Jefferson and Madison, the third and fourth presidents, were men of culture and thought who had direct experience of the fight for independence and the formation of the Constitution. Historians usually concentrate on a conflict during this period between Federalists, who wanted a strong central government, and conservatives who were for states rights. Thomas Jefferson never gave up his firm conviction that Virginia was his country and not the United States but any conflict in his mind between federal and state power faded when Napoleon of France sold him the territory France possessed west of the Mississippi River, from Louisiana on the gulf of Mexico to territory in the far northwest on the Pacific Ocean, for 3 cents an acre. Settlers were already moving westward into the open lands east of the Mississippi and now in addition a huge new open territory was added to the union west of the Mississippi all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Napoleon was doing his best with his army to set up in Europe a union of states in a French empire and he more than doubled the future size of the American union by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. While the Napoleonic wars were going on in Europe and Madison was president, America began a war with Britain in 1812. Madison had to flee Washington D.C. when it was occupied by British forces. He returned the next day to examine government buildings set on fire by the British. But by 1812, 5 more states had been admitted to the union. The war proved that a European nation-state might set fires in the seat of the union’s government but none of them could stop the advance of a union of states with limited sovereignty and democratic freedoms. During the war, the 5 New England states met in Hartford Connecticut to consider secession from the union. The war against Britain was clearly not in the region’s economic interest and New Englanders were concerned also that the admission of new states reduced their political power in the central government. But an extraordinary new way to organize humanity’s political life in a new revolutionary system was underway and the New Englanders at the conference in Hartford voted to remain a part of it. In Europe after the Napoleonic wars, independent nation-states reappeared with full independent power and the strongest set out with their ships to conquer and subjugate more peoples worldwide for their colonial empires. But in the new open territories in America, new free states were set up with guaranteed democratic governments and unalienable human rights guaranteed by the Constitution. The 5 New England states showed the political power states with limited sovereignty possessed when they asserted their right to secede and then rejected secession. George Washington died 16 years before Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo in 1815. George Washington had created a democratic union of 13 states that would expand to 50 by admitting in 1959 the state of Hawaii. Napoleon lost his battle to unify Europe but he succeeded in expanding the American union by selling it enough territory for 14 new states. A future United States Of The World will have for its history books two heroes who personally created 27 of them.
Daniel McNeill
Daniel McNeill’s novella The End of All Beginnings is available at
Read it free on Kindle with a free app or buy it on Kindle for $1.99.
Also available as a book for $5.99.
A powerful and very dramatic exploration of love and relations between
a 70-year-old man and four women, two sisters 18 and 19, their mother
46, and a lesbian friend 22. It is full of well-written dialogues between the five
In various situations including sexual relations. The drama moves fast right
from the start and it is impossible not to read it as quickly as possible (it
can be read in less than three hours} to an ending that is totally unexpected
and explosive. A complex drama that moves with its own momentum towards
one liberating ending to all its beginnings.
Daniel McNeill
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