If it had not been for Seward, and the political leaders who thought as he did, Alaska might never have been acquired at all; but the Americans would have won Louisiana in any event, even if the treaty of Livingston and Monroe had not been signed.
The real history of the acquisition must tell of the great westward movement begun in 1769, and not merely of the feeble diplomacy of Jefferson's administration.

In 1802 American settlers were already clustered here and there on the eastern fringe of the vast region which then went by the name of Louisiana.

All the stalwart freemen who had made their rude clearings, and built their rude towns, on the hither side of the mighty Mississippi, were straining with eager desire against the forces which withheld them from seizing with strong hand the coveted province.

They did not themselves know, and far less did the public men of the day realize, the full import and meaning of the conquest upon which they were about to enter.

For the moment the navigation of the mouth of the Mississippi seemed to them of the first importance.