Why the United States Wanted Louisiana

Jefferson authorized his representatives, the American minister to France Robert Livingston and minister plenipotentiary James Monroe (minister plenipotentiary meant he had Jefferson's full authority), to offer a maximum of $10 million for land east of Mississippi and New Orleans. But when the pair met with the French representatives, they were told that it was either $15 million for the entire Louisiana territory, or the deal was off. So why didn't Livingston and Monroe just walk away from the deal?

First, Monroe had spoken one-on-one with Jefferson just before he traveled to France, and knew the importance of New Orleans as a gateway to the Mississippi River. The River was vital to the young country's economy, as water was the main form of transportation for the goods produced in the country.

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Statesmen James Monroe and Robert R. Livingstone completing negotiations with Comte Talleyrand for the Louisiana purchase on April 30, 1803.

But there was another reason that Jefferson -- and thus, Monroe -- knew the land was important. America was still very much an agricultural society, especially in the South. The money crops, tobacco and corn (and later cotton), stripped the land of its minerals. Rather than fertilize (and before crop rotation techniques were widely accepted), farmers could use up the land until it couldn't produce, then they would gather their families and slaves and move west to the next open plot of land. This migration began in the mid-1700s and reached its pinnacle a few decades after the Louisiana Purchase. According to local records, the average southern planter family moved at least twice every generation, presumably because the family would farm the land until it was stripped of its use. (Kennedy).

So Americans were hungry for more land, and Jefferson knew they would continue pushing farther west as long as the land was there. Since there was no way to reach Jefferson quickly (a trip back to France could take weeks, and there wasn't any long-distance communication), Livingston and Monroe accepted the offer on April 30, 1803.

In all fairness, the United States did get a sweet deal. The United States financed their $15 million purchase for 20 years with the Barings Bank of London and Hope & Co. of Amsterdam, which at 6 percent interest, came to a total of $23,527,872.57, or about 4 cents per acre. In fact, after the treaty was ratified, Livingston wrote to Jefferson that Napoleon began to second-guess the deal and even threatened not to abide by the terms because the terms were too much in the United States' favor. Livingston urged that the Congress must ratify the treaty before Napoleon changed his mind.

So what did the United States get for the money? The final boundaries determined that the Louisiana Purchase was 529,402,880 acres, which more than doubled the size of the United States, which contained 434 million acres at the time. The land would eventually be divided to make parts of 13 states, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming.

But if Napoleon thought America was getting too much for too little, why did he sell the land to America in the first place? Read on to find out.