No surer or more lasting cause conduced to the political, financial, and national development of this country, no unforeseen or long-sought measure received more universal approbation and revealed to all its great importance, than did the Louisiana purchase. Its acquisition marks a political revolution,--a bloodless and tearless revolution. It gave incomputable energy to the centralization of our Government. By removing the danger of foreign interference and relieving the burden of arming against hostile forces, it opened a field for the spread and growth of American institutions. It enlarged the field of freedom's action to work out the task of civilization on a basis of substantial and inspiring magnitude. It extended the jurisdiction of the United States to take in the mighty Mississippi. It gave an impetus to exploration and adventure, to investment and enterprise, and fed the infantile nation with a security born of greatness. The expeditions of La Salle furnished the basis of the original French claims to the vast region called by France in the New World Louisiana. Settlement was begun in 1699. French explorers secured the St. Lawrence and Mississippi rivers, the two main entrances to the heart of America. They sought to connect Canada and Louisiana by a chain of armed towns and fortified posts, which were sparsely though gradually erected. In 1722 New Orleans was made the capital of the French possessions in the Southwest. France hoped to build in this colony a kingdom rich and lucrative, and this hope the early conditions, the stretch of fertile and easily traversable country, stimulated. The French and Indian wars came on. The English forces, aided by American colonists of English descent, captured the French forts, destroyed their towns, and took dominion of their territory. The Seven Years' War, ending in America in the capture of Quebec by the immortal Wolfe, completed the downfall of French-America. The treaty of Paris ceded to Spain the territory of Louisiana.