Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/133



Chapter 6: Louisiana Legislation
was it decided that the government had an inherent right to acquire territory and annex foreign States, when the next question forced itself on Congress for settlement,—What were the powers of Congress over the new territory?

Three paths were open. The safest was to adopt an amendment to the Constitution admitting Louisiana into the Union and extending over it the express powers of Congress as they had applied to the old territory of the United States. The second course was to assume that the new territory became, by the fact of acquisition, assimilated to the old, and might be "disposed of" in the same way. The third was to hold it apart as a peculiar estate, and govern it, subject to treaty stipulations, by an undefined power implied in the right to acquire,—on the principle that government certainly had the right to govern what it had the right to buy.

The first plan, which was in effect Jefferson's original idea, preserved the theory of the Constitution as far as was possible; but the Republicans feared the consequences with France and Spain of throwing a doubt on the legality of the treaty. Another reason