How Much Without Iowa?
Two hundred years ago today, with an unknown number of lawyers, bankers and Bechtel executives hovering about, the new buckskin-jacketed United States of America took the lace-cuffed ancienne nation de la France to the cleaners, buying the immense Louisiana Territory for only a few million francs in one of history’s most lopsided real estate deals.
The presidents of France and the United States will not be celebrating that real estate closing together in Louisiana this weekend. France is still steamed about Euro Disney, Wal-Mart, California wines, English words and so much else. And President Bush is busy divvying up Iraq to more friendly allies. Still, this historic transaction changed the course of history, the face of North America and thankfully brought those Kansas City rib joints to the national table forever. That $15 million wouldn’t renovate the Superdome today, let alone purchase the Saints.
In case you weren’t watching cable news that December day in 1803, France and someone named Napoleon badly needed money to cover the costs of big wars and large parties. Paris also, frankly, feared that the democratic American rabble and this newly elected Jefferson guy might just seize the whole place. The United States couldn’t afford Manifest Destiny yet. In fact, negotiators were told: Just buy part of Florida for retirement. Congress OKd $2 million. The president secretly said he’d go to nine-four, not a million more. Imagine the presidential surprise 10 weeks later when the parchment arrived with word that James Monroe had spent $15 million for a tad more than Florida’s Gulf Coast. Thank goodness for credit cards and Dutch financiers.
For some reason Thomas Jefferson saw vague promise in obtaining 529,911,680 acres of farm fields and parking lots for 2.8 cents an acre, land that would become 15 states and stood undeveloped save for scattered tepees and beaver dams. Yes, the deal included much of the Dakotas, Kansas and the part of Wyoming devoid of trees. But we also got the Missouri River plus Oklahoma oil and football.
The U.S., which badly needed a site for the 2004 Nokia Sugar Bowl, obtained wicked New Orleans as a kind of 19th century Las Vegas getaway and perfectly positioned itself to steal the rest of the West from Spain and Mexico. To get straighter lines on maps, 1818 saw an adjustment with Britain’s Canada; the U.S. gave up southern Alberta, which looks a lot like northern Montana, in return for Fargo and Grand Forks, which look a lot like Fargo and Grand Forks.
The unexpected purchase of Louisiana, named for Louis XIV, who never saw the place, remains a pretty good deal 73,050 days later. The U.S. guaranteed itself ownership of a warm-weather port for bounteous agricultural exports and -- don’t forget -- the home plantation of warming Tabasco sauce.
