View in National Archives Catalog. Two centuries ago this springโwithout a call to arms, with little advance notice, and with only the briefest negotiationsโthe United States doubled in size. In an astounding transaction that amounted to four cents an acre, President Thomas Jefferson saw his dreams of westward expansion coming true for the nation he had helped create.
The United States of America would grow beyond the Mississippi River and include the rich forests, vast plains, and craggy mountains that would one day yield the vital resources to make it the most powerful and most prosperous nation on earth. The historic transaction is known as the Louisiana Purchase, but it was not something that Jefferson had sought to make at the time. He would have been content just to buy the port of New Orleans so the United Statesโnot Spain, not France, certainly not Great Britainโcould control the gateway to the Mississippi River, the main street of commerce in what was then the American West.
But France's ruler at the time, Napoleon Bonaparte, was losing interest in establishing a North American empire and needed funds to fight the British, so he directed his emissaries to offer not just New Orleans but all of the Louisiana Territory to the Americans. Jefferson's envoys in Paris, without awaiting any direction from their President which would have taken two months , accepted the deal and on April 30, , signed the Louisiana Purchase Treaty.
The story of the Louisiana Purchase, however, is more than just a quick deal among the top French and American diplomats in April of And it took more to complete the Louisiana Purchase than the treaty itself. It involved more than a year's worth of delicate negotiations to work out the approval of the treaty by Congress, the raising of funds to finance the purchase, and the transfer of documents that completed the deal.
There were agreements on how the deal would be financed and various delegations of powers of attorney to individuals carrying out the various functionsโsome thirty documents in all. Over the years, the Louisiana Purchase Treaty and the two side conventions, which stipulated how France would be compensated for Louisiana, have been part of Department of State records held by the National Archives.
