On the other hand, the President might alienate Spain and grasp at Florida. Livingston and Monroe warmly urged this policy, and were in fact its authors. Livingston’s advice would by itself have had no great weight with Jefferson or Madison, but they believed strongly in Monroe; and when he made Livingston’s idea his own, he gave it weight. Monroe had been sent abroad to buy Florida; he had bought Louisiana. From the Potomac to the Mississippi, every Southern man expected and required that by peace or war Florida should be annexed to the Union; and the annexation of Louisiana made that of Florida seem easy. Neither Monroe, Madison, nor Jefferson could resist the impulse to seize it. Livingston’s plan has been described. He did not assert that Spain had intended to retrocede Florida to France, or that France had claimed it as included in the retrocession. He knew the contrary; and tried in vain to find some one willing to say that the country to the Perdido ought to be included in the purchase. He made much of Marbois’s cautious encouragement and Talleyrand’s transparent manœuvres; but he was forced at last to maintain that Spain had retroceded West Florida to France without knowing it, that France had sold it to the United States without suspecting it, that the United States had bought it without paying for it, and that neither France nor Spain, although the original contracting parties, were competent to decide the meaning of their own contract. Believing that Bonaparte was pledged to support the United States in their effort to obtain West Florida, Livingston was anxious only to push Spain to the utmost. Talleyrand allowed him to indulge in these dreams. “I have obtained from him,” wrote Livingston to Madison,[149] “a positive promise that this government shall aid any negotiation that shall be set on foot” for the purchase of East Florida; while as for Florida west of the Perdido, “the moment is so favorable for taking possession of that country, that I hope it has not been neglected, even though a little force should be necessary to effect it. Your minister must find the means to justify it.” When the letters written by Livingston and Monroe in May, 1803, reached Washington, they were carefully studied by the President, fully understood, and a policy quickly settled. When Jefferson wrote to Senator Breckenridge his ideas on the unconstitutionality of the purchase, he spoke with equal clearness on the course he meant to pursue toward Spain in order to obtain Florida:[150]-- “We have some claims to extend on the sea-coast westwardly to the Rio Norte or Bravo, and, better, to go eastwardly to the Rio Perdido, between Mobile and Pensacola, the ancient boundary of Louisiana. These claims will be a subject of negotiation with Spain; and if as soon as she is at war we push them strongly with one hand, holding out a price with the other, we shall certainly obtain the Floridas, and all in good time.”