To pronounce this the paramount action of the century in Union-making, one need only think of the precedent for acquiring new territory thus formed and which has been followed in no less than seven instances and confirmed by a decision of the Supreme Court. It seems strange that the framers of the Constitution did not foresee and provide for such an emergency. Perhaps the omission was due to the intuitive feeling that no nation in all history had hesitated to enlarge its domain when advantage offered or necessity demanded. Necessity was here the moving principle and it scattered to the winds party objection to using the implied powers, and forced the friends of government to take refuge in the preamble to the Constitution and in "all laws which are just and necessary," a position from which they had tried in vain to drive the Hamiltonians a few years before. It was ordained by fate that the Jeffersonians should father a policy of national expansion which covered every addition of territory to that of Alaska. By nature they were opposed to giving such advantage to the central power. After the acquisition had been made, Jefferson was loud in his declaration that he would not "give one inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any nation"; but neither by nature nor party was he an expansionist. He would have been satisfied with the acquisition of the east bank of the river, including New Orleans. During the negotiations he confessed his doubts of success. He thought trade would soon make Natchez a second New Orleans. Hamilton, on the contrary, was an expansionist by principle and party. Three years before the purchase of Louisiana he said of that country and the Floridas, "I have been long in the habit of considering the acquisition of those countries as essential to the permanency of the Union, which I consider as very important to the welfare of the whole." Holding such aggressive opinions, Hamilton and his party, had they been in control during this long period, might have rashly entered upon an offensive policy which would have precipitated frequent wars and have endangered the Republic before its home strength had been developed. Looking to the happiness of the mass rather than the individual and devoid of scruples about the divine rights of man, the Federalists would not have hesitated to hold as subjects the inhabitants of acquired territory longer than the principle of self-government, for which a republic stands, would have permitted. On the other hand, by the time the "porcupine policy" of dealing with other nations on territorial questions, as the Federalists contemptuously called the early attitude of their opponents, had grown gradually into an aggressive policy, the Republic had become sufficiently strong to maintain whatever position might be taken.