![]() The $15 million-the equivalent of about $342 million in modern dollars, and long viewed as one of the best bargains of all time-technically didn’t purchase the land itself. ( Read with your kids about the exploration of this new territory.) The real cost of westward expansion ![]() With that, all of the modern-day states of Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma, and most of Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, became part of the United States. Though Jefferson himself was unsure if he had Constitutional authority to purchase territory, he gave the deal his blessing. But when the French offered them a $15 million deal for all of Louisiana, they consented immediately. Jefferson had only given Monroe and Livingston instructions to spend up to $10 million to purchase New Orleans and West Florida. ( Here's how Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo crushed his deams of creating a European empire.) Both the rebellion and yellow fever were decimating Bonaparte’s troops, so he decided to ditch his American imperial aspirations. To their surprise, France suggested they buy all of Louisiana instead.Īs it turned out, the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti had foiled Bonaparte’s plan to use Louisiana as a trade center for French Haitian sugar and coffee. They offered to buy New Orleans from France. Hoping to put a stop to the crisis, Jefferson told diplomats Robert Livingston and James Monroe to negotiate with France. Residents of Ohio and Tennessee and even politicians in Washington threatened bloodshed. ![]() When Spain openly finalized the secret deal in 1802, revoking American access to New Orleans’ warehouses, Jefferson’s worries proved prescient. and Spain had signed a treaty allowing American ships to use the Mississippi without restriction, and for merchants to move goods through the prosperous port of New Orleans without paying duty. Louisiana and the Mississippi River had become increasingly important to the United States as it strained against its westernmost borders. Reports of the secret treaty worried Thomas Jefferson, who was then the president of the newly independent United States. In 1800, he convinced Spain’s king, Charles IV, to cede the territory back to France in a secret treaty. But after battling with Great Britain for control of North America during the French and Indian War, France gave up most of its holdings, ceding Louisiana to Spain and most of the rest to Great Britain in 1763.īut as the French regained power, Napoleon Bonaparte, who dreamed of a French empire in the Americas, decided he wanted Louisiana back. France had once owned a massive swath of what is now the U.S.-including Louisiana. Though people had lived there for thousands of years, it became the site of a fierce tussle over colonial power in the 18th century. ![]() Louisiana at the time covered most of the Mississippi Valley. ![]()
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