The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 added around 828,000 square miles of territory to the United States from France, thus doubling the size of the young nation.
What was known then as the Louisiana Territory spanned from the Mississippi River in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west, and from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to the Canadian border in the north. 15 states are now located in the land acquired by Jefferson in the Louisiana Purchase, which is often regarded as one of the most significant successes of Thomas Jefferson's presidency.
Napoleon Bonaparte, to finance his war with Britain, agreed to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States for just $15 million, around 4 cents per acre.
The purchase marked the beginning of "Manifest Destiny," the 19th-century doctrine that the expansion of the US from the Atlantic coast all the way across North America to the Pacific coast was both inevitable and essential.
Jefferson immediately commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, to explore the Louisiana Purchase land.
On April 30, 1812, exactly nine years after the Louisiana Purchase agreement was signed, the territory's first state – Louisiana – was admitted to the Union as the United States' 18th state.
To commemorate Thomas Jefferson's historic land deal, order a bag of Mount Rushmore Coffee Company's "Louisiana Purchase French Roast" coffee today!