The Senate votes 24 to 7: Louisiana is bought
Six months after Robert Livingston and James Monroe signed in Paris for $15 million, the deal still needed Washington's approval. On October 20, 1803, the United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase treaty by a vote of 24 to 7, over Federalist objections that the Constitution gave the president no power to add new territory. The next day the Senate authorized Jefferson to take possession and set up a temporary military government over the land. Roughly 828,000 square miles, bought without a shot fired, now belonged to the United States.
The ratification vote forced the country's first real argument over whether the Constitution could grow with the nation, a debate that resurfaced every time America later annexed territory, from Texas to Alaska. Jefferson, a strict constructionist, set aside his own doubts, comparing his role to a guardian investing a ward's money for the ward's future good.
QHow much did the Louisiana Purchase cost per acre?
At $15 million for roughly 828,000 square miles, the United States paid out to less than three cents an acre. The money wasn't even American: the Treasury didn't have $15 million sitting around, so Jefferson's administration borrowed the full amount from British and Dutch banking houses at six percent annual interest. France, at war with Britain again within months, received payment that was itself borrowed from British and Dutch banks.
QWhat did Robert Livingston say the moment he signed the treaty in Paris?
Livingston, who had spent months negotiating in Paris only to see Monroe arrive and share credit for the final deal, couldn't resist a grand line once the ink was dry on April 30, 1803. He told the room, "We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our whole lives... From this day the United States take their place among the powers of the first rank." Napoleon, for his part, was reportedly less concerned with American rank than with keeping the land out of British hands.
QWhich present-day states and countries came out of the Louisiana Purchase?
The territory eventually became all or part of fifteen U.S. states, stretching from Louisiana and Arkansas up through the Dakotas and Montana, plus two Canadian provinces along the northern edge of the land France had claimed. No survey crew had mapped most of it in 1803; Jefferson was buying a vast, largely unmeasured expanse based on French colonial boundary claims rather than any firm cartography.
