to infinity. Judged either historically or theoretically, the strategy of Napoleon is original, unique, and unexcelled. It is his greatest achievement, because his most creative. CHAPTER XXI NAPOLEON AND THE UNITED STATES A Decisive Epoch -- Britain Dominates the Sea -- Napoleon's Policy -- Trade and Western Empire -- To the West Indies -- Needs of the Empire -- Great Britain's Sea Rival -- The Imperial Policy Revealed -- Tempestuous Times in the United States -- Party Government -- Livingston's Efforts -- Louisiana Purchased -- Effect on American Life -- Change in Constitutional Attitude -- The Kaleidoscope of Party Politics -- Preponderance of the South and West -- The Louisiana Purchase and the Nation. A decisive epoch was that of the eighteenth-century revolutions, a crisis reached after long, slow preparation, precipitated by social and religious bigotry, dizzy in its consummation, wild and headlong in its flight, precipitous in its crash. Of this important time the results have been so permanent that they are the commonplaces of contemporary history; in what Carlyle called the revolutionary loom the warp and woof were spun from the past, and the fabric is that from which our working-clothes are cut. Within those years appeared the great dominating soul of modern humanity, who displayed first and last every weakness and every sordid meanness of mankind, but in such giant dimensions that even his depravity inspires awe. His virtues were equally portentous because they worked on the grand scale, with materials that had been threshed and winnowed in the theory and experience of five generations of mankind. It was well within this stupendous age and by the act of this representative man that Louisiana was redeemed from Spanish misrule and incorporated with the territories of the United States. Nor was this all. A careful examination of the general political situation at that time will exhibit the elemental and almost ultimate fact that the sale of Louisiana was coincident with the turn of the age.