From The Louisiana Purchase Like many other major events in world history, the Louisiana Purchase is a fascinating mix of destiny and individual energy and creativity... Thomas Jefferson would have been less than human had he not claimed a major share of the credit. In a private letter . . . the president, reviving a favorite metaphor, said he ""very early saw"" Louisiana was a ""speck"" that could turn into a ""tornado."" He added that the public never knew how near ""this catastrophe was."" But he decided to calm the hotheads of the west and ""endure"" Napoleon's aggression, betting that a war with England would force Bonaparte to sell. This policy ""saved us from the storm."" Omitted almost entirely from this account is the melodrama of the purchase, so crowded with ""what ifs"" that might have changed the outcome-and the history of the world. The reports of the Lewis and Clark expedition . . . electrified the nation with their descriptions of a region of broad rivers and rich soil, of immense herds of buffalo and other game, of grassy prairies seemingly as illimitable as the ocean... From the Louisiana Purchase would come, in future decades, the states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and large portions of what is now North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Colorado, and Louisiana. For the immediate future, the purchase, by doubling the size of the United States, transformed it from a minor to a major world power. The emboldened Americans soon absorbed West and East Florida and fought mighty England to a bloody stalemate in the War of 1812. Looking westward, the orators of the 1840s who preached the ""Manifest Destiny"" of the United States to preside from sea to shining sea based their oratorical logic on the Louisiana Purchase. TURNING POINTS features preeminent writers offering fresh, personal perspectives on the defining events of our time.
Author
Librarian note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name Thomas James Fleming was an historian and historical novelist, with a special interest in the American Revolution. He was born in 1927 in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of a World War I hero who was a leader in Jersey City politics for three decades. Before her marriage, his mother, Katherine Dolan Fleming, was a teacher in the Jersey City Public School System. After graduating from St. Peter's Preparatory School in Jersey City, Fleming spent a year in the United States Navy. He received a Bachelor's degree, with honors, from Fordham University in 1950. After brief stints as a newspaperman and magazine editor, he became a full-time writer in 1960. His first history book, Now We Are Enemies, an account of the Battle of Bunker Hill, was published that same year. It was a best-seller, reviewed in more than 75 newspapers and featured as a main selection of the Literary Guild. Fleming published books about various events and figures of the Revolutionary era. He also wrote about other periods of American history and wrote over a dozen well-received novels set against various historical backgrounds. He said, "I never wanted to be an Irish American writer, my whole idea was to get across that bridge and be an American writer". Fleming died at his home in New York City on July 23, 2017, at the age of 90.
