Senate Ratifies Louisiana Purchase: U.S. Doubles

The United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase on October 20, 1803, by a vote of 24 to 7, doubling the nation's territory overnight for approximately four cents per acre. President Thomas Jefferson had authorized the purchase despite his own constitutional doubts about whether the federal government had the authority to acquire foreign territory — a dilemma that forced the nation's most prominent advocate of strict constitutional interpretation to embrace a breathtaking expansion of executive power. The purchase began as an attempt to buy New Orleans. Jefferson sent James Monroe to Paris to negotiate with Napoleon Bonaparte for the port city and the surrounding territory at the mouth of the Mississippi River, which was essential for western American farmers who shipped their goods downriver. Napoleon, facing renewed war with Britain and the destruction of his army in Haiti by disease and slave revolt, stunned the American negotiators by offering to sell the entire Louisiana Territory — 828,000 square miles stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. Monroe and Robert Livingston, the American minister to France, agreed to a price of $15 million (approximately $400 million in today's dollars) without waiting for authorization from Jefferson, recognizing that the offer might not last. The territory encompassed all or part of fifteen future American states and included some of the most fertile agricultural land on the continent. The price amounted to less than three cents per acre. Jefferson agonized over the constitutional question. The Constitution said nothing about purchasing foreign territory, and Jefferson had built his political career on the principle that the federal government could exercise only those powers explicitly granted by the document. He briefly considered proposing a constitutional amendment but abandoned the idea when advisors warned that the delay might cause Napoleon to withdraw the offer. Jefferson ultimately decided that the treaty-making power implied the authority to acquire territory, a pragmatic interpretation that his political opponents — many of whom supported the purchase itself — called hypocritical. The Senate ratified the treaty with minimal debate, and the United States suddenly stretched from the Atlantic to the Rockies, opening the interior of the continent to American settlement and ensuring that the young republic would become a continental power.