The Louisiana Purchase was the purchase of a vast area of land by the United States from Napoleonic France in 1803. While France only occupied a small amount of the territory, it comprised vast swathes of what is now the American Midwest. William Floyd Junior explains the history of the territory and how the US came to acquire it.
The Louisiana Purchase on a modern map. Source: William Morris, available here.
The first administration of Thomas Jefferson (1801-1805) basically turned on one event, the purchase of the Louisiana Territory and control of the Mississippi River. It was the river, which occupied the President’s mind along with its free navigation, which would lead to the acquisition of the vast territory of approximately 828,000 square miles. Jefferson first began contemplating his vision about the time of the Revolution. In confronting the problem of Virginia’s frontiers, he thought of his idea as “Empire of Liberty.” In his first inaugural address, Jefferson spoke of the United States as, “a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation.”
European Exploration
The story of the Louisiana Territory began as far back as 1519, when a Spanish sea expedition explored the Gulf of Mexico. This would be the first time that Europeans would site the mouth of the Mississippi River. In 1528, there was another Spanish expedition of some three hundred men travelling inland from the coast of Florida. After a torturous expedition, four emaciated survivors would reach a Spanish settlement in Mexico after wondering through southern Louisiana and much of the southwest for eight years.
In 1541, Hernando de Soto, the newly appointed governor of Cuba, organized an expedition of six hundred soldiers for the purpose of exploring the Louisiana territory. De Soto would die the following year of yellow fever. The force would be reduced by hunger, disease, and Native American attacks to about half of its original size, causing it to sail down the Mississippi to safer surroundings.
The first European settlers to move into the Mississippi Valley were French, who would come in from the north instead of the usual southern route. Samuel de Champlain became governor of new France in 1633 and would encourage his countrymen to expand further into the interior.
When King Louis XIV became ruler of France, he moved to shut the Spanish out of North America and curb British expansion. A great Anglo-French rivalry for control of the Mississippi Valley would ensue.
Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, a young adventurer-explorer would name the territory he was exploring, Louisiana after the king. On April 9, 1682, La Salle planted a column and cross-painted it with “the arms of France.” La Salle would also formulate a plan for the colonization of the lower Mississippi Valley. La Salle would be murdered by two of his own men before he could establish settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi River. In the summer of 1684, France made peace with Spain. The peace and LaSalle’s failure led the French government to abandon immediate plans for attacking New Spain by establishing colonies on the lower Mississippi.
In September 1715, after being in power for seventy-two years, Louis XIV died. He would leave France and the empire bankrupt by the cost of years of war around the world. Several years after Louis died, the rivalry between England and France would gain momentum. France would go on to claim the entire Ohio valley. English leaders looked at Louisiana along with Canada as a wall confining their colonies to the Atlantic seaboard. The French continued exploring trying to find a route to the Pacific Ocean. By 1752, they planted the French flag at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. By the early 1790s, a mass migration had started dividing the country.
1800s
By 1800, France would reign supreme in Europe and Napoleon turned his energies to rebuilding his overseas empire. Louisiana and the Floridas were major elements of his grand design centered on Santo Domingo, the richest of the colonies. In the same year, Spain ceded Louisiana to France on October 1, by the Treaty of San Ildefonso. However, Spain refused to part with the Floridas. Napoleon would now mount an expedition to take possession of Louisiana at the port of New Orleans. Jefferson became aware of the retrocession causing a shadow to fall over his administration.
Napoleon planned to build a commercial bloc in the Caribbean Basin that consisted of the strategically important West Indian Islands Martinique and Saint Dominque which would be linked with Louisiana. The French in the Mississippi Valley would be President Jefferson’s first great diplomatic crisis. He had been a long- time friend of France since his days as ambassador in Paris (1784-1789), which made him familiar with French diplomacy and politics.
Although Jefferson had never been west of the Shenandoah Valley, his attitude about the Mississippi Valley and beyond was long-standing. When news that Spain had ceded its rights to Napoleon and France, Jefferson recognized this as a fundamental shift in the strategic situation. It both threatened American security and would block western expansion.
Jefferson’s instructions to Robert Livingston, the newly appointed American ambassador to France were very direct. The fact that France would now control the Louisiana region was a major disaster that “completely reverses all the political relations with the United States and will fill a new epoch in our political course.” It constituted, he believed, the greatest challenge to American independence and national integrity since the American Revolution. Despite prior friendships with France, the moment the French occupied New Orleans, the two nations became enemies.
Monroe mission
Livingston was more than capable, but he was not a Virginian. Jefferson wanted someone in Paris whom he could trust beyond any doubt. In effect, he would order James Monroe, who was at the time Virginia’s governor, to become a special envoy to France. Monroe’s instructions authorized the purchase of New Orleans and as much of the Mississippi Valley as possible. The boundaries of the French acquisition from Spain were not clear, but Jefferson was offering up to ten million dollars.
During the winter and spring of 1803, while the outcome of the Monroe mission was yet to be decided, Jefferson’s management of the prospective crisis was both smart and shrewd. He would see to it that an old French friend, du Pont de Nemours, was provided information about America’s intentions that could be leaked in the corridors of Versailles.
