In a letter to Robert Livingston, the U.S. officials feared that France, resurgent under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte, would soon seek to dominate the Mississippi River and access to the Gulf of Mexico. Since the late 1780s, Americans had been moving westward into the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys, and these settlers were highly dependent on free access to the Mississippi River and the strategic port of New Orleans. Reports of the retrocession caused considerable uneasiness in the United States.
In 1801, Spain signed a secret treaty with France to return Louisiana Territory to France. In 1796, Spain allied itself with France, leading Britain to use its powerful navy to cut off Spain from America. Spain, no longer a dominant European power, did little to develop Louisiana Territory during the next three decades. In 1762, during the French and Indian War, France ceded its America territory west of the Mississippi River to Spain and in 1763 transferred nearly all of its remaining North American holdings to Great Britain. By the middle of the 18th century, France controlled more of the modern United States than any other European power: from New Orleans northeast to the Great Lakes and northwest to modern-day Montana. A formal treaty for the Louisiana Purchase, antedated to April 30, was signed two days later.īeginning in the 17th century, France explored the Mississippi River valley and established scattered settlements in the region. What was known as Louisiana Territory comprised most of modern-day United States between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with the exceptions of Texas, parts of New Mexico, and other pockets of land already controlled by the United States. On April 30, 1803, representatives of the United States and Napoleonic France conclude negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase, a massive land sale that doubles the size of the young American republic.
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