The Louisiana Purchase nearly doubled the territory of the United States overnight, moving the border to the Rocky
Mountains. This enormous addition of land brought new sources of wealth in the form of timber, game, and minerals as well as millions of acres of potential farmland. Louisiana, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, and parts of North and South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado were formed out of the purchase. The purchase brought additional population that did not share a common British heritage, namely, Native Americans and descendants of French and Spanish colonists lived in the new territory
Before 1763, Louisiana had been claimed by France. With defeat in the French and Indian War (1754-63), France ceded the territory to Spain. The Treaty Of Paris (1783) granted the area east of the Mississippi and north of Florida to the United States and asserted that “the navigation of the river Mississippi, from its source to the ocean, shall forever remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain and the citizens of the United States.” Unfortunately, neither the United States nor Great Britain controlled the last few hundred miles of the river, which lay completely in Spanish territory. If farmers west of the Appalachian Mountains wanted to send their crops to markets using the Mississippi, they had to ship them through the Spanish territory and the port of New Orleans. This detail became a point of contention throughout the 1780s and into the 1790s until the Pinckney Treaty (1795), which granted the United States the right of deposit—permission to ship goods without paying duties—through the port of New Orleans for three years. The Spanish governor agreed to extend this right on a year-by-year basis thereafter
Almost as soon as Napoleon Bonaparte agreed to end the Quasi-War (1798-1800) between France and the United States, he sought to create a new French empire in the Western Hemisphere. To do so he had to retake the rebellious colony of Saint Domingue (Haiti), which had been the most profitable of the sugar-producing colonies of the West Indies, and gain control of Louisiana. Napoleon compelled Spain to retrocede Louisiana to France in the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1800), and following a brief peace with the British in 1801, Napoleon sent an army to Saint Domingue. However, after the French lost thousands of soldiers to disease (see also disease and epidemics) and to the black revolutionaries in Saint Domingue, Napoleon’s hopes for a Franco-American empire faded. Moreover, in 1803 war loomed again between France and Great Britain, and Louisiana became a defensive liability that could be easily captured by the British.
In the meantime, Napoleon’s actions had not gone unnoticed. President Thomas Jeeeerson, despite his Francophile sympathies, was aghast at the idea of the French possession of Louisiana. He wrote to Robert Livingston, the United States ambassador to France, that New Orleans was the “one single spot” on earth that the “possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy” since so much produce passed through the port. Jefferson continued: “France placing herself in that door assumes to us the attitude of defiance.” He urged Livingston to see what he could do to purchase the port of New Orleans and Florida (which Jefferson apparently believed was a part of Louisiana, but still remained a Spanish possession) and sent James Monroe to assist him in the negotiations. Exacerbating the situation, late in 1802, the Spanish colonial government—France had not officially taken control of the region—suspended the “right of deposit” for U. S. goods.
The French rejected the initial offer to buy New Orleans, but soon came back with a better deal—all of Louisiana (830,000 square miles) for $15 million. Monroe and Livingston had been authorized to pay $6 million for New Orleans but had been asked to negotiate a lower price if possible. The diplomats recognized a bargain when they saw one and within two weeks in April 1803 agreed to the purchase. The French also insisted that all property rights within Louisiana had to be respected and that its residents be granted full U. S. citizenship—provisions that ran counter to the written instructions of the negotiators. Again, the deal was too good to quibble over such details, and Livingston and Monroe agreed to these provisions.
President Jefferson thought that since nothing in the United States Constitution allowed for the addition of new territory to the United States on equal terms with the current states, there might have to be a constitutional amendment allowing such a purchase. But since the treaty stipulated that the United States had only six months to ratify the agreement, Jefferson decided to sidestep the constitutional issue. Given his agrarian sympathies, he believed that Louisiana offered an incredible opportunity by providing land for Indian removal and eventual settlement of European Americans. As such, the lands in the West would guarantee the agrarian and republican nature of the United States for centuries.
The Louisiana Purchase faced opposition from the Federalist Party. Some of Jefferson’s political enemies thought that he had overreached his authority. Like Jefferson, they believed the Constitution made no provision for this kind of sale. This opposition—centered in the North and East—saw the purchase as a means to extend the control of the Democratic-Republican Party, since most of the states in the West supported Jefferson and the settlers in the new territory would likely follow suit. Many of these opponents were also concerned with the expansion of slavery into the area. Slavery was already well ensconced in the lower Mississippi Valley, and many people believed that any new states in the region would become slave states. Similarly, the provision granting citizenship to “foreigners” in the territory distorted whatever balance had existed between the states. Moreover, with the Louisiana Purchase as precedent, critics wondered what was to prevent the addition of new lands and other “foreigners” from being added to the nation and destroying the rights of the present citizens as they were swallowed up by hordes of people with different values and customs. The addition of Louisiana also raised very real fears of disunion and the destruction of the United States. On the one hand, disgruntled members of the Federalist Party actually began discussing the secession of New England, New York, and New Jersey into a separate nation because the region shared “a sufficient congeniality of character.” On the other, there was also the specter of a West that might decide to go its own way. Within a few years of the purchase, several plots to create such a nation emerged,
A contemporary mapmaker's vision of Louisiana, 1804 (Library of Congress)
The most famous of which was masterminded by Aaron Burr in 1806. Such concerns, however, came to naught. Although much of the purchased territory remained unsettled by European Americans for decades, the opening of the Mississippi encouraged further settlement west of the Appalachians and European Americans flooded into the region to stake out farms and build cities.
See also Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Further reading: Alexander DeConde, The Affair of Louisiana (New York: Scribner’s, 1976); Peter J. Kastor, The Nation’s Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004); Jon Kukla, A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of the America (New York: Knopf, 2003).
World History
