Louisiana Purchase Trivia

During the last decade of the 1700s American were settling into the Cumberland, Tennessee and Ohio River Valley regions. To do so, they depended on their right to use the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans. Spain had granted the right to ship goods from American ports through the Mississippi without paying duty or storage at New Orleans.

In 1802 Spain revoked the privileges and created an atmosphere of growing tension in that part of the West.
In 1803 Napoleon (the French now had control of the land) offered to sell to the US the entire Louisiana Territory. US Foreign Ministers Livingston and  Monroe joined French Minister Talleyrand in Paris to make the deal.  Problem was neither of the American representatives had instructions nor authority to purchase the whole of the territory even as the negotiations continued.

The actual purchase was dated on May 2 1803, but it was antedated to April 30. The final cost of the Louisiana Territory was $27,267,622. At the time, it was unclear exactly what the US had even purchased. The terms did not even clearly define the boundaries, and it was thought that an amendment to the Constitution was  needed to legalize the entire transaction...as it turned out the Senate approved the treaty by a vote of 24 to 7, still without clear boundaries.

The northern boundary was established amicably by an Anglo-American convention in 1818: the Rocky Mountains (then called the Stony Mountains) were the west, while the Mississippi River was the eastern boundary - for all practical purposes. This was some 15 years after the "territory" was purchased!

Out of this purchase came North and South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Minnesota and Louisiana.

Not bad for $27.5 million!! Even if no one knew what they were buying exactly!