Presents a chronological date collection of letters related to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 . Highlights include correspondence from 1801-1804 between individual representatives of the United States Government, individual representatives of the Government of England, individual representatives of the Government of France, Thomas Jefferson's message to Congress, and Articles of Exchange of possession of the Louisiana Territory.

In an unprecedented legal agreement, Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of the United States in an afternoon. The Louisiana Purchase was an 1803 transaction in which the United States bought over 280,000 acres of land from the French.?During the Napoleonic Wars between France and Britain, the slave uprisings in the French holdings in the Caribbean left France in financial trouble. Jefferson sent James Monroe and Robert R. Livingston to Paris to negotiate the buying of the city of New Orleans, a crucial port city for America.?To their surprise, Napoleon offered the entire French territory for a price of $15 million. On December 20, 1803, the French flag was lowered in New Orleans and the flag of the United States of America flew in its stead.?Between 1804 and 1806, under the orders of Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explored the new territory, bringing back samples of plants, foods and animals native to the area. These reports and more are included in this volume.

A reference anthology providing contributed essays by eminent scholars with excerpts of primary source documents (accompanied by explanatory head notes) to address the reasons why the Louisiana Purchase happened and to examine the tremendous changes it brought about. The introduction explains the details of the purchase. Chapters that follow explore the political cultures on both sides of the Mississippi River in the years immediately preceding the Louisiana Purchase the events immediately related to the Louisiana Purchase through the experiences of Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr (Jefferson's controversial vice president), Dehahuit (Caddo Indian chief), and Edward Livingston (politician and legal theorist); and the Louisiana Purchase's connections to American politics and constitutionalism. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR