In 1762, France had practically given the land to Spain, but in 1800, the treaty of San Ildefonso allowed the French to reacquire the area. At the time, Napoleon Bonaparte had grand dreams of a French Empire in the New World. He was hoping to use the island of Hispaniola as the center of his domain, with the Mississippi Valley as the main food and trade route from which to support his empire. Unfortunately for him, a slave revolt led by Toussaint L’Ouverture dashed his plans. L’Ouverture and his fellow slaves seized control of the island by defeating Napoleon’s troops there. Napoleon then sent an army under the command of his brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc to regain the island. Although the French probably could have regained control of the island through sheer numbers, Napoleon realized that the cost in French lives would have been enormous, not only due to battle losses, but also to malaria, yellow fever, and various other ailments. Therefore, he decided to give up the island and, without the Hispaniola, he had practically no use for Louisiana. Add to this, the fact that he was again facing a renewed threat of war with England, and his need to finance that war; he decided to offer up Louisiana for sale to the U.S.
The third President of the fledging United States, Thomas Jefferson, seemingly apprehensive with regard to French intentions in the area, had already sent James Monroe and Robert Livingston to France to attempt to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans and the western area of Florida. When offered the entire plot of land, Jefferson’s delegates jumped at the chance. They immediately inked the deal, (April 30, 1803) despite the fact that Jefferson himself admitted later that he had stretched his power to its limit and probably beyond. Jefferson himself believed in a strict interpretation of the Constitution, and although it did not specifically grant the Presidency the power to buy land, he arrived at the conclusion that the enormous practical and financial windfall from this deal would far outweigh the possible theoretical violation of the Constitution. The Senate obviously agreed with him because on October 20, 1803, they ratified the deal. The Spanish (who had never officially surrendered up the area, finally did so in a ceremony on November 30, 1803 and on December 20, 1803, the French (in a second ceremony) officially turned Louisiana over to the U.S.
The enormity of the deal is quite mind-boggling. This area of this land is over 600 million acres, or over 2 million kilometers, or over 800,000 square miles. At the time, this tract of land exceeded the size of Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal combined! Eventually, the land acquired by the Louisiana Purchase would be carved into all or part of fifteen American states: Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, New Mexico, Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Montana. And the price for this gargantuan plot of land was a mere 60 million francs or about 15 million dollars. Even better – the cash portion of that was only about $11,250,000 with the remaining portion being the assumption by the U.S. of French debts to the American citizens. The cost of the whole deal breaks down to just under 4 cents per acre. For this mere pittance, Jefferson acquired, what was to be, the very heart of the American continent, and whose natural resources were a vast cornucopia beyond even his dreams. This was the single most important event of the early nineteenth century without which, the entire course of American history would have been altered unimaginably. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson on July 18, 2004, General Horatio Gates, one of the leading Generals for the British in the American War For Independence, declared “Let the land rejoice, for you have bought Louisiana for a song!”
