The Louisiana Purchase
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n 1800, Spain secretly
ceded the Louisiana territory--the area stretching from Cananda to the Gulf
Coast and from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains--to France, which
closed the port of New Orleans to American farmers. Westerners, left without a
port from which to export their goods, exploded with anger. Many demanded war.
The prospect of French
control of the Mississippi River alarmed Jefferson. Jefferson feared the
establishment of a French colonial empire in North America blocking American
expansion. The president sent negotiators to France, with instructions to
purchase New Orleans and as much of the Gulf Coast as they could for $2
million.
Circumstances played
into American hands when France failed to suppress a slave rebellion in Haiti.
One hundred thousand slaves, inspired by the French Revolution, had revolted,
destroying 1200 coffee and 200 sugar plantations.
In 1800, France sent
troops to crush the insurrection and reconquer Haiti, but they met a determined
resistance led by a former slave named Toussaint Louverture. Then, French
forces were wiped out by mosquitoes carrying yellow fever. "Damn sugar,
damn coffee, damn colonies," Napoleon, the French leader, exclaimed.
Without Haiti, Napoleon had little interest in keeping Louisiana.
France offered to sell
not just New Orleans but all of Louisiana Province. The American negotiators
agreed on a price of $15 million, or about 4 cents an acre. In a single stroke,
Jefferson doubled the size of the country.
To gather information
about the geography, natural resources, wildlife, and peoples of Louisiana,
President Jefferson dispatched an expedition led by his private secretary
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, a Virginia‑born military officer. For
2 years Lewis and Clark led some 30 soldiers and 10 civilians up the Missouri
River as far as present‑day central North Dakota and then west to the
Pacific.