The Louisiana Purchase

Have you ever been to New Orleans? Was it fun? What did you do there? That's nice. Did you know that it was Thomas Jefferson who acquired New Orleans?! Well, its true! Jefferson purchased some land off of Napoleon Bonaparte. This was called the Louisiana Purchase. This was the land west of the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. He doubled the size of the United States!

But Jefferson was troubled. He always said the federal government should be limited and the Constitution should be followed and it said nothing about buying land. *GASP*




But the land was only $15 million, and that was a sweet deal, so he went for it. Was this hypocritical? Maybe, but there is always the elastic clause to fall back on, and besides....it really was a sweet deal.

To find out what was in this territory he went Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore. They had help from Sacajawea who would later be featured on a dollar coin.