It is generally agreed that after the Revolution and the Civil War, the Louisiana Purchase is the greatest fact in American history. In 1904 a world’s fair, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, was held at St Louis in commemoration of the cession. After one hundred years the wilderness then acquired had become the centre of the power and wealth of the Union. It contained in 1903 15,000,000 inhabitants, and its taxable wealth alone was four hundred times the fifteen millions given to Napoleon.
Authorities.—The official literature is in the American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. 2, and Public Lands, vol. 2; diplomatic papers reprinted in House Document 431, 57th Congress, 2nd Session (1903); to which add the Histoire de la Louisiane et de la cession (Paris, 1829; Eng. trans., Philadelphia, 1830), by François Barbé-Marbois. This book abounds in supposed “speeches” of Napoleon, and “sayings” by Napoleon and Livingston that would have been highly prophetic in 1803, though no longer so in 1829. They have been used liberally and indiscriminatingly by the most prominent American historians. See also T. Donaldson, The Public Domain, House Miscellaneous Document 45, pt. 4, 47th Congress, 2nd Session. For the boundary discussions by J. Q. Adams and Don L. de Onis, 1818-1819, American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. 4; also in Onis’s Official Correspondence between Don Luis de Onis ... and John Quincy Adams, &c. (London, 1818), or Memoria sobre las negociaciones entre España y los Estados Unidos que dieron motivo al tratado de 1819 (Madrid, 1820). See also discussion and map in U.S. Census, 1900, Bulletin 74; and the letters of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Rufus King and other statesmen of the time. By far the best general account of the diplomacy is in Henry Adams’s History of the United States, vols. 1 and 2; and of Western conditions and American sentiment in J. B. McMaster’s History of the United States, vols. 2 and 3. Consult also Justin Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, vol. 7; and various valuable periodical articles, especially in the American Historical Review, by F. J. Turner and others. Reference may be made to B. Hermann, The Louisiana Purchase (Washington, 1898), and Theodore Roosevelt’s Winning of the West, vol. 4. Of the various special but popular accounts (by J. K. Hosmer, Ripley Hitchcock, R. Blanchard, K. E. Winship, &c.), not one is worthy of its subject, and all contain various inaccuracies.
[1] By the treaty of San Ildefonso, signed the 1st of October 1800. This was never ratified by Charles IV. of Spain, but the treaty of Madrid of the 21st of March 1801, which confirmed it, was signed by him on the 15th of October 1802.
LOUISVILLE, the largest city of Kentucky, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Jefferson county, on the Ohio river, 110 m. by rail and 130 m. by water S.W. of Cincinnati. Pop. (1890) 161,129; (1900) 204,731, of whom 21,427 were foreign-born (including 12,383 Germans and 4198 Irish) and 39,139 were negroes; (1910 census) 223,928.
Louisville occupies 40 sq. m. of a plain, about 70 sq. m. in extent, about 60 ft. above the low-water mark of the river, and nearly enclosed by hills. The city extends for 8 m. along the river (spanned here by three bridges), which falls 26 ft. in 2 m., but for 6 m. above the rapids spreads out into a beautiful sheet of quiet water about 1 m. wide. The streets intersect at right angles, are from 60 to 120 ft. wide, and are, for the most part, well-shaded. The wholesale district, with its great tobacco warehouses, is largely along Main Street, which runs E. and W. not far from the river; and the heart of the shopping district is along Fourth Street in the dozen blocks S. of Main Street. Adjoining the shopping district on the S. is the old residence section; the newer residences are on “The Highlands” at the E. end and also at the W. end. The city is served by the Baltimore & Ohio South-Western, the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Louisville, Henderson & St Louis, the Illinois Central, the Chicago, Indiana & Louisville, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Southern and the Louisville & Nashville railways; by steamboat lines to Memphis, Cairo, Evansville, Cincinnati and Pittsburg; by an extensive system of inter-urban electric lines; and by ferries to Jeffersonville and New Albany, Indiana, two attractive residential suburbs.
Many of the business houses are old-fashioned and low. The principal public buildings are the United States government building, the Jefferson county court house and the city hall. In front of the court house stands a bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson, designed by Moses Ezekiel (b. 1844), and inside of the court house a marble statue of Henry Clay by Joel T. Hart (1810-1870). There are few or no large congested tenement-house districts; most of the wage-earners own their own homes or rent cottages. Louisville has an extensive park system, most of which was acquired after 1889 and is on the outskirts. From the heart of the city South Parkway, 150 ft. wide, extends S. 6 m. to the entrance to Iroquois Park (670 acres) on a wooded hill. At the E. end of Broadway is Cherokee Park (nearly 330 acres), near which is the beautiful Cave Hill Cemetery, containing the grave of George Rogers Clark, the founder of the city, and the graves of several members of the family of George Keats, the poet’s brother, who lived in Louisville for a time; and at the W. end of Broadway, Shawnee Park (about 170 acres), with a long sandy river beach frequented by bathers. Central Park occupies the space of two city squares in the old fashionable residence districts. Through the efforts of a Recreation League organized in 1901 a few playgrounds are set apart for children. Louisville is a noted racing centre and has some fine tracks; the Kentucky Derby is held here annually in May.
The United States government has a marine hospital, and a life-saving station at the rapids of the river. The state has a school for the blind, in connexion with which is the American Printing House for the Blind. There are state hospitals and many other charitable institutions.
The principal educational institutions are the university of Louisville, which has a College of Liberal Arts (1907), a law department (1847), and a medical department (1837)—with which in 1907 were consolidated the Hospital College of Medicine (1873), the Medical Department of Kentucky University (1898), the Louisville Medical College (1869), and the Kentucky School of Medicine (1850); the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (1859); the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Kentucky, which was formed in 1901 by the consolidation of the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church at Danville (1853) and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary (1893); the Louisville College of Pharmacy (1871), and the Louisville College of Dentistry (1887), a department of Central University. There are many musical clubs, and a spring festival for which a local chorus furnishes the nucleus, is held annually. The Louisville Public Library was established in 1902, and 1904 acquired the library, the small museum (containing the Troost collection of minerals) and the art gallery of the Polytechnic Society of Louisville (1878), which for many years had maintained the only public library in the city. The principal newspapers are the Courier Journal (Democratic, morning), the Herald (Republican, morning), the Evening Post (Independent Democratic), and the Times (Democratic, evening). The Courier Journal is one of the most influential newspapers in the South. Henry Watterson became editor in 1868, when the Courier (1843), established and owned by Walter N. Haldeman, was consolidated with the Journal (1830), of which Watterson had become editor in 1867, and with the Democrat (1844).