One can of course dispute the morality of the European practice of claiming North American lands, but by accepted procedure in those days, France's claimed title to the Mississippi Valley by virtue of La Salle's 1682 "discovery" of the Mouth of the Mississippi. Historians have long recognized the audacity of that claim, as when I quoted Parkman in my Wilderness So Immense: "On April 9, 1682, La Salle claimed the interior of the continent for Louis XIV and named it in his honor. By this little ceremony, in the words of historian Francis Parkman, 'the vast basin of the Mississippi . . . passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan of Versailles . . . all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half a mile.'" Based on that claim of discovery, France's "title" to the Mississippi basin was recognized by other European nations by the Peace of Paris of 1763 (at the end of the French and Indian/Seven Years' War) when Great Britain took the eastern watershed and acquiesed in France's "gift" of the western watershed (Louisiana) to Spain by a prior treaty of 1761. The same "title" and legal description of the Louisiana territory was cited in the Peace of Paris of 1783 that ended the American Revolution, and again in the secret treaty of 1801 whereby Spain ceded Louisiana back to France, and yet again in the Louisiana Purchase Treaty of 1803, again in the treaty of Ghent in 1814/5 that ended the War of 1812, and yet again in the Adams-Onis and related treaties of 1818/9 that drew the international boundaries of the Louisiana Territories. In short, while one can challenge the legitimacy of the initial claim - by 1803 all the parties to the Louisiana Purchase recognized the "title" as it had been defined by a series of international treaties. As to the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase (a question addressed in greater detail in my book, A Wilderness So Immense) it is interesting that both Jefferson and his opponents made no _constitutional_ objection problem to acquiring LAND - aside from the matter, as Fisher Ames put it, that the Louisiana Purchase spent "money, of which we have not enough, for land, of which we have too much" and the worry among New Englanders that cheap western land would drive down land prices in the east and lure away their labor pool for seamen and industrial workers. Jefferson's critics DID protest mightily about admitting the RESIDENTS of Louisiana into the Union. Jefferson tried several times to draft a constitutional amendment addressing that matter - and ultimately decided that he couldn't get anything ratified by the 6-months deadline for ratifying the treaty, ya da ya da ya da .... All this is treated in some detail in A Wilderness So Immense - and his several draft amendments are in an appendix. Dr. Jon Kukla, Executive Vice-President Red Hill - The Patrick Henry National Memorial 1250 Red Hill Road Brookneal, Virginia 24528 www.redhill.org or www.PatrickHenry.com Please show me where the Native Americans passed title to their lands to the French? Show me where the French even made contact with the Native Americans who "held title" to their lands won to them by historical occupation of those lands? France's claim to Louisiana was a BOGUS claim. One which Jefferson had to right to purchase. Also, show me where in the constitution, the president is given the power to negotiate such a deal? It doesn't exist. Jefferson performed an illegal act, broke his oath to defend the constitution, and should have been impeached. Instead, the Congress decided to uphold his illegal purchase even they possessed no authority to do so. The land belonged to the Native Americans, not the French, nor the Americans. This action led to the destruction of the way of life of the Natives to that soil, punctuated by the American efforts to exterminate them as if they had no right to exist. To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html