A Map of The Louisiana Purchase In 1803
In 1803 the United States negotiated the purchase of the Louisiana
Territory from France for $15 million. With a stroke of a pen America
doubled in size, making it one of the largest nations in the world.
The sale included over 600 million acres at a cost of less than 3
cents an acre in what today is the better part of 13 states between
the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.
For President Thomas Jefferson
it was a diplomatic and political triumph. In one fell swoop the purchase of
Louisiana ended the threat of war with France and opened
up the land west of the Mississippi to settlement.
By any measure the purchase of Louisiana was the most important action of
Jefferson's two terms as president. Jefferson knew that acquiring the very heart
of the American continent would prove to be the key to the future of the United
Initially Jefferson through his minister to France Robert Livingston offered
Napoleon $2 million for a small tract of land on the lower Mississippi. There
Americans could build their own seaport. Impatient at the lack of news, Jefferson
sent James Monroe to Paris to offer $10 million for New Orleans and West Florida.
Almost at the same time, and unbeknownst to Jefferson, France had offered all
of Louisiana to Livingston for $15 million.
Though the transaction was quickly sealed, there were those who objected to
the purchase on the grounds that the Constitution did not provide for
purchasing territory. However, Jefferson temporarily set aside his
idealism to tell his supporters in Congress that "what is practicable must
often control what is pure theory." The majority agreed.
Jefferson later admitted that he had stretched his power "till it cracked"
in order to buy Louisiana, the largest single land purchase in American history.
As a result, generations of Americans for nearly 200 years have been the beneficiaries
of Jefferson's noble vision of America and his efforts at expanding the continent.