Louisiana Purchase - Background

Background

Throughout the later half of the 18th century, Louisiana was a pawn on the chessboard of European politics. It was originally claimed by Spain, but also claimed by the French, who established most of the colonists as part of New France. Following the Seven Years War and French defeat by Great Britain, Spain gained control of the territory west of the Mississippi River. As the area was being gradually settled by United States migrants, many Americans, including Jefferson, assumed that it would be acquired "piece by piece." The risk of another power taking it from a weakened Spain would make "profound reconsideration" of this policy necessary.

The city of New Orleans controlled the Mississippi River due to its location; other locations for ports were attempted, but did not succeed. New Orleans was already important for shipping agricultural goods to and from the parts of the United States west of the Appalachian Mountains. Pinckney's Treaty, signed with Spain on October 27, 1795, gave American merchants "right of deposit" in New Orleans, granting them use of the port to store goods for export. Americans used this right to transport products such as flour, tobacco, pork, bacon, lard, feathers, cider, butter, and cheese. The treaty also recognized American rights to navigate the entire Mississippi River, which had become vital to the growing trade of the western territories.

In 1798 Spain revoked this treaty, prohibiting American use of New Orleans, and greatly upsetting the Americans. In 1801, Spanish Governor Don Juan Manuel de Salcedo took over from the Marquess of Casa Calvo, and restored the right to deposit goods from the United States. Napoleon Bonaparte had gained Louisiana for French ownership from Spain in 1800 under the Treaty of San Ildefonso, after being a Spanish colony since 1762. But the treaty was kept secret. Louisiana remained nominally under Spanish control until a transfer of power to France on November 30, 1803, just three weeks before the cession to the United States.

James Monroe and Robert R. Livingston traveled to Paris to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans in 1802. Their interest was only in gaining control of New Orleans and its environs; they did not anticipate the much larger purchase that would follow.

The Louisiana Purchase was by far the largest territorial gain in U.S. history, stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. The purchase doubled the size of the United States. Before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Louisiana had been under control of the Spanish since 1763. Although Spain was America’s ally in the Revolution, they didn’t want the Americans to settle on their land or territory. The Louisiana Purchase territory was home for many of the Cajuns after the British forced them to leave from their former home of Nova Scotia, Canada.

Although the purchase was thought of as unjust and unconstitutional, Jefferson believed there was no evidence of unconstitutional actions taking place during the purchase of what became fifteen states. In hindsight, the Louisiana Purchase could be considered one of Thomas Jefferson’s greatest contributions to the United States. On April 18, 1802, Jefferson penned a letter to Robert Livingston. It was an intentional exhortation to make this supposedly mild diplomat strongly warn the French of their perilous course. The letter began:

The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France works most sorely on the U.S. On this subject the Secretary of State has written to you fully. Yet I cannot forbear recurring to it personally, so deep is the impression it makes in my mind. It completely reverses all the political relations of the U.S. and will form a new epoch in our political course. Of all nations of any consideration France is the one which hitherto has offered the fewest points on which we could have any conflict of right, and the most points of a communion of interests. From these causes we have ever looked to her as our natural friend, as one with which we never could have an occasion of difference. Her growth therefore we viewed as our own, her misfortunes ours. There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce and contain more than half our inhabitants. France placing herself in that door assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific dispositions, her feeble state, would induce her to increase our facilities there, so that her possession of the place would be hardly felt by us, and it would not perhaps be very long before some circumstance might arise which might make the cession of it to us the price of something of more worth to her. Not so can it ever be in the hands of France. The impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us...

Jefferson’s letter went on with the same heat to a much quoted passage about “the day that France takes possession of New Orleans.” Not only did he say that day would be a low point in France’s history, for it would seal America’s marriage with the British fleet and nation, but he added, astonishingly, that it would start a massive shipbuilding program.