The exact limits of the acquisition were not definitely drawn. The French archives show that Napoleon regarded the Rio Grande as the W. boundary of the territory of which he was to take possession, and the United States up to 1819 ably maintained the same claim. She also claimed all West Florida as part of Louisiana--which, in the usage of the second half of the 18th century, it apparently was not. When she acquired the Floridas in 1819-1821 she abandoned the claim to Texas. The line then adopted between the American and Spanish possessions on the W. followed the Sabine river from the Gulf of Mexico to the parallel of 32° N., ran thence due N. to the Red river, followed this to the meridian of 100° W. and this line N. to the Arkansas river, thence along this to its source, thence N. to the parallel of 42°, and along this line to the Pacific. Such is the accepted description of the W. boundary of the Louisiana Purchase--waiving Texas--thus retrospectively determined, except that that boundary ran with the crest of the Rocky Mountains N. of its intersection with the parallel of 42°. No portion of the Purchase lay west of the mountains, although for some years after 1870 the official maps of the United States government erroneously included Oregon as so acquired--an error finally abandoned by 1900. On the 20th of December 1803, at New Orleans, the United States took possession of the lower part of the province, and on the 9th of March 1804, at St Louis, of the upper. The entire region then contained possibly 80,000 residents. The treaty of cession required the incorporation of Louisiana in the Union, and the admission of its inhabitants, "as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States." By act of the 26th of March 1804 the region below 33° N. was organized as the Territory of Orleans (see Louisiana), and that above as the District of Louisiana. The region above 33°, renamed in 1805 the Territory of Louisiana, and in 1812 the Territory of Missouri, was divided as time went on into many Indian reservations, territories and states. Thus were carved from the great domain of the Purchase Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Oklahoma in their entirety, and much the greatest part of Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. There is justification for the saying of Thiers that the United States were "indebted for their birth and for their greatness"--at least for an early assurance of greatness--"to the long struggle between France and England." The acquisition of so vast a territory proved thus of immense influence in the history of the United States. It made it possible for them to hold a more independent and more dignified position between France and England during the Napoleonic wars; it established for ever in practice the doctrine of implied powers in the