Wonder what it would cost to buy W Canada? Or is it better to just wait for the inevitable

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Concerned about losing access to the port of New Orleans, in 1803 President Thomas Jefferson sent James Monroe and Robert Livingston to Paris to attempt to buy the city from France, authorizing them to offer France up to $10 million for it.

Meanwhile, Napoleon had concluded that it wasn’t worth the cost for France to try to hold onto its vast North American territory. So when Monroe and Livingstone arrived to commence negotiations, they were astonished when France offered to sell the United States not just New Orleans, but the entire Louisiana Territory. The American commissioners did not have authority to negotiate any such deal, but when France offered the entire territory for only $15 million (only $5 million more than they were prepared to offer for New Orleans alone), the deal was too good to turn down. On April 30, 1803 they signed the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, by which the United States would acquire 828,000 square miles of land, at a price of three cents per acre (sixty cents per acre in current dollars). The deal would double the size of the United States. “This is the noblest work of our whole lives,” Livingston remarked.

When the commissioners returned to the United States with the remarkable treaty, Jefferson was amazed and delighted. But the road to ratification was anything but smooth. There were very serious objections to the constitutionality of the treaty and there was also the inconvenient fact that the United States didn’t actually have $15 million. But in the end, the proponents of the purchase prevailed, the U.S. borrowed the money from British financiers, and on October 20, 1803 (two hundred twenty-two years ago today) the Senate gave its advice and consent to ratification of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty—one of the best real estate bargains in history. “From this day the United States take their place among the powers of the first rank,” Livingston said.

#archaeohistories

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