LYCOS RETRIEVER 
The Purchase: United States
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On April 30, 1803, the Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed by Robert Livingston, James Monroe, and Barbé Marbois in Paris. Jefferson announced the treaty to the American people on July 4. After the signing of the Louisiana Purchase agreement in 1803, Livingston made this famous statement, "We have lived long but this is the noblest work of our whole lives...The United States take rank this day among the first powers of the world"[4]. United States Senate ratified the treaty with a vote of twenty-four to seven on October 20; on the following day, it authorized President Jefferson to take possession of the territory and establish a temporary military government. In legislation enacted on October 31, Congress made temporary provisions for local civil government to continue as it had under French and Spanish rule and authorized the President to use military forces to maintain order. Plans were ... set forth for a mission to explore and chart the territory, which would become known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
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The State of Louisiana had contributed to the Exposition a building of much historical interest in its reproduction of the famous Cabildo, in which the transfer of the Louisiana Purchase was consummated in 1803. The building, adjoining that of the Government, was erected at a cost of $22,000, and was the exact size of the original, 95 by 107 feet, but was more than a replica, the actual doors and roof the old Spanish structure were removed and brought to St. Louis for the new Cabildo. The interior was ornamented with choice paintings, some of them old masters brought to America by Joseph Bonapart. There were portraits of Livingston, Monroe and Marbois, who signed the treaty between France and the United States, and of Jefferson, Napoleon, Salcedo, Laussat, Wilkinson and Claiborne; and there was a painting showing New Orleans as it was in 1803. In the collection of antique furniture in the building were two priceless pieces, -- Napoleon's china-cabinet and the desk on which the treaty of 1803 was signed. Above the desk hung a facsimile of the great treaty that meant so much to the nation, and whose centennial anniversary the Exposition celebrated.
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The first printed map depicting the topography of the Louisiana Purchase was published in 1804 in an atlas by Aaron Arrowsmith. All of the American maps within the atlas, including the one identified simply as Louisiana, were drawn by the American cartographer and draftsman, Samuel Lewis. Arrowsmith and Lewis based their product upon the best information at hand. Their representation of the upper Mississippi and Missouri basins, for example, was borrowed from a groundbreaking map of the American West drawn in St. Louis in 1795 by French engineer Pierre Antoine Soulard. Louisiana... included several readily evident errors and blank spaces, among them being a South Fork of the Platte River which extends far south into present-day New Mexico; the omission of the great Colorado River of the West, still awaiting discovery by the United States; an uncertain source of the Mississippi; the Rocky Mountains portrayed too far to the west and in a single broken chain; and a minimized Columbia River system.
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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 Gadsden Purchase was one of the most curious real estate deals in which Uncle Sam has ever taken part. James Gadsden (1788-1858), whose name the purchase bears, was a grandson of Christopher Gadsden (1724-1805), a South Carolina Revolutionary soldier and statesman who was captured by the British at Charleston and confined as a prisoner for ten months at St. Augustine. James Gadsden soldiered for several years under General Andrew Jackson and it was he who seized the papers that led to the trial and execution of Robert C. Ambister and Alexander Arbuthnot in Florida in 1818, an incident that strained British-American diplomatic relations almost to the breaking point. Gadsden was appointed by President Monroe as the commissioner in charge of placing the Seminole Indians on reservations.
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When news of the purchase reached the United States, President Jefferson was surprised. He had authorized the expenditure of $10 million for a port city, and instead received treaties committing the government to spend $15 million on a land package which would double the size of the country. Jefferson's political opponents in the Federalist Party argued that the Louisiana purchase was a worthless desert, and that the Constitution did not provide for the acquisition of new land or negotiating treaties without the consent of the Senate. What really worried the opposition was the new states which would inevitably be carved from the Louisiana territory, strengthening Western and Southern interests in Congress, and further reducing the influence of New England Federalists in national affairs. President Jefferson was an enthusiastic supporter of westward expansion, and held firm in his support for the treaty. Despite Federalist objections, the U.S. Senate ratified the Louisiana treaty in the autumn of 1803.
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