USPS Bicentennial Anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase

USPS in 2003 issued a commemorative stamp marking the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.

The Louisiana Purchase
In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, acquiring more than 800,000 square miles of land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. The price was about $15 million – a remarkable bargain. In fact, the Louisiana Purchase has been called the greatest real estate deal in history. Thirteen U.S. states were carved from this massive land purchase, including most of Oklahoma (the panhandle area of the state was not acquired until after the Mexican-American War.

 

Historians consider the purchase the most important event of U.S. President Thomas Jefferson’s first administration, if not his presidency. France’s Napoleon Bonaparte sold Louisiana to raise money to support his military ventures in Europe. Jefferson believed the U.S. Constitution did not grant the government power to make such a purchase, and in doing so, felt he had “stretched the Constitution ‘till it cracked.” However, he felt the benefits to the nation outweighed such a violation of the Constitution.
 
In a message to Congress, Jefferson said, “Whilst the property and sovereignty of the Mississippi and its waters secure an independent outlet for the produce of the Western States and an uncontrolled navigation through their whole course... the fertility of the country, its climate and extent, promise in due season important aids to our Treasury, an ample provision for our posterity, and a wide spread for blessings of freedom and equal laws.”

Commerce in the US depended heavily on waterways during the early 1800s.  None was more important to US interests than the mighty Mississippi River and the port city of New Orleans.  Fearful that the US might lose navigational rights along the Mississippi, President Thomas Jefferson sent James Monroe and Robert R. Livingston to Paris to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans and its immediate surrounding area.  Jefferson also sent Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, a French nobleman living in the United States.  He had political connections in France, so Jefferson asked him to help with negotiations.

Monroe and Livingston were prepared to offer $10 million for the port city, but France offered the entire 530-million-acre area for $15 million.  Concerned Napoleon would withdraw the offer at any time, the representatives agreed without consulting the president, and the treaty was signed on April 30, 1803.

The purchase was the American government’s largest financial transaction to date, and it doubled the size of the United States at a cost of less than 3¢ per acre.  Control of the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans provided a convenient method of transportation necessary for the development of the new region.  The acquisition also distanced France from the young nation, removing the risk that the two like-minded countries would become enemies over conflicting interests.