Jefferson was the founder and head of the new order of things, and
of the republican party, soon to take the name of democratic, which
controlled all the country with the exception of New England.
Our commerce increased enormously, for the leading nations of Europe
were warring with one another; money came in fast and most of the
national debt was paid.
Louisiana with an area exceeding all the rest of the United States, was
bought from France in 1803, for $15,000,000, and from the territory
were afterward carved the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa,
Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Oklahoma, the Indian Territory
and most of the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and Wyoming.
The upper Missouri River and the Columbia River country to the Pacific
Ocean were explored in 1804-6, by Lewis and Clarke, the first party of
white men to cross the continent north of Mexico. Ohio was admitted to
the Union in 1802. Fulton's steamboat, the Clermont made her maiden trip
from New York to Albany in 1807. The first boatload of anthracite coal
was shipped to Philadelphia, and it was a long time before the people
knew what to do with it.
The Tripolitan Pirates were snuffed out (1801-1805). The blight of the
Embargo Act settled upon our commerce in 1807, in which year the
opening gun of the War of 1812 was fired when the Leopard outraged the
Chesapeake.
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