I direct you to negotiate the affair."[204] After some haggling with Monroe, the price agreed on for this territory was 60,000,000 francs, the United States also covenanting to satisfy the claims which many of their citizens had on the French treasury.

For this paltry sum the United States gained a peaceful title to the debatable lands west of Lake Erie and to the vast tracts west of the Mississippi.

The First Consul carried out his threat of denying to the deputies of France any voice in this barter.

The war with England sufficed to distract their attention; and France turned sadly away from the western prairies, which her hardy sons had first opened up, to fix her gaze, first on the Orient, and thereafter on European conquests.

No more was heard of Louisiana, and few references were permitted to the disasters in St.Domingo; for Napoleon abhorred any mention of a _coup manque_, and strove to banish from the imagination of France those dreams of a trans-Atlantic Empire which had drawn him, as they were destined sixty years later to draw his nephew, to the verge of war with the rising republic of the New World.
In one respect, the uncle was more fortunate than the nephew.