Author Topic: Louisiana Purchase, 1803  (Read 806 times)

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rangerrebew

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Louisiana Purchase, 1803
« on: January 16, 2019, 02:50:54 pm »
Louisiana Purchase, 1803

The Louisiana Purchase encompassed 530,000,000 acres of territory in North America that the United States purchased from France in 1803 for $15 million.

The Louisiana Purchase

As the United States spread across the Appalachians, the Mississippi River became an increasingly important conduit for the produce of America’s West (which at that time referred to the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi). Since 1762, Spain had owned the territory of Louisiana, which included 828,000 square miles. The territory made up all or part of fifteen modern U.S. states between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. The Pinckney treaty of 1795 had resolved friction between Spain and the United States over the right to navigate the Mississippi and the right for Americans to transfer their goods to ocean-going vessels at New Orleans. With the Pinckney treaty in place and the weak Spanish empire in control of Louisiana, American statesmen felt comfortable that the United States’ westward expansion would not be restricted in the future.

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1801-1829/louisiana-purchase