“ On the east it was bounded by the Mississippi as far south as the thirty-first parallel, where different boundaries were claimed. The United States construed the cession of France to include all the territory between the thirty-first parallel and the Gulf of Mexico, and between the Mississippi and Perdido, the latter of which is now the western boundary of Florida. Under this construction of the cession, the ‘Province of Louisiana’ is now covered by those portions of the States of Alabama and Mississippi which lie south of the thirty-first parallel ”

“ At the close of the Revolutionary War the territory really occupied by the old thirteen States covered scarcely a quarter of a million square miles, and after the treaty of 1783 the nation occupied only 825,000 square miles, but in 1867 the territory belonging to the United States had an area in round numbers of 3,561,000 square miles. ”