...Jefferson, Partridge Jefferson on the Dangers of New Orleans There is on the globe one single spot the possessor of which is our natural and habitual...half of our whole produce and contain more than half of our inhabitants.... The impetuosity of [France's] temper, the energy and restlessness of her character...

...enemy to the United States by acquiring New Orleans from Spain. "There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual...its fertility it will ere long yield more than half our whole produce and contain more than half our inhabitants." Spain might have been a less dangerous...

...April 18, 1802, to Robert Livingston, his minister to France: "There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual...three-eighths of our territory must pass to market. . . . The day that France takes possession of N. Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her...

...New Orleans as a strategic gateway to the center of the continent: "There is on the globe one spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans" (cited in Lewis l976, l0). By l803, when the city was purchased by the United States, it was a robust...