To his surprise, Napoleon, needing funds to finance a new European war with England, offered to sell Jefferson most of the land from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.
While Jefferson was known to be partial to the French, having the Emperor Napoleon's driving interests for world domination next door was not an attractive prospect thus, Jefferson acted swiftly. Even before the French took over Louisiana, the Spaniards had closed the Mississippi River in 1802. Jefferson strategically made this move in order to insure that American farmers in the Ohio River Valley had access to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River-the river was a key to the farmers' economic well-being, as they needed a vent for their surplus grain and meat. When Jefferson learned that Spain had secretly ceded Louisiana to France in 1800, he instructed his ministers to negotiate the purchase of the port of New Orleans and possibly West Florida. Doubling the Nation's Size: The Louisiana Purchase Jefferson's action on this matter caused him to rethink the need for a well-equipped navy and halted his move to reduce the force to a mere token size. The war ended with agreements that involved one last payment of tribute, at least to Tripoli. This was one of the first covert operations in American history.
When the Pasha of Tripoli raised his demands in 1801, Jefferson refused to pay the increase, sent warships to the Mediterranean, blockaded the small nation, and tried unsuccessfully to promote a palace coup in Tripoli. For the previous century or so, Western nations had paid bribes to the Barbary states, which would later become Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripolitania, to keep them from harassing American and merchant ships. The first foreign episode involved Jefferson's war with the Barbary pirates. Although Thomas Jefferson came to power determined to limit the reach of the federal government, foreign affairs dominated his presidency and pushed him toward Federalist policies that greatly contrasted with his political philosophy.
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