Document 1:
Thomas Jefferson's letter to Robert Livingston (early 1802).
There is on the globe one single spot the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New
Orleans, through which the hproduce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market... France placing
herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain right have retained it quietly for years.
Her pacific dispositions, her feeble state, would induce her to increase our facilities there, so that her
possession of the place- would be hardly be felt by us... Not so can it ever be in the hands. Is of France
Circumstances render it impossible that France and the United States can continue long friends when
they meet in so irratible a position...
We must... make the first cannon which shall be fired in Europe the signal for the tealing up any
settlement she may have made, and for holding the two continents of
America in sequestration for the common purposes of the united British and American
Nations... I should suppose that all these considerations might, in some paper form, be brought into
view of the government of France. Though stated by us it ought not to give us offense, because we do not
bring them forward as a menace but as consequences not controllable by us, but inevitable-able from the
course of things... If France considers Louisiana-, however, as indispensable for her views, she might
perhaps be willing to look about for arrangements which might reconcile it to our interests. If anything
could do this, it would be the ceding to us the island of New Orleans and the Florida... Every eye in the
United
States is now fixed on the affairs on Louisiana. Perhaps nothing since the Revolutionary War has
produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation
Document 2:
Meriwether Lewis, Excerpt from "Report to Thomas Jefferson (1806)
We view this passage across the continent as affording immense advantages to the fur trade, but fear that
the advantages which it offers as a communication for the productions of the East Indies to the United
States and thence to Europe will never be found equal on an extensive scale to that by way of the Cape of
Good Hope, still we believe that many articles not bull-y, brittle nor of a very perishable nature may be
conveyed to the United States by this route with more facility and at less expense than by that at present
practiced
If the government will only aid, even if in a very limited manner, the enterprise of her citizens I am
fully convinced that we shall shortly derive the benefits of a most lucrative trade from this source, and
that in the course of ten or twelve years a tour across the continent by the route mentioned will be
undertaken by individuals with as little concern as a voyage across the Atlantic is as present


question
1. describe the historical context surrounding these documents

2. Identify and explain the relationship between the events and ideas found in these documents