[Illustration:  THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.]

187.  Jefferson is chosen President of the United States; what he said about New Orleans.—­A number of years after the war was over Jefferson was chosen President of the United States; while he was President he did something for the country which will never be forgotten.

Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, with the lower part of the Mississippi River, then belonged to the French; for at that time the United States only reached west as far as the Mississippi River.  Now as New Orleans stands near the mouth of that river, the French could say, if they chose, what vessels should go out to sea, and what should come in.  So far, then, as that part of America was concerned, we were like a man who owns a house while another man owns one of the doors to it.  The man who has the door could say to the owner of the house, I shall stand here on the steps, and you must pay me so many dollars every time you go out and every time you come in this way.

[Illustration:  Map showing the extent of the United States at the close of the Revolution, and also when Jefferson became President (1801).]

Jefferson saw that so long as the French held the door of New Orleans, we should not be free to send our cotton down the river and across the ocean to Europe.  He said we must have that door, no matter how much it costs.

188.  Jefferson buys New Orleans and Louisiana for the United States.—­Mr. Robert R. Livingston, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was in France at that time, and Jefferson sent over to him to see if he could buy New Orleans for the United States.  Napoleon Bonaparte[5] then ruled France.  He said, I want money to purchase war-ships with, so that I can fight England; I will sell not only New Orleans, but all Louisiana besides, for fifteen millions of dollars.  That was cheap enough, and so in 1803 President Jefferson bought it.

[Illustration:  Map showing how much larger President Jefferson made the United States by buying Louisiana in 1803. (The Oregon country is marked in bars to show that the ownership of it was disputed; England and the United States both claimed it.)]

If you look on the map[6] you will see that Louisiana then was not simply a good-sized state, as it is now, but an immense country reaching clear back to the Rocky Mountains.  It was really larger than the whole United States east of the Mississippi River.  So, through President Jefferson’s purchase, we added so much land that we now had more than twice as much as we had before, and we had got the whole Mississippi River, the city of New Orleans, and what is now the great city of St. Louis besides.

[Footnote 5:  Napoleon Bonaparte (Na-po’le-on Bo’na-part).]

[Footnote 6:  See map in this paragraph, and compare map in paragraph 187.]

189.  Death of Jefferson; the words cut on his gravestone.—­Jefferson lived to be an old man.  He died at Monticello on the Fourth of July, 1826, just fifty years, to a day, after he had signed the Declaration of Independence.  John Adams, who had been President next before Jefferson, died a few hours later.  So America lost two of her great men on the same day.