When the Spanish official governing New Orleans abruptly closed the port to American commerce, Jefferson came under considerable pressure to launch a military expedition to seize both the city and the Floridas, abandoning diplomacy in favor of war with both Spain and France. In spite of Congress authorizing the president to raise eighty thousand volunteers for a military campaign, Jefferson would reject the idea and continue to pursue a peaceful outcome. Time and demography were on America’s side, justifying Jefferson’s patient approach.
Jefferson was also lucky in that Napoleon’s decision was not to just to sell New Orleans but the entire Mississippi Valley and the modern-day American Midwest. In the early morning of April 11, 1803, Napoleon announced to his Finance Minister Barbe-Marbois that, “I renounce Louisiana.” Within hours the French were enquiring if the United States had interest in the entire territory of Louisiana. Napoleon’s abrupt decision was prompted by the resumption of the Anglo-French war. Ambassador Livingston had complained in the past that negotiating with the French was impossible: “There is no people, no Legislature, no counsellors. One man is everything. He seldom asks advice, and never hears it unasked.” This was typical of Napoleon’s all-or-nothing style. The payment that Napoleon would receive would help subsidize his European army. This worked directly to Jefferson’s advantage. Napoleon’s losing of Santo Domingo was another reason why Napoleon was willing to depart with Louisiana.
Agreement
Livingston knew what to do. “The field open to us is infinitely larger than our instructions contemplated,” Livingston would tell Madison, and the chance “must not be missed.” Livingston and Monroe, now in Paris, negotiated a treaty which gave the United States the Louisiana Territory. The area was so big that the borders were not clearly defined by either party, for about fifteen million dollars or three cents an acre.
The news of the signing of the deal that reached Jefferson on July 3, 1803, was official but not direct. The news came in a letter from the two ministers to Rufus King who got the news shortly before leaving London, brought it with him on his return home, and sent it to Madison from New York. The report of the acquisition of territory west of the Mississippi surprised the American people more than it did Jefferson or Madison. They had learned of the prospect a number of weeks earlier and had approved a larger negotiation in a private letter sent to Paris. Nevertheless, Jefferson was still surprised by the scope of the deal.
The news of the Louisiana Purchase was not accepted favorably by everyone. In Boston George Cabot wrote to his friend Rufus King, the leader of New England Federalism, regarding the recent purchase as being advantageous to France. It is like selling us a ship after she is surrounded by a British fleet,” he said. He would also write that France was, “rid of an encumbrance that wounded her pride,” while obtaining money and regaining the friendship of the United States.
As Jefferson was taking in the news, he wrote to Merriwether Lewis concerning his exploration of the newly acquired territory, “In the journey which you are about to undertake for the discovery of the course and source of the Mississipi (sic) and of the most convenient water communication from thence to the Pacific Ocean . . .” This was a letter full of optimism but also realistic. Jefferson had now done all he could to control the largely uncontrollable nature of Lewis’s dangerous mission.
The official documents concerning the deal would reach Washington on July 14 and were not made public. However, a summary of them would be given out and the financial terms made public. The terms included a payment of $11,250,000 to France in six per cent stock, redeemable for fifteen years, and the assumption by the United States of the claims of its citizens against France in the amount of $3,750,000. For a period of twelve years French and Spanish ships and merchandise were to pay no higher duties than American in the parts of the ceded territory. Finally, the inhabitants of Louisiana were to be incorporated with the United States as soon as possible, consistent with the Constitution, and were to be secure in their personal rights in the meantime. The financing was arranged with the Anglo-Dutch Merchant Banks, Barings Brothers and Hopes, which in effect bought Louisiana from France and sold it to the United States, making nearly $3,000,000 from the deal.
Constitutional matters
On January 13, 1803, Jefferson’s Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, would write to the President explaining his constitutional position regarding the purchase of the Louisiana Territory. He would sum up his opinion by stating the following:
1st. That the United States as a nation has an inherent right to acquire territory.
2d. That whenever that acquisition is by treaty, the same constituted authorities in whom the treaty-making power is vested have a constitutional right to sanction the acquisition.
3d. That whenever the territory has been acquired, Congress have the power either of admitting into the Union as a new state, or of annexing to a State with the consent of that State, or making regulations for the government of such territory.
Later in January, Jefferson would reply to Gallatin saying, “You are right in my opinion, to Mr. L’s proposition: there is no constitutional difficulty as to the acquisition of territory, and whether where acquired it may be taken into the Union by the Constitution as it now stands, will become a question of expediency. It must be assumed at this point that the administration recognized as constitutional the acquisition of territory by treaty. The point of what should be done with it would not be answered at this point in time. For Jefferson to have suggested any difficulties to Congress at this stage would have been to invite trouble. The Senate would finally approve the treaty by a vote of 24 to 7, sealing the deal.
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Now read William’s article on three great early influences on Thomas Jefferson here.
Sources
1. Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson & the new nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 745, 746, 747, 748.
2. Alexander De Conde, This Affair of Louisiana (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 15, 20.
3. www.loc.gov/collections/louisiana.
4. Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 243, 244, 245, 246.
5. Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (New York: Random House, 2012), 385, 387.
6. Dumas Malone, Jefferson The President: First Term 1801-1805 (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1970), 296, 297, 302, 312, 313.
7. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Merriwether Lewis, July 4, 1803, National Archives.
8. Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life (New York: Penguin Group, 2014), 324.
