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Louisiana Purchase: United States
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The American purchase of the Louisiana territory was not accomplished without domestic opposition. Jefferson's philosophical consistency was in question because of his strict interpretation of the Constitution. Many people believed he was being hypocritical by doing something he surely would have argued against with Alexander Hamilton. The Federalists strongly opposed the purchase, favoring close relations with Britain over closer ties to Napoleon, believing the purchase to be unconstitutional, and concerned that the U.S. had paid a large sum of money just to declare war on Spain. The Federalists ... feared that the political power of the Atlantic seaboard states would be threatened by the new citizens of the west, bringing about a clash of western farmers with the merchants and bankers of New England. There was concern that an increase in slave holding states created out of the new territory would exacerbate divisions between north and south, as well.
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The Louisiana Purchase was one of the largest land deals in history. In 1803, the United States paid approximately $15 million dollars for over 800,000 square miles of land. This land deal was arguably the greatest achievement of Thomas Jefferson's presidency but ... posed a major philosophical problem for Jefferson.
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The Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the area of the United States; this new acquisition had an area of 828,000 square miles (2,155,500 square kilometers). The Louisiana Territory was west of the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, strectching from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.
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The Louisiana Purchase opened the west for settlement by Europeans and Americans and had grave implications for American Indians, who would soon find their ancestral homelands taken from them. It allowed for the extension of slavery, brought an end to French and Spanish domination in Arkansas and allowed a diversity of settlers to develop and perpetuate their own cultures in the six distinct geographic regions of the state.
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The Louisiana Territory, purchased for less than 5 cents an acre, was one of Thomas Jefferson's greatest contributions to his country. Louisiana doubled the size of the United States literally overnight, without a war or the loss of a single American life, and set a precedent for the purchase of territory. It opened the way for the eventual expansion of the United States across the continent to the Pacific, and its consequent rise to the status of world power. International affairs in the Caribbean and Napoleon's hunger for cash to support his war efforts were the background for a glorious achievement of Thomas Jefferson's presidency, new lands and new opportunities for the nation.
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Via the Louisiana Purchase the United States acquired more than 2,000,000 km2 (800,000 square miles) of territory from France in 1803 for $15 million. The French territory of Louisiana included far more land than just the current US State of Louisiana; the lands purchased contained parts or all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota west of the Mississippi River, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, nearly all of Kansas, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Rocky Mountains, the portions of southern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan and southern Alberta that drain into the Missouri River, and Louisiana on both sides of the Mississippi River including the city of New Orleans.
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