It is March 1st. Welcome to Episode 60 of History in a Year. Today, the United States accidentally buys half a continent. Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian republic is threatened when Napoleon Bonaparte takes control of the Mississippi River. Desperate to keep the port of New Orleans open for American farmers, Jefferson sends diplomats to Paris with a simple mission: Buy the city. But defeated by the Haitian Revolution and desperate for war funds, Napoleon makes a shocking counter-offer. We explore the greatest real estate deal in human history, the geopolitical stroke of luck that doubled the size of the United States, and the constitutional crisis it caused for the President.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is March 1st. Welcome to Episode 60. It is a new month, and we are stepping into a new era for the United States. The year is 1803.
LEAH:
Thomas Jefferson is sitting in the President’s House. The partisan wars of the 1790s have cooled down, and Jefferson is laser-focused on his ultimate dream for America.
STEPHEN:
Jefferson believed that the key to a healthy republic was land. He didn’t want Americans to be crammed into dirty, crowded industrial cities like they were in Europe. He wanted an “Empire of Liberty” made up of independent, self-sufficient farmers.
LEAH:
But there was a massive geographical problem with that dream.
STEPHEN:
By 1803, hundreds of thousands of American settlers had poured over the Appalachian Mountains into places like Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. These farmers were growing massive amounts of crops.
LEAH:
But they couldn’t just put those crops in a wagon and haul them back over the mountains to the East Coast. It was too expensive and too difficult. The only viable way to sell their goods was to float them down the Ohio River, into the Mississippi River, all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.
STEPHEN:
And sitting right at the mouth of the Mississippi River was the most important geographic choke point in North America: The port city of New Orleans.
LEAH:
Whoever controlled New Orleans controlled the entire economic lifeline of the American West. If New Orleans closed, the American farmers would go bankrupt.
STEPHEN:
For years, New Orleans had been controlled by Spain. Spain was a declining, relatively weak empire, and the United States had negotiated a treaty allowing Americans to freely use the port.
LEAH:
But in 1801, rumors started swirling in Washington. Thomas Jefferson heard whispers that Spain had secretly signed a treaty handing the entire Louisiana Territory—which included New Orleans—back to France.
STEPHEN:
And not just France. Napoleon Bonaparte’s France.
LEAH:
Napoleon was the most brilliant, ambitious, and terrifying military dictator on the planet. He had conquered most of Europe, and now, he wanted to rebuild the French Empire in North America.
STEPHEN:
Jefferson panicked. A weak Spain holding New Orleans was an annoyance. The greatest military genius in the world holding New Orleans was a direct, existential threat to the United States.
LEAH:
Jefferson wrote to his minister in Paris, Robert Livingston. He said, “There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans.”
STEPHEN:
Jefferson realized that if Napoleon took control of the river, the United States would have no choice but to ally with the British Navy just to survive.
LEAH:
So, Jefferson decided to try and buy his way out of the problem. He sent his trusted friend, James Monroe, across the Atlantic to join Robert Livingston in Paris.
STEPHEN:
Their mission was very specific. Congress authorized them to spend up to 10 million dollars. They were instructed to walk up to Napoleon and offer to buy the city of New Orleans, and maybe a piece of Florida. That was it. Just secure the port.
LEAH:
But when Monroe arrived in Paris in April 1803, he walked into a geopolitical earthquake.
STEPHEN:
Because Napoleon’s grand plan for an American empire had completely, catastrophically failed. And the United States had the enslaved people of Haiti to thank for it.
LEAH:
France’s most profitable colony was Saint-Domingue—modern-day Haiti. It was a massive sugar-producing island built on brutal slave labor. But the enslaved people, led by a brilliant general named Toussaint Louverture, had risen up in revolution.
STEPHEN:
Napoleon needed Haiti’s sugar wealth to fund his empire. So, he sent a massive army of 30,000 elite French soldiers across the ocean to crush the Haitian rebellion and re-enslave the population.
LEAH:
But the French army marched into a slaughterhouse. The Haitian fighters were fierce, and more importantly, they were aided by a microscopic ally: Yellow Fever.
STEPHEN:
The mosquito-borne disease absolutely decimated the French troops. Thousands of French soldiers, including Napoleon’s own brother-in-law who was commanding the army, died agonizing deaths in the tropics.
