This Day…

1802-Livingston writes to Jefferson that Joseph Bonaparte, brother of France’s First Consul, has casually inquired whether the United States would rather purchase East and West Florida – present day Florida and the southern parts of Alabama and Mississippi or Louisiana.  Livingston writes that, ‘I told him that there was no comparison in their value, but that we had no wish to extend our boundary across the Mississippi.’  However, Jefferson now begins to envision a continental United States.