In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Mississippi River was vital for transporting goods because of its access to the western frontier and the Gulf of Mexico. The center of river trade was New Orleans, a part of Louisiana Territory originally ruled by France. Louisiana at that time was a vast expanse of land stretching from present-day Alberta in the north to Louisiana in the south, and from Missouri in the east to Colorado in the west.
France gave New Orleans to Spain, and Spain revoked Americans’ right to trade in that vital city. Because the Mississippi River was becoming increasingly important as American settlers moved west, U.S. officials lobbied Spain to reconsider. However when the Americans learned that Spain had secretly returned New Orleans to France, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson dispatched envoys to France in an effort to buy the prized city.
Napoleon’s Western Empire
Napoleon Bonaparte ruled France, and he sought to use Louisiana to build a western empire. However a yellow fever epidemic nearly wiped out the French army in the Caribbean and French reserves were drained by Napoleon’s efforts to conquer Europe. This made administering Louisiana no longer practical.
To the surprise of U.S. negotiators, Napoleon offered to sell not only New Orleans but the entire Louisiana Territory. Despite having no instructions from Jefferson on how to handle such an offer, U.S. envoys Robert Livingston and James Monroe quickly agreed to the price of $15 million, which amounted to less than three cents per acre.
Spanish Objections to the Louisiana Purchase
The purchase outraged Spain because France had secretly pledged not to sell New Orleans to any foreign entity without offering it back to Spain first. That secret promise, called the Treaty of San Ildefonso, was broken when the U.S. purchased Louisiana.
Moreover, the exact boundary lines between French Louisiana and Spanish Florida were unclear. Spain argued that Florida extended west to the Mississippi River, while the U.S. maintained that Louisiana Territory began west of the Perdido River. This caused an international conflict that eventually led to the U.S. acquiring Florida from Spain nearly two decades later.
American Objections to the Louisiana Purchase
In the U.S., the anti-Jefferson Federalists opposed the purchase on several grounds. Some objected to the purchase because it tied the U.S. closer to France when most Federalists favored closer ties to Britain. Others, primarily in New England, saw that the vast territory would be carved into many southern, pro-Jefferson slave states. That would upset the balance between North and South in Congress. Some New England Federalists even considered seceding from the Union and forming a northern confederacy.
Some accused Jefferson, who prided himself on his strict interpretation of the Constitution, of hypocrisy because there was no provision enabling a president to purchase foreign land with taxpayer money. Ironically the purchase was made with proceeds from U.S. bond sales begun by Jefferson’s archrival, Alexander Hamilton, in a sale that Jefferson had deemed unconstitutional.
Jefferson later admitted that he stretched his power "till it cracked" to buy Louisiana. He acknowledged that such a purchase could enhance presidential power and diminish states’ rights. However he believed that buying Louisiana would end French threats to U.S. trade and expand the notion of American liberty westward. Therefore he approved the purchase treaty and sent it to the Senate for ratification.
The Louisiana Purchase Treaty
Federalists argued against the purchase in the Senate, with some even trying to prove that Louisiana still belonged to Spain, which would have made the purchase invalid. Nevertheless the Senate ratified the treaty by the necessary two-thirds majority, 24 to 7. Louisiana Territory was transferred to the U.S. at St. Louis in a formal ceremony on March 10, 1804.
With this purchase, the U.S. acquired about 828,000 square miles of land. And just as Federalists had feared, many southern states were created from the territory, which meant that slavery would not be ended anytime soon. Thus the Louisiana Purchase contributed to the gradual rift between North and South that culminated in war three generations later.
Sources
- Davis, Kenneth C.: Don’t Know Much About History (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2003)
- Schweikart, Larry and Allen, Michael: A Patriot’s History of the United States (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2004)
Walter Coffey - Walter Coffey is a freelance writer who resides in Houston, Texas. Walter has written several works of historical fiction and non-fiction, ...
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