Louisiana Purchase Research Paper

Words: 284
Pages: 2

The biggest and most significant development in the first half of the nineteenth century, in my opinion, was the Louisiana purchase and subsequent manifest destiny. When the American Government put up $15 million in order to purchase the Louisiana territory from the French in 1803, they purchased roughly 830,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River. The administration at the time (Jefferson) justified this purchase as a necessary step towards economic growth and prosperity. Jefferson cited that priority access to the Mississippi and Port of New Orleans would be the main sources of said prosperity. Strategically, the Louisiana purchase was said to be an effective way to insulate us from European powers such as the Spanish, French