The policy Lewis was establishing represented, in Jefferson’s thinking, only a first phase. Jefferson knew that such a system of commerce could not last long. For one thing, the beaver east of the Rocky Mountains were not a renewable resource; the whole history of the fur trade in North America was one of overtrapping the beaver and moving west.III For another, immigration and emigration—the most important factors in shaping the United States—precluded leaving Louisiana to its current inhabitants. Americans, whether U.S. citizens or recent immigrants, would push west. No power on earth could
...more
