The Louisiana Purchase Doubles America

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson negotiated the Louisiana Purchase — the acquisition of 828,000 square miles of territory from France for approximately $15 million (about 4 cents per acre). The purchase, which doubled the size of the United States overnight, stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border. Napoleon, needing funds for his European wars and having just lost Haiti to revolution, sold the territory willingly. The purchase was arguably unconstitutional — Jefferson himself admitted the Constitution did not explicitly authorize the acquisition of new territory — but its benefits were too vast to resist. The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806) explored the new territory, reaching the Pacific Ocean. The Louisiana Purchase set the stage for westward expansion, the displacement of Native American nations, the extension of slavery into new territories, and the transformation of the United States from a coastal republic into a continental power.