This stupendous transaction assured to our Republic not only leading hand in the affairs of this continent, but place among the great powers of the world. Its 1,124,685 square miles doubled the national domain. It opened path well toward, if not to, the Pacific, and made ours measureless tracts of agricultural and mining lands, rich as any under the sun. [Illustration: Portrait.] Stephen Decatur. If it originated many of the most perplexing questions which have agitated our national politics, as those relating to slavery in this territory itself, to the acquisitions from Mexico, to the Pacific railways, and to the Indians and the Chinese, all this has been amply compensated by the above and countless other benefits. Equally brilliant if less impressive was another piece of Jefferson's foreign policy. He might be over-friendly to France, but elsewhere he certainly did not believe in peace at any price. The Barbary powers had begun to annoy our commerce soon after Independence. The Betsey was captured in 1784, next year the Maria, of Boston, and the Dauphin, of Philadelphia, and their crews of twenty-one men carried to a long and disgraceful captivity in Algiers. The Dey's bill for these captives, held by him as slaves, was: 3 Captains at $6,000 $18,000 2 Mates at $4,000 8,000 2 Passengers at $4,000 8,000 14 Seamen at $1,400 19,600 --------- $53,600 For custom, eleven per cent 5,896 --------- $59,496 Later a single cruise lost us ten vessels to these half-civilized people. Following European precedent, Washington had made, in 1795, a ransom-treaty with this nest of pirates, to carry out which cost us a fat million. The captives had meantime increased to one hundred and fifteen, though the crews of the Maria and the Dauphin had wasted away to ten men. Nearly a million more went to the other North-African freebooters. The policy of ransoming was, indeed, cheaper than force. Count d'Estaing used to say that bombarding a pirate town was like breaking windows with guineas. The old Dey of Algiers, learning the expense of Du Quesne's expedition to batter his capital, declared that he himself would have burnt it for half the sum. Yet it makes one's blood hot to-day to read how our fathers paid tribute to those thieves. The Dey had, in so many words, called us his slaves, and had actually terrorized Captain Bainbridge, of the man-of-war George Washington, into carrying despatches for him to Constantinople, flying the Algerine pirate flag conspicuously at the fore. After anchoring--this was some requital--Bainbridge was permitted to hoist the Stars and Stripes, the first time that noble emblem ever kissed the breeze of the Golden Horn. [1803]