Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: editor Candis Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane Hey. Jane
Speaker 1: and I are huge friends buffs. We can stand around
Speaker 1: the break room over coffee and quote lines along the
Speaker 1: best of them. And this morning I went over to
Speaker 1: Jane's test and was like, Jane, I have this great
Speaker 1: friends line and I cannot remember the episode that it
Speaker 1: came from. And it's when um Phoebe is trying to
Speaker 1: help Ross get over his ex wife remarrying so soon,
Speaker 1: and she says, you can't be mad about the past,
Speaker 1: because you know you and Emily were in the past,
Speaker 1: and you're not still mad about the Louisiana purchase, are you?
Speaker 1: And Rachel says, well, I don't think anyone's mad about that,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that's true. Actually, yeah. And you
Speaker 1: know it's funny because after you pointed out which episode
Speaker 1: this came from and I had a context for everything,
Speaker 1: I was like, who would be mad about the Louisiana purchase?
Speaker 1: And Phoebe is so quirky that I typically don't put
Speaker 1: a lot of stock and the things that she said
Speaker 1: that people were mad about it. Yeah at the time.
Speaker 1: I mean now we look back on and we're like, wow,
Speaker 1: they doubled the country in this in this great deal,
Speaker 1: and we were able to expand the country and grow
Speaker 1: in power. But at the time, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: um take a walk in their shoes. I guess of
Speaker 1: someone living in New York or something. At that time,
Speaker 1: they had a lot of worries about this new land
Speaker 1: and what they were going to do with it and
Speaker 1: the people there, and how are they were going to
Speaker 1: handle the people, and whether they were not going to
Speaker 1: become citizens. There are so many parts to this equation,
Speaker 1: and I guess it's almost comparable to when the US
Speaker 1: acquired Alaska, and we know that people were kind of
Speaker 1: mad about that. It was called Stewart's Folly because everyone
Speaker 1: thought it was a bad decision, or are they going
Speaker 1: to use this huge chunk of land for But aside
Speaker 1: from caribou, perhaps there weren't a lot of living things
Speaker 1: that came with Alaska. And I'm sorry the native population,
Speaker 1: of course I shouldn't fail to mention that. But when
Speaker 1: we're talking about Louis Sienna, this was a territory that
Speaker 1: was highly prized because I had a great port and
Speaker 1: it was perfect for trade. So everyone wanted it, and
Speaker 1: it had changed hands from France to Spain, and then
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson wanted it for the US. And there were
Speaker 1: lots and lots of people there, about a hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: not to mention the Native Americans too. The port was
Speaker 1: so important. Jefferson actually wasn't that interested in the rest
Speaker 1: of the land. He sent his um, his people over
Speaker 1: two guys. One was a representative to France named Robert Livingston,
Speaker 1: and the other was James Monroe, who technically had presidential
Speaker 1: power UM when he went over to make the deal,
Speaker 1: and Jefferson was like, you know, make sure you get
Speaker 1: New Orleans, like the poor is what's important. And if
Speaker 1: if you have to, if they make you buy other
Speaker 1: land too, it's sort of like a gift with purchase.
Speaker 1: And he wanted to spend only I think ten million dollars.
Speaker 1: But again, because Monroe was as Minister of Plantentiary, he
Speaker 1: was vested for the power to act in Jefferson's stead.
Speaker 1: So when Napoleon said here's the deal, it's New Orleans,
Speaker 1: Louisiana and then this whole other parcel of land for
Speaker 1: fifteen million, take it or leave at Monroe said, I
Speaker 1: take it. That's right, and it Actually he had a
Speaker 1: few reasons for doing this, um that it would help
Speaker 1: out America desplite the problems that might come. One was
Speaker 1: that farmers in the South, especially UH, they hadn't perfected
Speaker 1: by this time this uh, this idea of crop rotation
Speaker 1: and so um the land was being used for, particularly
Speaker 1: tobacco and corn, and these after a few harvests, it
Speaker 1: would um basically deplete the land of the nutrients that
Speaker 1: it needed. And so the pet the farmers would have
Speaker 1: to uproot everything and go and move westward, basically where
Speaker 1: more land was, and so they could start again with
Speaker 1: new fresh land. And then I think about the Louisiana
Speaker 1: purchasing all the land that it gazed to the United States.
