Louisiana Purchase

Introduction

The United States emerged from the Revolutionary War with its independence, but the young nation remained vulnerable to foreign powers. Both France and Spain claimed territory west of the original thirteen states. Much of the trade of what was then the western United States flowed down the Mississippi River. First Spain and then France controlled the port of New Orleans, posing the threat that either could cripple the U.S. economy by cutting off access to the sea. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent envoys to Paris with instructions to pay up to $10 million to acquire New Orleans and as much of the territory east of the city as possible. However, French leader Napoleon Bonaparte made the Americans a surprise offer: he would sell the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million. Jefferson worried that nothing in the Constitution authorized such an acquisition. However, he swallowed his objections and jumped at the deal. The purchase more than doubled the size of the United States, secured control of the Mississippi River, and put the country on the path to becoming a continental power. SHAFR historians ranked the Louisiana Purchase as the fourth-best U.S. foreign policy decision.

Americans living west of the Appalachian Mountains at the start of the nineteenth century depended on access to the Mississippi River to send their goods to market. In 1795, President George Washington negotiated a treaty with Spain, which then controlled New Orleans, granting Americans the right to send goods through the port. But in 1801, rumors began to reach Washington that Spain would transfer its claim to Louisiana to France. Jefferson wrote that the move would be “the embryo of a tornado which will burst on the countries on both sides of the Atlantic.” France was far stronger than Spain and capable of enforcing its claims to New Orleans and beyond. Worse yet, Napoleon, who had seized power in France three years earlier, dreamed of establishing a French empire in the region west of the Mississippi.

In October 1802, Spain formally handed its claim to the Louisiana Territory to France. In a parting act, Spain revoked the right of Americans to use warehouses in New Orleans. The exports from more than a third of the United States were suddenly at risk. Some Americans, particularly those living in what were then the western states, urged Jefferson to respond to the closure of New Orleans by seizing the port. Doing so, however, likely meant war.

As the rumors of France’s acquisition of Louisiana swirled, Jefferson sent notes to the French government warning that the United States would “marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation” to prevent the move. But these warnings were a bluff. Jefferson had long viewed Britain as the primary threat to the United States and had no interest in an alliance with London. With his hand forced by the closure of New Orleans to U.S. commerce, Jefferson opted to try diplomacy first. In January 1803, he dispatched his close friend and political ally James Monroe to Paris. Monroe’s guidance was simple: try to buy New Orleans and as much of the land east of the city—known as the Floridas—as possible. To that end, Jefferson authorized Monroe to spend up to $10 million. Monroe reached Paris on April 12, 1803. He was greeted by the U.S. minister to France, Robert Livingston. He had surprising news: Napoleon wanted to sell not just New Orleans but the entire Louisiana Territory.

The agreement that Monroe and Livingston struck gave the United States until October 1803 to ratify the treaty. Faced with a rapidly approaching deadline to act, Jefferson dropped his insistence that the Louisiana Purchase could only be concluded by amending the Constitution. He now had to persuade the Senate to consent to the treaty and Congress to appropriate the funds needed to conclude the purchase.

Members of the Federalist Party, Jefferson’s opposition, sought to block Senate approval. They offered an array of objections. The young country could not afford the purchase. The price tag would double once the federal government paid off the loan needed to finance the deal. The United States would become too big and diverse to govern. Disputed boundaries with British and Spanish claims in North America constituted a possible source of future conflict. Slavery would expand into the new territory. The Federalists also bristled at what they saw as Jefferson’s hypocrisy: The strict constitutional constructionist was abandoning his principles now that they conflicted with his interests.

The Federalists’ objections to acquiring the Louisiana Territory reflected self-interest as much as principle. The party drew its political strength from the northeastern states. Westward expansion threatened that region’s well-being. Ports that had long been the United States’ gateway to the world might suffer as commercial opportunities shifted to New Orleans, and businesses might collapse as workers headed west for new opportunities.

The Federalists were badly outnumbered in the Senate, and their effort to block the treaty came to naught. Jefferson’s fellow Democratic-Republicans rallied behind him. On October 20, 1803, after two days of debate, the Senate voted 24 to 7 to consent to the treaty with France.

With the treaty approved, the debate turned to the question of paying for the purchase. Here the vote was far closer. Although the United States was acquiring 828,000 square miles of land for less than a nickel per acre, the $15 million price tag was steep for the young country. Completing the purchase would require it to borrow money from European banks, an unpopular proposition in a country proud of its independence. As a result, the bill to authorize completing the purchase passed the House by only two votes, 59 to 57. The Senate was less troubled by the financial commitment and moved quickly to add its approval. The United States had completed the Louisiana Purchase.

The consequences of the Louisiana Purchase were sweeping. The sale secured the western frontier of the United States from a potential French threat. New possibilities for expansion exploded, laying the groundwork for what would come to be called Manifest Destiny, or the belief that the United States was destined to reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and making possible the emergence of the United States as a continental country and ultimately a world power. The Louisiana Purchase also expanded the power of the national government by affirming that the Constitution granted implied as well as explicit powers. Yet the Louisiana Purchase also had a dark side. It made possible the expansion of the plantation economy, enabling the growth and brutality of the American slave system. The deal also ignored the fact that dozens of Indigenous tribes already lived in the Louisiana Territory. As the nineteenth century progressed, American settlers, aided by an increasingly powerful federal government, forcibly moved tribal nations off their native lands.