The Causes Of The Louisiana Purchase

The Louisiana Purchase happened in 1803 and it was exactly what it is called. The United States of America purchase the Louisiana territory from France. The U.S. gave France about 50 million dollars for the Louisiana territory. The land purchased contained all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River; most of North Dakota; most of South Dakota; northeastern New Mexico; northern Texas; the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans; and small portions of land that would eventually become part of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

France controlled this territory from 1699 until 1762, the year it gave the territory to its ally Spain. In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte took France back from Spain in hopes of building a great empire. However, a series of accidental events caused France to sell the entire territory to the United States, which had originally intended only to seek the purchase of New Orleans and its adjacent lands.

There were a lot of small events that caused this Louisiana Purchase, including an impending war with Britain, but the main one was the slave revolt in Haiti.

Jefferson did not want to purchase Louisiana from France because that would imply that France had the right to be in Louisiana. On the other hand, he was aware of the potential threat that France could be in that region and was prepared to go to war to prevent a strong French presence there.

Throughout this time, Jefferson was keeping tabs on Napoleon's military activities and intentions in North America. Part of his evolving strategy involved givi...

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...hern states but trying to encompass the preceding French and Spanish rule (for instance, Spain had prohibited slavery of Native Americans in 1769, but some slaves of mixed African-Native American descent were still being held in St. Louis when the US took over the Louisiana Territory). In a freedom suit that went from Missouri to the US Supreme Court, slavery of Native Americans was finally ended in 1836.The institutionalization of slavery under US territorial law in the Louisiana Territory contributed to the American Civil War a half century later. As states organized within the territory, the status of slavery in each state became a matter of contention in Congress, as southern states wanted slavery extended to the west, and northern states just as strongly opposed new states being admitted as slave states. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a temporary solution.