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Louisiana Purchase Research Paper

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On April 30, 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Purchase from France. The Louisiana Purchase was territory from the west of the Mississippi River to the border of the western territories of Spain and Britain. The purchase was “less than three cents per acre for 828,000 square miles (2,144,520 square km), it was the greatest land bargain in U.S. history.” The grand total of the purchase was 15 million dollars and “doubled the size of the United States, greatly strengthen the country materially and strategically, provided a powerful impetus to westward expansion, and confirmed the doctrine of implied powers of the federal Constitution.” The president at the time, Thomas Jefferson, pushed for the Louisiana Purchase because his “plans …show more content…

To map out this territory to for Jefferson’s “envisioned trade route across Western America to the Pacific Ocean,” he selected the explorer, Meriwether Lewis, to explore and bring back information about the new land. “For three years Lewis and Jefferson spent evenings discussing and planning the logistics and goals of an expedition. Those goals were multi-faceted, with both scientific and economic intentions.” Jefferson gave Lewis these instructions for the expedition: “The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, and such principal stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce." “Beginning at the mouth of the Missouri, you will take careful observations of latitude & longitude, at all remarkable points on the river, & especially at the mouths of rivers, at rapids, at islands, & other places & objects distinguished by such natural marks & characters of a durable kind." Also, Lewis was instructed by Jefferson “to try to establish positive relationships with the American Indians populating the region: ‘The commerce which may be carried on with the people inhabiting the line you will pursue, renders a knolege of those people important.’”3 [“The River of Lewis and Clark.”

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