Speaker 1: Is that at the time the borders still weren't clearly defined.
Speaker 1: So in the minds of the armors at least, this
Speaker 1: was a great opportunity because they could just keep pushing
Speaker 1: west as long as they needed to, you know, for
Speaker 1: the sake of their farms and their crops. And this
Speaker 1: was maybe a foreshadowing of the later idea of manifest
Speaker 1: destiny that would come around eighteen forty five, the idea
Speaker 1: that civilization, you know, could take over the entire North
Speaker 1: American continent and American ideals could be pushed to you know,
Speaker 1: every single corner of North America, and you know that
Speaker 1: power would radiate, and the Americans felt really entitled to
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, it seemed rather natural for them to
Speaker 1: push westward, westward. And now we look back and we
Speaker 1: were completely comfortable with the idea that you at ninety
Speaker 1: states looks now, and back then they even had that
Speaker 1: idea that it was natural for them to move that
Speaker 1: way and to take more land. I think that was
Speaker 1: part of the young American spirit too. You know, they
Speaker 1: had won the Revolution not too terribly long ago, and
Speaker 1: people were still excited about being part of a fledgling nation.
Speaker 1: Even though the constitution was in place, powers were still
Speaker 1: certain shifting and contracting, and people were getting you to
Speaker 1: all the new freedoms that they had. You know, it
Speaker 1: was a separation from a monarchy, and people were still
Speaker 1: testing the limits of the United States. But back to
Speaker 1: the parcel of Lane in question, So fifteen million dollars today,
Speaker 1: it would have cost around two hundred eighty four million
Speaker 1: to make that purchase, and it actually didn't technically cost
Speaker 1: the US fifteen million, ended up costing them twenty three million,
Speaker 1: five hundred twenty seven thousand, eight hundred seventy two dollars
Speaker 1: and fifty seven cents. That's right. And that actually even
Speaker 1: with that added song with they got, with the interest
Speaker 1: and the loans that they had to take out, it
Speaker 1: still ended up being a really good deal for them,
Speaker 1: only about four cents an acre I think it was.
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? Yeah, it's a great deal. So they
Speaker 1: went over to France around April of eighteen o three,
Speaker 1: and they got Napoleon to make this deal with them
Speaker 1: around April, I guess thirty toward the end of the month.
Speaker 1: But then time was not on living Stoneham in the
Speaker 1: row side because the Polly and saw maybe I haven't
Speaker 1: made the best deal, and he was about to take
Speaker 1: back his offer because I think he realized what he
Speaker 1: was giving away. That's a ton of land. And so
Speaker 1: Congress reserved to hurry up and ratify this treaty, and
Speaker 1: then it was official. I was, gosh, I'm gonna throw
Speaker 1: in another number at you guys, five hundred twenty nine million,
Speaker 1: four hundred two thousand, eight hundred eighty acres, which today
Speaker 1: is divvied up into about thirteen different states. It's crazy. Well,
Speaker 1: we could look back on why is it that Napoleon,
Speaker 1: if this was such a bad deal, why did he
Speaker 1: sell in the first place? And it turned out that
Speaker 1: he was kind of strapped for cash, and also the
Speaker 1: plan that he had, the reason why he got his
Speaker 1: land back from Spain in the first place, was because
Speaker 1: he had this plan for a colony in the America's
Speaker 1: uh sunt dominique I guess um, but actually um it
Speaker 1: fell through. He wanted to make money from this colony,
Speaker 1: but the indigenous people they revolted and threw off the French,
Speaker 1: the French rule there. And so when that happened, Napoleon
Speaker 1: was basically, well, why do I have this land at all?
