4.2.b

“The issue, then, is not whether Jefferson’s policies toward Louisiana were 

right or wrong but rather how he managed to implement decisions that 

defied in so many ways his long-standing commitment to limitations on 

executive power and the near-sacred character of republican principles. . . . 

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Jefferson was not simply seized by power-hungry impulses once he assumed 

the presidency, since in a broad range of other policy areas he exhibited 

considerable discipline over the executive branch and habitual deference 

to the Congress; . . . he did not suddenly discover a pragmatic streak in 

his political philosophy, . . . he clung tenaciously to Jeffersonian principles 

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despite massive evidence that they were at odds with reality. . . . The answer 

would seem to be the special, indeed almost mystical place the West had 

in his thinking. . . . For Jefferson more than any other major figure in the 

revolutionary generation, the West was America’s future.”

“The story of the Louisiana Purchase is one of strength, of Jefferson’s 

adaptability and, most important, his determination to secure the territory 

from France, . . . A slower or less courageous politician might have bungled 

the acquisition; an overly idealistic one might have lost it by insisting on 

5

strict constitutional scruples. . . . The philosophical Jefferson had believed 

an amendment necessary. The political Jefferson, however, was not going 

to allow theory to get in the way of reality. . . . [He] expanded the powers of 

the executive in ways that would have likely driven Jefferson to distraction 

had another man been president. Much of his political life, though, had 

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been devoted to the study and the wise exercise of power. He did what 

had to be done to preserve the possibility of republicanism and progress. 

Things were neat only in theory. And despite his love of ideas and image 

of himself, Thomas Jefferson was as much a man of action as he was of 

theory.”