Louisiana Purchase

views updated

LOUISIANA PURCHASE

On 30 April 1803, French and American negotiators completed work on the Louisiana Purchase. For a pricetag of close to $15 million, the United States acquired territory totaling 828,000 square miles. Eventually, fifteen states—Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Wyoming—joined the United States, either in whole or in part, through the Louisiana Purchase. It was, ironically, exactly the sort of deal that the United States had not sought in 1803, but which became an event that Americans eventually described as a godsend for reasons very different from the motivations that initially drove federal policymakers to pursue the Purchase.

diplomacy of the purchase

The French had established a vaguely defined colony called Louisiana before ceding that territory to Spain following the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). By the time the United States secured its own independence, however, the extent of European control remained limited to the Mississippi Valley itself, with Spanish officials governing a predominantly Francophone population. Meanwhile, Indians continued to wield power further west.

Foreign control of the Mississippi made policymakers in the United States worry about their own ability to secure trade down the river. This concern transcended region or party. Americans were therefore uniformly dismayed to learn that a secret agreement in 1800 had transferred Louisiana from Spain to France, followed soon after by news that the Spanish intendant in New Orleans had imposed restrictions on American trade and that Napoleon had dispatched a vast army to the Americas. In response to a situation that Americans began discussing as the Mississippi Crisis, the Jefferson administration and its allies in Congress sought to acquire New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Their goal remained simple: to consolidate federal sovereignty east of the Mississippi River, not to expand further west.

The Americans proved unsuccessful in negotiating a resolution of the crisis in Paris because the French regime had other concerns. When Napoleon was not attempting to secure dominance in Europe, he was focusing on efforts to reestablish white power in the Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue, the site of an increasingly successful revolt of slaves and free people of color. The army that American observers worried would go to Louisiana was in fact

bound for Saint Domingue. When the French military expedition collapsed through disease and military defeat, Napoleon abandoned his hopes for Saint Domingue (in 1804 leaders of the revolt declared independence for the Republic of Haiti). Louisiana, which Napoleon had acquired to provide supplies and security for Saint Domingue, immediately lost its value to France. Well aware of the Americans' eagerness for a resolution to the Mississippi Crisis, Napoleon ordered his own diplomats to negotiate the sale of Louisiana in its entirety. Although much of the wording of the subsequent treaty followed a template developed by President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison, the scope and timing of the treaty reflected Napoleon's decisions. The agreement itself required the United States to pay $11.5 million and to forgive $3.5 million in French debts.

results of the purchase

The reaction in the United States was one of relief, not because the new nation had acquired additional territory, but rather because the Purchase had achieved a peaceful settlement of the Mississippi Crisis. Nonetheless, Americans worried about what they should make of the treaty and its ramifications. The absence of clearly defined boundaries immediately created intense disputes between the United States and Spain. Some members of Congress expressed ongoing doubts that the president had the constitutional power to negotiate a treaty that redefined national boundaries. Although the treaty itself was quickly ratified by the Senate, debates over how best to govern the territory continued for months. Many in Congress questioned whether the United States possessed the resources to govern such a vast terrain, and those concerns crossed party lines.

Establishing federal sovereignty west of the Mississippi would be among the greatest challenges in both foreign and domestic policy during the decades that followed. The United States and Spain repeatedly came close to war over the boundaries of Louisiana. It was not until 1821 that the United States and Spain ratified the Transcontinental Treaty, which finally established boundaries acceptable to both nations. Meanwhile, the federal government devoted unprecedented resources to securing the loyalty of white residents and preserving racial supremacy over Indians, slaves, and free people of color.

Settling these foreign and domestic affairs was a prerequisite for creating states from the Louisiana Purchase. The first of those states, Louisiana, entered the Union in 1812 after a brief congressional debate. But less than a decade later the second state, Missouri, unleashed disagreements that brought the expansion of slavery to the center of national politics. And the Purchase guaranteed the issue would not go away, for as Purchase territories petitioned for statehood in the decades that followed, Americans were repeatedly forced to reargue the issue. Nonetheless, the successful integration of new states and territories also led Americans to conclude that territorial expansion was possible, and by the antebellum era those successes were contributing to the spirit of Manifest Destiny, which argued that expansion was not only viable but essential.

The new territories carved from the Purchase were uniformly Jeffersonian in their national politics, but each one became home to unique local political systems. With the collapse of the Jeffersonian coalition, the states and territories of the Louisiana Purchase became the site of bitter disputes between Whigs and Democrats. But the primary political division was sectional. Northern states and territories became both antislavery and, in 1861, strongly pro-Union. The southern states of Louisiana and Arkansas became strongly proslavery before joining the Confederacy. States and territories in the middle—most notably Missouri and Kansas—became the sites of their own internal civil wars.

Although creating states from the Louisiana Purchase fueled the disputes causing secession, the Civil War ironically helped complete the Purchase. Only the creation of a large modern army in the Civil War provided the means for the United States to complete its conquest of the Northern Plains. It was over a half a century after negotiators signed the Louisiana Purchase before the United States could claim that it truly controlled the territory.

bibliography

Brugger, Robert J., et al., eds. The Papers of James Madison: Secretary of State Series. Vols. 3–5. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995–2000.

DeConde, Alexander. This Affair of Louisiana. New York: Scribners, 1976.

Kastor, Peter J. The Nation's Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004.

Kukla, John. A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America. New York: Knopf, 2003.

Peter J. Kastor

Encyclopedia of the New American Nation