Interesting facts

Interesting Facts about the Louisiana Purchase

The Louisiana Purchase would have cost $233 million in 2011 dollars. That's around 42 cents per acre.

Some historians claim that Napoleon had no right to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States.

The issue of slavery in the western lands of the Louisiana Purchase became a major issue in later years and part of the cause of the American Civil War.

The land had been owned by Spain for a while before they sold it back to France in 1800.

Napoleon didn't mind selling the land to the United States because he thought it would hurt his enemy England.

The original price of $15 million worked out to around 3 cents an acre.

The Louisiana Purchase was huge. It totaled 828,000 square miles and all or part of what would later become 15 different states. It doubled the size of the United States and made it a major world nation.

How big was it?

Opposition

At the time, many leaders in the United States were against the Louisiana Purchase. They thought that Thomas Jefferson didn't have the right to make such a large purchase of land and that we would soon be at war with Spain over the land. The purchase was nearly cancelled by Congress and only passed by the vote of 59-57.

Borders

The Louisiana Purchase stretched from the Mississippi River in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west. Its southernmost tip was the port city of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. To the North it included much of Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana up to the border of Canada.