It's All Trew: Louisiana Purchase a great deal

Imagine this, three men, all from different nationalities, each survivors of wars and reigns of terror, mutually suspicious of each other and in addition each was still alive only because they had escaped the gallows or the guillotine in their own countries, all sitting down in a dim-lighted salon in Paris, France, to conduct business. What kind of business? One representing the most powerful man in the world at the moment, would offer to sell a huge tract of land he did not own or know the boundaries, to another man who had little money much less the authority to buy. That tract of land consisted of all the lands the Mississippi River drained including all the lands its tributaries drained, basically all the property north of the Gulf of Mexico and west of the Mississippi River to the Shining Mountains (wherever they were) north to Canada (wherever that was). Now, is that a clear legal description or what? The seller was Napoleon who needed the money to fight his next war. The buyer was Thomas Jefferson a man without an army, navy or hardly any money in his treasury and who was surrounded by hostile neighbors in his new country. Not only that, but in order to buy the land he would have to borrow the purchase money from England, one of his hostile neighbors and also one of the only countries in the world with that much money to loan...more