On this day in 1803, Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory known as Louisiana—all of the land drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries essentially the entire country from the Rockies to the Mississippi with the exception of Texas— from France for $15 million dollars. This wasn’t within Jefferson’s or any president’s powers. It was against Jefferson’s principles since it was a de facto acknowledgement that France had some right to the territory. It wasn’t a terribly popular move—it wasn’t ratified by the Senate until nearly 6 months after the fact. And it set the stage for war with Spain which, in fact, did happen. But Jefferson recognized the necessity for it, went ahead and did it anyway, and overnight doubled the size of the fledgling United States and made the country we’re living in today possible.
