The Louisiana Purchase

Louisiana was given to Spain by the French. And Spain liked the idea of it being a no mans land so they can block off there precious silver mines. After awhile the French wanted it back and tried different attempts but finally made a secret deal with Spain where the French got Louisiana back and Spain got a rich provinces in France but when the king of Spain and his daughter got there it was in ruins.  The Louisiana territory encompassed all or part of 15 current U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The land purchased contained all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River; most of North Dakota; most of South Dakota; northeastern New Mexico; northern Texas; the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans; and small portions of land that would eventually become part of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

France controlled this vast area from 1699 until 1762, the year it gave the territory to its ally Spain. Under Napoleon Bonaparte, France took back the territory in 1800 in the hope of building an empire in North America. A slave revolt in Haiti and an impending war with England, however, led France to abandon these plans and sell the entire territory to the United States who had originally intended only to seek the purchase of New Orleans and its adjacent lands.

The purchase of the territory of Louisiana took place during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. At the time, the purchase faced domestic opposition because it was thought that it was unconstitutional. Although he agreed that the U.S. Constitution did not contain provisions for acquiring territory, Jefferson decided to go ahead with the purchase anyway in order to remove France's presence in the region and to protect both U.S. trade access to the port of New Orleans and free passage on the Mississippi River.