingston and Monroe had not been signed.  The real history of the acquisition must tell of the great westward movement begun in 1769, and not merely of the feeble diplomacy of Jefferson’s administration.  In 1802 American settlers were already clustered here and there on the eastern fringe of the vast region which then went by the name of Louisiana.  All the stalwart freemen who had made their rude clearings, and built their rude towns, on the hither side of the mighty Mississippi, were straining with eager desire against the forces which withheld them from seizing with strong hand the coveted province.  They did not themselves know, and far less did the public men of the day realize, the full import and meaning of the conquest upon which they were about to enter.  For the moment the navigation of the mouth of the Mississippi seemed to them of the first importance.  Even the frontiersmen themselves put second to this the right to people the vast continent which lay between the Pacific and the Mississippi.  The statesmen at Washington viewed this last proposition with positive alarm, and cared only to acquire New Orleans.  The winning of Louisiana was due to no one man, and least of all to any statesman or set of statesmen.  It followed inevitably upon the great westward thrust of the settler-folk; a thrust which was delivered blindly, but which no rival race could parry, until it was stopped by the ocean itself.