However, before going into the matter of citations of authorities and records, it is due to the reader to present something of the English attitude at the time, so that he may see more clearly and with more understanding its actions. That can best be done by brief picture of the background of that period. CHAPTER V. Background—Louisiana. The great domain, christened Louisiana, was taken over by La Salle in 1682, in the name of France. It remained under French dominion until 1763, when, as a result of French-English wars, France retired from the New World. It seemed inevitable that Louisiana, great unexplored trans-river territory, would fall into English hands. But France ceded Louisiana to Spain, then still a world power. In 1800 Napoleon Bonaparte caused Spain to re-cede Louisiana to France. In 1803 Bonaparte sold Louisiana to the United States. He was about to engage in war with England, and historians generally agree that the sale to United States was made because he recognized the difficulty of defending the remote territory against the English Navy. The British Encyclopedia says the sale was made to keep Louisiana from falling into English hands. Thus it appears, that England was justified in feeling that Louisiana for the second time had been maneuvered from her ownership. References without number may be given from histories covering that period. The writer has before him James G. Blaine’s “Twenty Years in Congress,” which in Chapter 1 of the first volume (pages 3 to 13) deals comprehensively with the relation of the Louisiana purchase to the early days of the Republic. Some key quotations are here presented: “She (France) in 1763, now gave up Canada and Cape Breton, acknowledged the sovereignty of Great Britain in the original thirteen colonies as extending to the Mississippi, and, by a separate treaty, surrendered Louisiana on the west side of the Mississippi, with New Orleans on the east side, to Spain. She (Spain) continued in possession of Louisiana until the year 1800, when Bonaparte concluded a Treaty ..., by which the entire territory was retroceded to France.”