The Louisiana Purchase transferred to the United States
On this day · 20 December 1803
On December 20, 1803, three flags rose and fell over New Orleans as France handed a continent's interior to the young United States.
On December 20, 1803, officials gathered in the Cabildo in New Orleans for one of the strangest handovers in history. Spain’s flag came down, France’s went up and then down again, and the Stars and Stripes rose — marking two transfers of ownership in a single afternoon. Spain had only just returned the colony to France on November 30, so France held it for barely twenty days.
For about $15 million, the United States acquired roughly 828,000 square miles, land that would form all or part of fifteen future states. The deal cost less than five cents an acre and nearly doubled the size of the nation overnight.
Historian Douglas Brinkley called it one of the three things that created the modern United States.
President Jefferson had sent envoys hoping merely to secure New Orleans; Napoleon, strapped for cash and war-weary, offered the whole territory instead. The Americans, stunned, said yes.
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