The Spanish Government Begins the Formal Transfer of Louisiana to the U.S.: November 30, 1803

This text comes from our book, Lands of Hope and Promise.

The vigorous Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, had at last, it seemed, stabilized the government of France following the confusions that had followed the French Revolution. With peace established in France, Napoleon began to harbor the dream of a restoration of French power in North America. In 1800, he entered into secret negotiations with Spain over Louisiana, a vast territory stretching from New Orleans in the south, and westward from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains. In return for some European territories, Spain secretly ceded Louisiana back to France in the Treaty of San Ildefonso on October 1, 1800.

This secret cession became public in 1802 when Napoleon sent a French force to take possession of New Orleans and Louisiana (which remained ostensibly under Spanish control). Jefferson and other Americans—Republicans and Federalists alike—were worried. They thought Spanish control of Louisiana troublesome, since the Spanish could easily close off the port of New Orleans to the shipment of American goods. Yet, Spain was weak, and Jefferson hoped that in time Americans could take advantage of this weakness and begin pealing away parts of Louisiana for the United States. French control of Louisiana, however, was another matter altogether, for Napoleon’s France was strong and thus a real hindrance to American expansion westward. Hoping to ward off the French threat, Jefferson wrote to the American minister at Paris telling him to warn the French government that “the day that France takes possession of New Orleans . . . we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.” This was no idle threat; for Great Britain was Napoleon’s greatest enemy in Europe. An American alliance with Great Britain could threaten French possessions in the Americas.

The Louisiana Purchase

Tensions between France and the United States increased in 1803; the Spanish governor of Louisiana again forbade Americans in the West the right to ship their goods through the port of New Orleans. The president’s Federalist rivals clamored for war with France; but Jefferson, eager to maintain peace, instead sent James Monroe to France as envoy extraordinary to help the American consul Robert Livingston negotiate an understanding with France.

Events now took a significant turn. Napoleon was mobilizing for war with Britain, and he feared that, with their superior sea power, the British might seize Louisiana. Moreover, Napoleon needed money. On April 11, 1803, his minister, Talleyrand, approached Livingston and Monroe and offered to sell the whole of Louisiana to the United States. Nineteen days later Livingston and Talleyrand signed an agreement in which France agreed to sell Louisiana to the United States for the bargain price of $15 million.

Jefferson faced a quandary. According to his own political philosophy, the Constitution gave the president no authority to add to national territory by treaty. His lawyers, however, hammered out a justification, worthy of Hamilton, for the purchase; the power to purchase was implied, they said, not actually spelled out, in the Constitution. The reasoning certainly violated Jefferson’s strict-constructionism; but his conviction that the U.S. should expand to the west—even, perhaps, to the Pacific—as well as his fear of foreign powers in the West demanded a momentary lapse from constitutional purity. The failure to control New Orleans, he thought, would imperil the continuance of the West in the federal union. “The future destinies of our country hang on the event of this negotiation,” said Jefferson. So despite its dubious constitutionality, Jefferson submitted the treaty to the Senate, and it was ratified.

On November 30, 1803, the Spanish government formally transferred Louisiana to France. Three weeks later, France transferred the territory to the United States. By the stroke of a pen, Jefferson had doubled the size of the country.