The Louisiana Purchase Ratified

On this day in 1803, the U.S. Senate approved a treaty with France providing for the purchase of the territory of Louisiana.   Although President Thomas Jefferson questioned the constitutionality of the deal, he believed it was essential in order to maintain American trade access to the port of New Orleans.  Soon after, he commissioned the Lewis and Clark expedition to study the area's plants, animal life, and geography, and to discover how the region could be exploited economically.

To learn more about the Louisiana Purchase & the Lewis & Clark Expedition, try the following resources:

• Discovering Lewis and Clark
• Lewis and Clark (Missouri Historical Society)
• Lewis and Clark (PBS)
• Lewis and Clark (Scholastic)
• Louisiana Purchase (History Channel)
• Louisiana Purchase (National Archives)
• Louisiana Purchase and Associated Documents (Avalon Project)
• ​Mapping the West (Smithsonian)
• The Journals of Lewis and Clark (University of Nebraska)
• The Lewis and Clark Expedition (National Archives)
• The Lewis and Clark Expedition (The Jefferson Monticello)
• The Louisiana Purchase (The Jefferson Monticello)