Purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France under
Thomas Jefferson’s administration.
In 1801, newly elected President Thomas Jefferson learned
that Spain had surrendered the Louisiana Territory to the
French under the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso. Like many
other Americans, Jefferson feared that the French would rescind the right of American farmers to deposit their goods at
New Orleans. He also worried that a reborn French empire
across the Mississippi River would inspire the many Indian
nations in the western country to rise up and attack settlements along the entire frontier. He even thought that
Napoleon might send French settlers to the region to set up
farms that would feed the slaves on the many plantations of
France’s sugar islands such as Haiti.
One year later, Jefferson instructed Robert Livingston, his
ambassador to France, to purchase New Orleans and western
Florida from the French. If the French would not agree, then
Livingston was instructed to purchase from them another
tract of land along the Mississippi River, where America
could build a new port for the deposit of western goods. Before Livingston could negotiate a purchase (and before Spain
had surrendered Louisiana to the French), Spain closed New
Orleans to American shipping. In response, Jefferson sent
James Monroe to France in 1803 as a special minister with instructions to offer the French up to $10 million for New Orleans and western Florida.
Livingston and Monroe were stunned when French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand offered in 1803
to sell the entire Louisiana Territory including New Orleans
to the United States for $15 million. Napoleon, preparing to
renew his military campaigns in Europe, needed money
quickly. Livingston and Monroe agreed to the sale, and in
1803 Congress approved the Treaty between the United States
of America and the French Republic, which made Louisiana,
which stretched from the Mississippi River all the way to the
Rocky Mountains, a territory of the United States.
—Mary Stockwell
References
Billington, Ray Allen. Westward Expansion: A History of the
American Frontier. New York: Macmillan, 1967.