Originally, negotiators Robert Livingston and James Monroe were authorized to pay France up to $10 million solely for the port of New Orleans and the Floridas. However, when they were offered the entire territory of Louisiana – an area larger than Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal combined – the American negotiators swiftly agreed to a price of $15 million.
Although President Thomas Jefferson was generally a strict interpreter of the Constitution who wondered if the U.S. Government (and especially the President) was authorized to acquire new territory, the desire to expand the United States across the entire continent trumped his ideological beliefs. As Napoleon threatened to take back the offer, Jefferson squelched whatever doubts he had and prepared to occupy a land of unimaginable riches.
The Louisiana Purchase was the first major cession of land in a long series of expansions that span the 19th century. Within 50 years, the present-day borders of the contiguous United States would be solidified with the Gadsden Purchase.
Each expansion, though greatly increasing the size of the United States, also exposed the sectional weaknesses between the North and South, especially related to the issue of slavery. As new territories and states were created, the desire to maintain a balance between "free states" and "slave states" required a series of fragile compromises (notably the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850). Eventually, as agreements became more difficult to achieve, civil war became inevitable.
In addition, the Louisiana Purchase ignored the potential impact on Native Americans. The land ceded in this agreement (and later expansions) was populated with thousands of American Indians across dozens of tribes. As territories and states were established, more and more Americans from the East traveled west, leading to conflict with Native Americans. Ultimately, Native people were forcibly moved on to reservations, losing vast acreage of their tribal lands, and the U.S. Government would force them to change their ways of life and try to erase their religions and cultural heritage.
The Louisiana Purchase Agreement is made up of the Treaty of Cession and the two conventions regarding the financial aspects of the transaction.
What was significant about this purchase for the United States?