Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/103



and in the war of the Revolution won the right to self-government. The area of the thirteen original colonies embraced 420,892 square miles, and the region lying between these States and the Mississippi River claimed and held by the Republic embraced an area of 406,952 square miles, making the entire area of the United States after the close of the Revolution 827,844 square miles.

The Louisiana Purchase secured by treaty with France contained an area of 1,171,931 square miles, exceeding in size by 344,087 square miles all of the former territory of the United States.

Florida, which was acquired from Spain in 1819, contained 59,268 square miles; and the territory acquired from Mexico, including Texas, covered an area of 967,451 square miles. But this last acquisition was only won by an aggressive war upon a neighbor greatly inferior in strength and reflected no credit upon the powerful Republic which was founded upon the right of people to self-government.

The almost unexplored province of Louisiana had been discovered by Spanish adventurers in 1542, but abandoned by them for one hundred and thirty years before French explorers took possession if it in the name of their king. It was held by France for eighty-two years, from 1681 to 1763, when it was ceded to Spain. During this period of more than two and a half centuries the entire white population of this immense fertile territory had only reached about fifty thousand, while the exports amounted to but $2,158,000, and the imports to $2,500,000.

Up to the close of the Revolutionary War Virginia claimed all of the tract lying north and west of Ohio River in the United States, as well as Kentucky. In 1784 Virginia ceded to the United States all of its claim to the region north of the Ohio River and west to the Mississippi. In the same year a treaty was made with the Sioux Indians, who claimed a large portion of this territory, by which they relinquished their claim to all west of the