Speaker 1: And that's when he was willing to sell it off
Speaker 1: at such a cheap price. And even though he kind
Speaker 1: of learned to regret that decision a little bit, maybe
Speaker 1: he did. And part of the price included for giving
Speaker 1: a debt that France has the US of I think
Speaker 1: about three point seven five million, and it took twenty
Speaker 1: years for the US to finally pay it off, and
Speaker 1: and people were not happy about it, and not necessarily
Speaker 1: because it was such a huge expense. So that was
Speaker 1: certainly part of the equation. Something that we were talking
Speaker 1: a little bit about in the beginning, the idea that
Speaker 1: this was gift with purchase. You know, you you've got
Speaker 1: a whole lot of land, but you also got around
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand people. And to put that in perspective,
Speaker 1: you know, by today's standards, that would be like acquiring
Speaker 1: another state full of people. You know, the United States
Speaker 1: wasn't too densely populated back then, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: these people are like, okay, so all these ideals that
Speaker 1: our forefathers who are fighting for, now we're going to
Speaker 1: have to share them with people who don't have our
Speaker 1: same religion, They don't have our same customs, they don't
Speaker 1: even speak the same language as us. How can they
Speaker 1: be declared cool? That's true. And you know, they didn't
Speaker 1: have the same history or understanding of the government. And
Speaker 1: you know, you look at so the cities in the
Speaker 1: Northeast especially, and they had they had power back then
Speaker 1: because their areas were so densely populated, and so in
Speaker 1: the government they had a little bit more sway and
Speaker 1: when all these people were suddenly added, they were like,
Speaker 1: what was going to happen to our power? It's going
Speaker 1: to be sort of diluted a bit. And also like
Speaker 1: the land is so cheap out there, Obviously we're gonna
Speaker 1: lose some of our own people and they might move out,
Speaker 1: you know, in a max exodus exactly. So the harshest criticism,
Speaker 1: like Jane was saying, came from places like Boston, Hartford,
Speaker 1: New York, and Philadelphia. And something else that was running
Speaker 1: pretty rampant at this time was anti Catholic sentiment, and
Speaker 1: people weren't comfortable with assimilating these people into the US population.
Speaker 1: And that was a question that that the US had.
Speaker 1: Should these people be assimilated, Should Louisiana be a colony? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was sort of a sense that they wouldn't listen
Speaker 1: to the government, they would only listen to the pope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was a big problem, especially again not the
Speaker 1: Harp on this point, but it is so important. These
Speaker 1: people had just fought for their freedom, and these foreigners,
Speaker 1: like Jane said, they weren't schooled in the same history.
Speaker 1: And another sort of elite idea that people had was
Speaker 1: that as foreigners, they wouldn't understand or grasp the concept
Speaker 1: of democracy. You know, this was still a pretty lofty
Speaker 1: turn back then, even though it's sort of a common
Speaker 1: one to us today. It was pretty novel at the time.
Speaker 1: And it's a little ironic too. They were worried about
Speaker 1: these things. At the same time, they were worried about
Speaker 1: how loosely the people mingled in this new area of
Speaker 1: Louisina purchased and blacks and whites and you know, all
Speaker 1: different kinds of people, and they sort of were seen
Speaker 1: as more equal in a sense, or they at least
Speaker 1: treated each other a little more more equal than at
Speaker 1: least people in the southern states of the United States
Speaker 1: at the time. And this would eventually lead to the
Speaker 1: bigger conflicts that escalated into the Civil War. And if
Speaker 1: you trace the events back to your history, you really can.
Speaker 1: You can see the trouble brewing. Because we know that
Speaker 1: the Governance Acts of eighteen and four and eighteen five
Speaker 1: outlawed the international slave trade. And while that may have
Speaker 1: been bad news for New Orleans, it was good news
Speaker 1: for the American South because that meant they could, you know,
Speaker 1: they could sell off their own slaves and keep it
Speaker 1: an in house sort of business limited the supplies with
Speaker 1: their own property um as they saw rosen value precisely, precisely,
Speaker 1: and later on, because the US was so big, we
Speaker 1: would see the Missouri Compromise come into play, and we
Speaker 1: would see that dividing line between north and south, and
Speaker 1: which states would be free states and which states would
Speaker 1: be slave states. And another group that we shouldn't forget
Speaker 1: to mention as the Native Americans, and a lot you know,
Speaker 1: wasn't done for this part of the population. I think
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson's plan was just to you know, keep nudging
Speaker 1: them westward and let them deal with the situation themselves.
