Historical events from 1765 to 1880

Louisiana Purchase / Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803

There are numerous events and trends that contributed to the development and growth of the United States. However, the Louisiana Purchase along with the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803 opened the door for the nation's expansion and utilization of the industrial era.

The Louisiana Purchase is often described as the greatest real estate deal in history, for in 1803, the United States paid France $15 million for 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi know as the Louisiana Territory (Louisiana pp). The land spanned from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border, thus nearly doubling the size of the United States and making it one of the largest nations in the world (Louisiana pp). The French territory included all of present day

Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota west of the Mississippi River, North Dakota, South Dakota,

Nebraska, New Mexico, northern Texas, nearly all of Oklahoma, Kansas, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Rocky Mountains, the portions of southern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan and southern Alberta that drain into the Missouri River, and Louisiana on both sides of the Mississippi River including the city of New Orleans (Louisiana1 pp).

Initially, the United States was simply interested in purchasing New Orleans because it controlled the Mississippi River, important for shipping goods to and from the regions west of the Appalachian Mountains (Louisiana1 pp). The Pinckney's Treaty of 1795, also known as the Treaty of San Lorenzo or the Treaty of Madrid, with Spain established that American merchants had "right of deposit" in New Orleans (Louisiana1 pp). Louisiana had been a Spanish colony since 1762, however, Napoleon Bonaparte returned the territory to French control, thus, Americans were concerned that they would lose their rights to use New Orleans (Louisiana1 pp).

President Thomas Jefferson decided to purchase New Orleans and nearby portions of Louisiana east of the Mississippi, and sent James Monroe and Robert Livingston to Paris to negotiate the purchase (Louisiana1 pp).

Livingston was sent to Paris is 1801 to pursue a purchase of New Orleans, however, when he was rebuffed, Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, who was living in the United States at the time, was enlisted to aid negotiations in 1802 (Louisiana1 pp). Du Pont engaged in back channel diplomacy with Napoleon and originated a much larger purchase as a means to defuse the potential conflict between the United States and Napoleon over North America (Louisiana1 pp). Monroe, who had been expelled from France on his last diplomatic mission, was sent by Jefferson to Paris in 1803 to demonstrate seriousness (Louisiana1 pp). Jefferson's strategy worked, for by instilling a sense of uncertainty in negotiations, just days before Monroe's arrival, Napoleon offered to sell all of Louisiana rather than just New Orleans (Louisiana1 pp).

By the time Monroe arrived, Napoleon had decided to sell the entire territory, and although the Americans were prepared to pay $2 million for New Orleans, they were dumbfounded when the entire region, which would double the size of the United States, was offered for less than 3 cents per acre (Louisiana1 pp). Recognizing the historic opportunity, Monroe and Livingston accepted Napoleon's offer even though they were not authorized to make such a large purchase (Louisiana1 pp). Napoleon saw it as a goodwill gesture toward the United States, and a strategic move against Great Britain, as well as a means of building up his war chest (Louisiana1 pp). The treaty states, "The President of the United States of America and the First Consul of the French Republic in the name of the French People desiring to remove all Source of misunderstanding..." (Louisiana2 pp). Thus, the plan would keep America out of the French conflict with Britain and keep France out of North America (Louisiana1 pp).

Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman, authors of "The Constitution of Empire: Territorial Expansion and American Legal History," state that the Louisiana purchase is the foundational act of territorial expansion, that acquisition of territory is not an incident of sovereignty that all governments possess, but rather a means of "implementing a textually enumerated power" (Belz pp). Chief Justice Rehnquist has called the Louisiana Purchase, "a breathtaking extension of the implied powers of the federal government" (Hawkins pp).

As early as 1783, Jefferson had proposed an exploration into the Northwest, yet was frustrated by a lack of support to carry out the project and by the fact that Spain and France governed the territory (Kipp pp). He was eager to explore for scientific knowledge as well as to expand the nation and provide a more direct commercial route to southeast Asia rather than sailing around South America (Kipp pp). Thus, within weeks after the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson had Congress appropriate $2,500, "to send intelligent officers with ten or twelve men, to explore even to the western ocean" (Lewis pp). Jefferson selected Captain Meriwether Lewis to lead the expedition, known as the Corps of Discovery, and Lewis in turn selected William Clark as his partner (Lewis pp). On May 14, 1804, the group departed and wintered at Fort Mandan where they met the Shoshone native woman, Sacagawea, who joined the group and guided them westward (Lewis pp). In fact, the success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition was due in part to the assistance that Sacagewea (Lewis1 pp). The expedition headed back east in March 1806 (Lewis pp).

The United States gained extensive knowledge of the geography of the American West, for the expedition had journaled maps of major rivers and mountain ranges, and had discovered and described one hundred and seventy-eight new plants and one hundred and twenty-two species and subspecies of animals (Lewis pp). It opened the fur trade in the West, paved the way for peaceful negotiations with the Native Americans, established a precedent for Army exploration, strengthened the United States' claim to Oregon Territory, focused the country and media attention on the West, and helped to show pioneers some of the Oregon Trail (Lewis pp). The expedition arrived in St. Louis on September 23, 1806, and had spent close to $39,000 dollars, slightly more than the original $2,500 originally requested for the Lewis and Clark Expedition of the Louisiana Purchase (Lewis1 pp). The Lewis and Clark Expedition was a great inspiration for the American Dream, and the Louisiana Purchase was the great resource giving fuel to a nation needing to grow (Lewis1 pp). The success was and is measured in its ability to create the nation's enthusiasm to the dawning of a new era, for from it came the mountain men, the explorers, the gold miners, the stagecoaches, the pioneers, the transcontinental railroad, and the great expansion of the United States into the West (Lewis1 pp).

From 1814 to 1824, Andrew Jackson was instrumental in negotiating nine out of eleven treaties that divested the southern Native American tribes of their eastern lands, and in 1823, the Supreme Court handed down a decision stating that tribes could occupy lands within the United States, however, they could not hold title to those lands, because their "right of occupancy" was subordinate to the United States' "right of discovery" (Indian pp). As President, Jackson called for the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which gave president power to negotiate removal treaties with Indian tribes (Indian pp). By 1837, the Jackson administration had removed approximately 50,000 Native American people from their land east of the Mississippi and had secured treaties that led to the removed of even a larger number, thus opening some 25 million acres of land to white settlement and to slavery (Indian pp).