This enormous tract of land that for a century had been steadily contributing to the material advancement of the world was now to show that it was ready and able to assume its full share not only in practical life and progress but in the deeper phases of science and art, and to demonstrate the nature of its resources by participation in the greatest universal exposition ever held.  By this exposition it was not only above all else to illustrate the marvelous development of the territory whose acquisition it was meant to celebrate, but it was likewise “to provide for a comparative display of the products, natural and artificial, of the nations of the world, to be arranged in classified groups, the exhibits of each nation in every class to be set down by the side of those of all other nations, thereby better to insure comparison and an intelligent verdict as to merit by the direct and practical contrast thus secured.”  It was to demonstrate the feasible combination of the artistic with the useful, the beautiful with the enduring, the graceful with the strong.

The three most significant dates historically connected with the acquisition of the magnificent domain known as Louisiana are April 30, 1803, when the great treaty was signed; October 19, when the treaty was ratified in the Senate of the United States by a vote of 24 to 7; and December 20, of the same year, when our Government received formal possession at New Orleans from the French prefect, Laussat.  The council chamber of the Cabildo (which building was so ably reproduced at the exposition) and the balcony adjacent were the scene of the formal retrocession of Louisiana from Spain to France, and also of the event so much more momentous to us—­the ceremony in which France delivered Louisiana into the keeping of the United States.

On August 20, 1901, by a proclamation of the President, “in the name of the Government and of the people of the United States, all the nations of the earth” were invited “to take part in the commemoration of the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, an event of great interest to the United States and of abiding effect on their development, by appointing representatives and sending such exhibits to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition as would most fitly and fully illustrate their resources, their industries, and their progress in civilization.”  This invitation was sent through the Department of State of the United States to the chief magistrates of all civilized governments, from nearly all of whom official acceptances were received in reply.

It has become a matter of history that ground was broken for the site of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition December 20, 1901, that day being the anniversary of the one on which the jurisdiction over the Louisiana Territory passed from France to the United States in 1803.  The dedication exercises were held on the afternoon of April, 30, 1903, and were designed to commemorate not only the one hundredth anniversary of the signing of the treaty by Livingston, Monroe, and Marbois, transferring the territory from France to the United States, but also to dedicate in a formal manner the grounds and palaces of the exposition then rapidly advancing toward completion, though not to be opened before the following spring.