The modern United States, with Louisiana Purchase overlay (in green)
The Louisiana Purchase (French: Vente de la Louisiane "Sale of Louisiana") was the acquisition by the United States of America in 1803 of 828,000 square miles (2,140,000 km2) of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana. The U.S. paid 50 million francs ($11,250,000)
plus cancellation of debts worth 18 million francs ($3,750,000), for a
total sum of 15 million dollars (less than 3 cents per acre) for the
Louisiana territory ($230 million in 2012 dollars, less than 42 cents
per acre).
The Louisiana territory encompassed all or part of 15 present U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The land purchased contained all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River; most of North Dakota; most of South Dakota; northeastern New Mexico; northern Texas; the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans; and small portions of land that would eventually become part of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
France controlled this vast area from 1699 until 1762, the year it gave
the territory to its ally Spain. Under Napoleon Bonaparte, France took
back the territory in 1800 in the hope of building an empire in North
America. A slave revolt in Haiti and an impending war with Britain,
however, led France to abandon these plans and sell the entire
territory to the United States, who had originally intended only to seek
the purchase of New Orleans and its adjacent lands.
The purchase of the territory of Louisiana took place during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. At the time, the purchase faced domestic opposition because it was thought to be unconstitutional. Although he agreed that the U.S. Constitution
did not contain provisions for acquiring territory, Jefferson decided
to go ahead with the purchase anyway in order to remove France's
presence in the region and to protect both U.S. trade access to the port
of New Orleans and free passage on the Mississippi River.
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Although the foreign minister Talleyrand opposed the plan, on April 10, 1803, Napoleon told the Treasury Minister François de Barbé-Marbois
that he was considering selling the entire Louisiana Territory to the
United States. On April 11, 1803, just days before Monroe's arrival,
Barbé-Marbois offered Livingston all of Louisiana for $15 million,
equivalent to about $230 million in present-day values.
The American representatives were prepared to pay up to $10 million for
New Orleans and its environs, but were dumbfounded when the vastly
larger territory was offered for $15 million. Jefferson had authorized
Livingston only to purchase New Orleans. However, Livingston was certain
that the United States would accept the offer.
The Americans thought that Napoleon might withdraw the offer at any
time, preventing the United States from acquiring New Orleans, so they
agreed and signed the Louisiana Purchase Treaty on April 30, 1803. On
July 4, 1803, the treaty reached Washington, D.C.. The Louisiana Territory was vast, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to Rupert's Land in the north, and from the Mississippi River in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west. Acquiring the territory would double the size of the United States at a sum of less than 3 cents per acre.
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