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Louisiana Purchase
Vast sale
Misso
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S E R I E S
Grand plans
Napoleon Bonaparte envisioned a great French empire in the New World. He hoped to use the Mississippi Valley as a food and trade center to supply the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The island was to be the heart of this empire. However, Haitian slaves seized power on the island and the French army lost thousands of soldiers, mainly to yellow fever. Napoleon abandoned Hispaniola and thus had little use f or Louisiana.
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The Louisiana Purchase was 828,000 square miles, almost six times bigger than present-day Montana and nearly four times as big as France, the country that sold it to the United States.
15 states
Cheap land
President Thomas Jefferson and the U.S. Congress secured the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon in 1803 for $15 million (an average of 4 cents an acre). In comparison, the United States bought 591,000 square miles of Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million (about 2 cents an acre).
The new territory became all or part of 15 states: Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana.
Good move
The Louisiana Purchase was as important as the Declaration of Independence from England and the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, according to Henry Adams, who taught at Harvard and was one of the most important U.S. historians and philosophers.
Above, The United States purchase of Louisiana territory in 1803 put the United States in an enviable position in the struggle to control North America.
Napoleons motives
The (Louisiana Purchase) assures forever the power of the United States, and I have given England a rival who, sooner or later, will humble her pride. French Emperor Napolean Bonaparte
Sources: World Book Encyclopedia, the Lewis and Clark National Trail Interpretive Center and Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose.
When you drive across the border of Canada at Sweet Grass, you are still in the original Louisiana Purchase. It included land drained by the Milk River. When the 49th Parallel was settled on as the border of Purchase lands between Canada and the United States in 1818, that sliver of land became part of Canada and the United States gained parts of what would become North Dakot a and Minnesota In Milk River, Alberta, look for the mural on the side of a building that shows all the flags of countries, including the United States, that have controlled that area.
Thomas Jefferson