Xavier Mahoney
Ush&g
To my fellow democrat-republicans,
We as a new country have the exciting opportunity to double our size in territory and possibly gain important water way access. This summer of 1803, emperor of France, napoleon has offered me a deal I have taking into great consideration. The offer is to sell Louisiana to the United States for $15 million. I want to only buy the region around the mouth of the Mississippi river for $2 million.
Even though we normally follow a strict interpretation of the constitution as a new nation, we would be very foolish not to buy this territory. My fellow Americans have feared that the French might interfere with their trade by imposing high taxes on products and ships. Even worse they dreaded that the French might close the port to Americans. Empreror napoleoan has the desire to sell not only new Orleans, but the entire louisina territory. Now this territory is about 828,000 square miles. With land like that who knows what we could possibly do in the future. This territory was about as large as the total land area of the united states. It is also bigger than all of western Europe.
However though, im not sure if I have the power under the constitution to accept napoleons offer. Im faced with two related constitutional issues:
1. Strict versus broad construction of the constitution
2. The nature of the federal union