Speaker 1: There was no sympathy shown towards them, and we wouldn't
Speaker 1: see the kind of cruelty that came with Andrew Jackson's
Speaker 1: administration on the Trail of Tears for some time. But
Speaker 1: there was no question of assimilating them, that's right. And
Speaker 1: we didn't really know much about all the different tribes
Speaker 1: and stuff that we're out there. Actually it took um
Speaker 1: an expedition, a special special expedition, right after we purchased, uh,
Speaker 1: the huge plot of land. Um. Thomas Jefferson actually commissioned
Speaker 1: these two guys merywether Lewis and William Clark to go
Speaker 1: out and explore this new area that they had just acquired,
Speaker 1: and a little bit more as well. And basically his
Speaker 1: plan was to find waterways. Basically they would make it
Speaker 1: easy to bring um products and commodities from one side
Speaker 1: to the other. And they did find some waterways and
Speaker 1: some uh sometimes they didn't. But um, what they are
Speaker 1: also commissioned to do is actually explore the land itself
Speaker 1: and find the plants and the animals and even the
Speaker 1: Indian tribes there. And that's how we know, or at
Speaker 1: least the early Americans knew what was out there. Isn't
Speaker 1: that crazy to think that if you get that huge
Speaker 1: parcel of land, like we've been saying along, your task
Speaker 1: with the responsibility of dividing it up, your tasks with
Speaker 1: the responsibility of what to deal with the people, but
Speaker 1: also what to deal with the natural resource says I mean,
Speaker 1: Jefferson knew he was going to get a happy bustling
Speaker 1: poured out of New Orleans, but little detain no probably
Speaker 1: you know all the other vast resources that would come
Speaker 1: with it too, And so you know, all along, I
Speaker 1: think that t. J. Thought he was making a really
Speaker 1: really sound decision, but the Federalists, which were still you know,
Speaker 1: very politically active at this point in time, felt that
Speaker 1: he was not. And you know, they fought tooth and
Speaker 1: nail about this, you know, not only about the land out,
Speaker 1: only about the citizens, but the fact that it was unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: There was nothing in the Constitution that provided for naturalizing
Speaker 1: a group like that, like that's a big group of people.
Speaker 1: There was a question because there's nothing specifically said in
Speaker 1: the Constitution. So there was this debate over or they're
Speaker 1: implied powers in the Constitution that would allow this to happen,
Speaker 1: and that was ultimately the decision. I mean, what else
Speaker 1: were they going to do? Basically, I guess, but um
Speaker 1: it was. It was difficult at the time. And one
Speaker 1: of the biggest problems with that naturalization debate was that
Speaker 1: that had been one of the points outlined in the
Speaker 1: Treaty of France. And again we know that Jefferson was
Speaker 1: not the acting person when i treaty was created, it
Speaker 1: was Monroe, but still, you know, he was he was
Speaker 1: held accountable for it. And you know, that's what I
Speaker 1: love about history, is that just looking back at some
Speaker 1: of these debates about limiting the president's power acting constitutionally,
Speaker 1: acting outside the parameters of the constitution. It's so fun
Speaker 1: to see people pushing these boundaries at the beginning of
Speaker 1: our nation's history and today, you know, looking at what
Speaker 1: sort of problems the president has to face today. And um,
Speaker 1: a question that's raised in the article that we have
Speaker 1: about Louisiana purchase is you know, Jefferson probably would have
Speaker 1: laughed at the border disputes of today. You know, it's
Speaker 1: nothing compared to Oh, I just thought, you know, millions
Speaker 1: of acres of land. I wonder what's out there. And
Speaker 1: the same goes for the constitutional questions, and they've sort
Speaker 1: of of there. He was sort of left at the
Speaker 1: kind of things that we're supposing like or or they
Speaker 1: employed powers or not. And another clincher for that is that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we all know Dictaney how an accident, a
Speaker 1: hunting accident and accidentally shot one of his friends. But
Speaker 1: Jefferson's vice president was Aaron Burr, and he shot Alexander
Speaker 1: Hamilton's and killed him. So yeah, I mean again, there
Speaker 1: probably wasn't a you know, a lot of videos circulating
Speaker 1: on YouTube, you know, making fun of that. And actually
Speaker 1: a similar thing happened with Lewis and Clark's expedition. Lewis
Speaker 1: I believe was accidentally shot by one of his his
Speaker 1: crew um in a hunting accident, So I guess it's
Speaker 1: not very new phenomenon. I'm sorry about that pality to
Speaker 1: do anyway. If you want to learn more about the
Speaker 1: Louisiana purchase, Lewis and Clark, Manifest Destiny, and your best
Speaker 1: friend in Mind, Thomas Jefferson, be sure to check out
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