How Did Jefferson Purchase The Louisiana Territory
The Purchase of the Louisiana territory from France for 15 million dollars by today’s standards was clearly a great investment, but at its time it touched off a political firestorm of disagreement between both Thomas Jefferson’s Republican party and Federalists.
The Republicans favored a system that provided constitutionally limited central government leaving the remainder to the states to control. In Jefferson’s view, anything that was written in the constitution was the responsibility of the federal government, everything else on the other hand, was the responsibility of the states.
As a two-term president, the opportunity to purchase the Louisiana territory put Jefferson’s reputation at risk because there was nothing in the constitution …show more content…
It provided room for the US to expand while improving relations with France. Fortunately, we had a president like Thomas Jefferson who would not allow politics or criticism to stop him from taking advantage of the opportunities that would pass his way, or to allow the criticism of both the Federalists and his own party to dissuade him.
Thomas Jefferson’s fundamental beliefs were to support decision making at the state level, but was pragmatic enough to understand that sometimes we need to seek solutions that require short term variations in our deepest held ideals. Furthermore, if his objective is to favor the working landowner over the political and financial opportunists that seem to flourish in large central governments, he needed to temporarily use the authority of his central office to expand the decentralized territories that would indeed support the landowners and local laborers.
By today’s standards Thomas Jefferson was a strict idealist. His variations from his belief were rare but when he did vary, he did it in a grand way as in the purchase of the Louisiana territory. Since then, our government has become much, much more centralized, and I’m sure Thomas Jefferson would not recognize what we have become, but we were lucky to have him be our president when the opportunity arose for him to make history and give the US its first major opportunity to
The Republicans favored a system that provided constitutionally limited central government leaving the remainder to the states to control. In Jefferson’s view, anything that was written in the constitution was the responsibility of the federal government, everything else on the other hand, was the responsibility of the states.
As a two-term president, the opportunity to purchase the Louisiana territory put Jefferson’s reputation at risk because there was nothing in the constitution …show more content…
It provided room for the US to expand while improving relations with France. Fortunately, we had a president like Thomas Jefferson who would not allow politics or criticism to stop him from taking advantage of the opportunities that would pass his way, or to allow the criticism of both the Federalists and his own party to dissuade him.
Thomas Jefferson’s fundamental beliefs were to support decision making at the state level, but was pragmatic enough to understand that sometimes we need to seek solutions that require short term variations in our deepest held ideals. Furthermore, if his objective is to favor the working landowner over the political and financial opportunists that seem to flourish in large central governments, he needed to temporarily use the authority of his central office to expand the decentralized territories that would indeed support the landowners and local laborers.
By today’s standards Thomas Jefferson was a strict idealist. His variations from his belief were rare but when he did vary, he did it in a grand way as in the purchase of the Louisiana territory. Since then, our government has become much, much more centralized, and I’m sure Thomas Jefferson would not recognize what we have become, but we were lucky to have him be our president when the opportunity arose for him to make history and give the US its first major opportunity to