Excerpt from "The Cession of Louisiana"

Signed on April 30, 1803
Published in Documents of American History, edited by
Henry S. Commager, 1943

In January 1803, Congress authorized $2 million for an attempt to buy New Orleans from France. President Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826; served 1801–9) appointed former Virginia governor James Monroe (1758–1831) to join Robert R. Livingston (1746–1813), the U.S. minister to France, in negotiations with the French. Jefferson had secretly authorized them to pay more than $9 million for New Orleans and Florida. However, at the time Jefferson did not realize Spain had not ceded Florida to France.

In the early nineteenth century, news did not travel fast. It could take months for both news and people to travel across the Atlantic. While Monroe was sailing across the ocean to France, French dictator Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821) was planning his next aggressive action. By the end of 1802, he knew his troops had failed in their...