Vying for Control of the Port of New Orleans

By 1794, Madrid had become weary of her entanglements with the whole Indian-American mess, especially with the settlers.  With war always a threat in Europe, Spain was thinking of negotiating with the United States.

On October 27, 1795, the Treaty of San Lorenzo gave America the Yazoo Strip (Panhandle of Florida, parts of Georgia and Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.  This opened the Mississippi to the United States and permitted them to deposit goods in New Orleans and ship them without paying custom duties.

Late in 1800, Spain ceded the entire Louisiana Territory to France.  The US thought the French a much more powerful adversary in control of the western boundary to the United States.  Could France prove to be "just a pain in the United States' side" or would she change US history?

On October 10, 1802, Spain who was still administering the city of New Orleans, decided to close the port again while waiting on France to decide a convenient time to take back the port again.  This of course, threatened frontier farmers with bankruptcy yet again.

President Jefferson was determined to solve the New Orleans problem once and for all.  The US minister to France was told to negotiate for the purchase of New Orleans.  Jefferson encouraged rumors that the US was considering a military alliance with Britain - thus breaking influence of both Spain and France in the western United States. How did they react?

Next time - Napoleon gives the US a heck of a deal
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Today in Thanksgiving History: On November 26, 1941,  President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill officially establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. 

The tradition of celebrating the holiday on Thursday dates back to the early history of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, when post-harvest holidays were celebrated on the weekday regularly set aside as “Lecture Day,” a midweek church meeting where topical sermons were presented. A famous Thanksgiving observance occurred in the autumn of 1621, when Plymouth governor William Bradford invited local Indians to join the Pilgrims in a three-day festival held in gratitude for the bounty of the season.

Thanksgiving became an annual custom throughout New England in the 17th century, and in 1777 the Continental Congress declared the first national American Thanksgiving following the Patriot victory at Saratoga. In 1789, President George Washington became the first president to proclaim a Thanksgiving holiday, when, at the request of Congress, he proclaimed November 26, a Tuesday, as a day of national thanksgiving for the U.S. Constitution. However, it was not until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to fall on the last Thursday of November, that the modern holiday was celebrated nationally.

Now you know the history of our Thanksgiving Holiday!  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving day :) 

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!