LEAH:
Napoleon realized the situation was hopeless. He lost his army, and he lost Haiti.
STEPHEN:
And without Haiti as a Caribbean naval base, the vast, empty wilderness of the Louisiana Territory on the North American mainland was completely useless to him. He couldn’t defend it from the British, and it wasn’t making him any money.
LEAH:
And Napoleon desperately needed money. He was about to break his peace treaty with Great Britain and plunge Europe back into a massive continent-wide war. He needed cash to buy muskets, cannons, and ships.
STEPHEN:
So, on April 11, 1803, the French Minister of Finance, François Barbé-Marbois, sat down with the American diplomat Robert Livingston.
LEAH:
Livingston started to give his pitch. He said, “We would like to buy the city of New Orleans.”
STEPHEN:
And the French minister basically interrupted him and said, “Forget New Orleans. What will you give us for the whole thing?”
LEAH:
Livingston was stunned. “The whole thing?”
STEPHEN:
Yes. The entire Louisiana Territory. France was offering to sell the entire western half of the Mississippi River basin.
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LEAH:
Livingston and Monroe were completely completely out of their depth. This was not in their instructions. It would take months to send a letter back to Jefferson and get a reply. But they knew if they hesitated, Napoleon might change his mind.
STEPHEN:
So, they started haggling. After a few days of intense negotiation, they struck a deal.
LEAH:
The United States agreed to pay 15 million dollars. In exchange, France would hand over 828,000 square miles of land.
STEPHEN:
Let’s put that in perspective. 15 million dollars for 828,000 square miles breaks down to about three cents an acre. It is the single greatest real estate bargain in human history.
LEAH:
With the stroke of a pen, Robert Livingston and James Monroe had literally doubled the size of the United States.
STEPHEN:
When the news reached Thomas Jefferson in Washington D.C. on July 4th, 1803, the country celebrated wildly.
LEAH:
But inside the President’s House, Thomas Jefferson was having a massive constitutional crisis.
STEPHEN:
Remember, Thomas Jefferson was the ultimate “strict constructionist.” He spent the entire 1790s fighting Alexander Hamilton, arguing that the federal government could only do exactly what was written in the Constitution. If a power wasn’t explicitly listed, the government couldn’t do it.
LEAH:
Jefferson pulled out his copy of the Constitution and read it cover to cover. And nowhere in that document did it say the President had the power to buy foreign territory.
STEPHEN:
By his own strict political philosophy, the Louisiana Purchase was illegal. It was an unconstitutional expansion of federal power. He was acting exactly like Alexander Hamilton!
LEAH:
Jefferson was actually so worried about it that he sat down and started drafting a constitutional amendment to make the purchase legal after the fact.
STEPHEN:
But his advisors, including James Madison, told him to stop. They warned him that if he waited for an amendment to be ratified by the states, it would take months. By then, Napoleon could change his mind and rip up the treaty.
LEAH:
They told Jefferson, “Just accept the treaty. The country needs this.”
STEPHEN:
So, Thomas Jefferson swallowed his pride. He compromised his most deeply held political beliefs for the good of the nation. He submitted the treaty to the Senate, and they overwhelmingly ratified it.
LEAH:
The Louisiana Purchase completely changed the destiny of the United States. Before 1803, America was an Atlantic nation, clinging to the eastern seaboard.
STEPHEN:
After 1803, America was a continental empire. The new territory stretched from the Gulf of Mexico all the way up to the Canadian border, and from the Mississippi River west to the peaks of the Rocky Mountains. It would eventually become 15 different US states.
LEAH:
But there was a massive question hanging over the whole deal.
STEPHEN:
Nobody actually knew what was out there.
LEAH:
The French hadn’t surveyed it. The Spanish hadn’t mapped it. Thomas Jefferson had just bought an area of land larger than Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal combined—and he had no idea what it looked like.
STEPHEN:
He needed someone to go out there and find out. He needed a military expedition to map the rivers, meet the Native American tribes, and see if there was a water route to the Pacific Ocean.
LEAH:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 61. Lewis and Clark. We embark on the most famous road trip in American history. Thomas Jefferson turns to his young personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to lead a daring Corps of Discovery into the absolute unknown.
STEPHEN:
I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.