Louisiana Purchase

The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 was the transfer of the western half of the Mississippi Valley from Spain and France to the United States. It encompassed 900,000 square miles of fertile lands, inhabited by Indian tribes, a few thousand French settlers and a rapidly growing population of American frontiersmen. It represented the single most important territorial acquisition by the United States during its transcontinental development. It was purchased by President Thomas Jefferson, who stretched the Constitution to do so. France was eager to sell it for $15,000,000; Spain had no choice in the matter. The Purchase contained most of what is now the west central section of the United States.

Background

In 1682, following a three years' long exploration through the Great Lakes region and, via the Illinois River, down the Mississippi, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle reached the mouth of the Mississippi River where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. He then claimed, on behalf of France, the entire region drained by the Mississippi River and all its tributaries and called it Louisiana after Louis XI, the French King on whose behalf he was acting.

In 1762, the French province of Louisiana included the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and the shore line of the Gulf of Mexico both east and west of the Mississippi. The Spanish got the west bank of the Mississippi; the British, in 1763, the east bank and also the Spanish Floridas; twenty years later the British returned the Floridas to Spain. At the same time the French, with commercial interests around New Orleans, sensed the growing importance of Louisiana and began moves for its recovery. By the Treaty of San Ildefonso, Oct. 1, 1800, and the Convention of Aranjuez, Mar. 21, 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte acquired Louisiana for France in return for placing the son-in-law of the Spanish king on the newly erected throne of Etruria. Napoleon, his dreams for a French empire in the Middle East thwarted by the British Navy, turned toward the Americas with plans for a new colonial empire to be centered in the Caribbean.

Rumors of this secret retrocession from Spain to France reached the United States, causing apprehension of possible encirclement. Some westerners might switch allegiance to France resulting in the loss of the western states to the French by secession should the French control the Mississippi River and New Orleans. President Jefferson said that America was faced with the prospect of "marrying the British fleet and nation" (that is, becoming an ally of Britain in the large-scale wars underway between Britain and France) as an offset to this new French empire in the heart of the continent. Livingston and special envoy James Monroe in Paris plied the French with arguments for a deal with the United States as they strove to buy just the coastal areas of New Orleans and West Florida. In the final decision to sell the whole province of Louisiana to the Americans, Napoleon was influenced by the imminent renewal of war with Britain, when Louisiana might be lost anyway, and the consequent need for money as well as by the failure of his Haitian campaign, where his invasion army had been destroyed by disease. Napoleon's chief goal was to strengthen the United States as a counter-weight to Britain.

Exceeding their instructions, the American envoys accepted Napoleon's offer. By a treaty and two conventions, all dated April 30, 1803, the United States paid $11.25 million for Louisiana, set aside $3.75 million to pay the claims of its own citizens against France, and placed France and Spain on an equal commercial basis with the United States in the colony for a period of twelve years. To finance the sale the U.S. delivered Treasury bonds to France, which it immediately resold to British bankers for gold. On Novenber 30, 1803, Spain formally delivered the colony to the French colonial prefect, who on December 20, 1803, officially transferred the territory to the American commissioners.

Politics

The nation recognized the bargain, but some Republicans complained that the Constitution did not allow such a purchase, and many Federalists were alarmed that eventually the western population would overwhelm their stronghold in the Northeast. Congress voted approval and voted the funds. The acquisition provoked several reversals of policy as Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans competed for electoral preeminance. Federalists had long ignored or disparaged the Western frontier, but they soon saw that their future depended on expanding their electoral strength beyond the Northeast. Their support for access to the Mississippi River and the acquistion of New Orleans and other territories largely rested on their need to remain competitive with their Republican rivals. Republicans, on the other hand, sensed their growing strength in the South and West and relaxed their narrower reading of the Constitution to argue for the purchase, even though it would increase the power of the government.

Geography

The region was poorly mapped. All that the Republic could be certain of in 1803, however, was that it had acquired a corridor down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, the width of which was uncertain. The great explorng expedition of Lewis and Clark revealed the extent and riches of the vast territory.

Later treaties by John Quincy Adams in 1818 and 1819, with Britain and Spain set the boundaries. The Treaty of 1818 placed the nation's northern boundary (with present-day Canada) along the forty-ninth parallel from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains and excluded the British altogether from the Mississippi Valley. The right to this valley and its great tributaries in the West, including the Spanish claim to Oregon, was won in the Treaty of 1819 by drawing the western boundary up the Sabine, Red, and Arkansas rivers to the Rocky Mountains and then westward along the 42nd parallel to the Pacific.

The acquisition of this enormous tract laid a large part of the material foundation for the future greatness of the United States. More immediately, however, its possession ensured the right of free navigation of the Mississippi and the control of the port of New Orleans, vital to western trade, as an integral part of American territory. Moreover, it reinforced the security of the new republic by eliminating France in the contest for supremacy in North America.

Bibliography

• Adams, Henry. History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson (2 vol 1889; 1986 Library of America edition).
• Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996) on the Lewis & Clark Expedition; excerpt and text search
• Cerami, Charles A. Jefferson's Great Gamble: The Remarkable Story of Jefferson, Napoleon and the Men Behind the Louisiana Purchase (2004), 272pp. popular history excerpt and text search
• Kastor, Peter J. The Great Acquisition: An Introduction to the Louisiana Purchase (2004), 184pp; excerpt and text search
• Kennedy, Roger G. Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase (2003) online edition
• Kukla, Jon. A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America (2004) excerpt and text search
• Levinson, Sanford and Sparrow, Bartholomew H., eds, The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion, 1803-1898. (2005) 262 pp.
• Lyon, E. Wilson Louisiana in French Diplomacy, 1759-1804 (1934)
• Malone, Dumas. Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801-1805. (1960)
• Peterson, Merrill D. Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography (1986), long, detailed biography; online edition
• Smelser, Marshall. The Democratic Republic: 1801-1815 (1968)
• Theriault, Sean M. "Party Politics During the Louisiana Purchase." Social Science History (2006) 30(2): 293-324. Issn: 0145-5532 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Tucker, Robert W. and David C. Hendrickson. Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (1992)

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