It would have surprised them to be told that the land was no longer theirs because a man had come by on the water. But nobody did tell them. They were Indians. They had wives and children and wigwams and other possessions in the land where they had always lived; but they were red, and the man in the boat was white, and therefore they were turned into trespassers because he had sailed by in a boat. That was the title to Louisiana which we bought from Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Louisiana Purchase was a piece of land running up the Mississippi, up the Missouri, over the Divide, and down the Columbia to the Pacific. Before we acquired it, our area was over a quarter, but not half, a million square miles. This added nearly a million square miles more. But what had we really bought? Nothing but stolen goods. The Indians were there before La Salle, from whose boat-sailing the title we bought was derived. “But,” you may object, “when whites rob reds or blacks, we call it Discovery; land-grabbing is when whites rob whites--and that is where I blame England.” For the sake of argument I concede this, and refer you to our acquisition of Texas. This operation followed some years after the Florida operation. “By request” we “annexed” most of present Texas--in 1845. That was a trick of our slaveholders. They sent people into Texas and these people swung the deal. It was virtually a theft from Mexico. A little while later, in 1848, we “paid” Mexico for California, Arizona, and Nevada. But if you read the true story of Fremont in California, and of the American plots there before the Mexican War, to undermine the government of a friendly nation, plots connived at in Washington with a view to getting California for ourselves, upon my word you will find it hard to talk of England being a land-grabber and keep a straight face. And, were a certain book to fall into your hands, the narrative of the Alcalde of Monterey, wherein he sets down what of Fremont’s doings in California went on before his eyes, you would learn a story of treachery, brutality, and greed. All this acquisition of territory, together with the Gadsden Purchase a few years later, brought our continent to its present area--not counting Alaska or some islands later acquired--2,970,230 square miles.