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.

The Embargo Act was a grievous mistake of Jefferson, though its purpose
was commendable. Under the plea of securing our ships against capture,
its real object was to deprive England and France of the commodities
which could be secured only in the United States. This measure might
have been endurable for an agricultural people, but it could not be
borne by a commercial and manufacturing one, like New England, whose
goods must find their market abroad. Under the Embargo Act, the New
England ships were rotting and crumbling to pieces at her wharves. It
was not long before she became restless. The measure was first endorsed
by the Massachusetts legislature, but the next session denounced it.