The Importance Of The Louisiana Purchase

1095 Words5 Pages
The end of the Revolution war in 1783 brought with it a surge in American expansion westward into the Appalachian Mountains causing a need for the exploration of the Mississippi River port of New Orleans for viability of American commerce. As a solution, in 1803, America under the presidency of Jefferson, negotiation the purchase the Louisiana territory. This purchase has been described as one of the biggest real estate deal in history. The purchase double the size of the American territory covering the Mississippi River and its tributaries westward to the Rocky Mountains, and extended from the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans up the Red River to the Canadian border. However, for a president who had ran a political campaign of limiting federal government control to what was explicitly stipulated in the constitution, the Louisiana Purchase posed several significant moral dilemmas for Thomas Jefferson. The Louisiana theory was originally owned by Spain who in 1801, secretly handed over the Louisiana territory to France, a deal Jefferson saw as a threat to American settlement and accessibility to the Gulf of Mexico which was very important for the American trade. In response he sent a letter to the then U.S Finance Minister in Paris, Roberts Livingston, explaining the importance of this region…show more content…
As a last resort, America had to take a loan from European banks at an interest of six percent. James Madison describing the effect of the debt on the Treasury stated “ the unexpected weight of the draught now to be made on the treasury will be sensibly felt by it, and may possibly be inconvenient in relation to other important objects” (Google eBook: American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, Congress of the United States

More about The Importance Of The Louisiana Purchase

Open Document