As the president why did I purchase Louisiana?

After all I was conservative and it was thought that I would be the last person who would be in favor of expansion.*

It wasn't about Louisiana but about Napoleon Bonaparte. The purchase of Louisiana in 1803 was simply to get the property out of that man's hands. Napoleon was a rat and we would have done just about anything to get him out of the western hemisphere. We knew he was going to use the money to build a fleet and an army. Then eventually he intended to return to the west and take back Louisiana and all of North America, like he later attempted to do to Europe and Russia.

We knew exactly what Napoleon was up to. It was all in the secret French plans which never made it into the history books. At the time about every second Frenchman was secretly in support of the United States and grateful for my help during their revolution so we had all the spies in France that we wanted. We knew every idea Napoleon ever wrote down and almost every plan he thought up and talked about to other Frenchmen.

He intended to invade and take over the entire New World. The English destruction of the French Fleet at Trafalgar in 1805 messed up his plans for returning to conquer America. Without his navy he could only move on land. So he ended up attacking Europe and Russia rather than America.

You really didn't think Napoleon had any intention of allowing the U.S. to keep all that land for a measly $14 million, did you?**

So American expansion was never an issue, it was that person who owned the land that was the issue. Napoleon was an issue the likes of which the world had never seen in modern times. With the backing of both a peasant population and the wealthy landed he was too much of an adversary for the U.S. to deal with.

This was the type of person no one had seen since the Carthaginians of the Roman days and in early Germanic times. Quite frankly all the English and American officials as well as officers were very afraid of him. I was not an exception.

The intelligent decision was of course to get him out of the New World while we had a chance. So when he wanted $14 million to build a navy and improve his army we considered it as a loan which would get the French almost completely out of the western Hemisphere for about ten years

I grabbed the offer when he made it. We knew he was going to make the offer months beforehand so I had agents check up on his reputation and that of his family in Corsica going back to his childhood. We did not like at all what we found.***

We knew the Louisiana purchase was actually the 'Louisiana loan' and after a few years he would want it back. Then we would have to sell it or give it back fast before he invented an excuse to invade us. This is why the focus of the U.S. Government on the Louisiana Territory was initially on making the quick buck from the furs and not at all on settling permanently.

This focus changed to one of permanence after the British defeated the French at Trafalgar. That was when the English did the only thing they ever did right (as far I was concerned) and performed a service to the US by destroying Napoleon's Navy which freed us forever from the threat of invasion by that s.o.b.

In conclusion:

Napoleon could have been a great builder of a New France in the Midwest and Western America. It's an unconscionable act that he traded away such an opportunity in order to impale Frenchmen on Russian pitchforks for that useless, depleted black dirt of Russia which was frozen hard as a rock for about eight months of each year.

Possibly even more foolish than Napoleon were the English who loaned the US that $14 million so that Napoleon could build a navy so that he could fight the English. (Do you see the irony of this? Nobody else does. You can ask any history professor and they wont say anything is ironic about the purchase.)

What an impertinent fool that Napoleon was. It is completely beyond me why some people continue to refer to this madman as some kind of a genius?

*First I was never anti anything or anybody. I just wanted liberty for myself and my friends. I was never anti Federal or just for states rights. A powerful unchecked Federal government with nothing to do is going to find things to do and eventually that will lead to them interfering with everyone's rights. It's inevitable. Had the states usurped more power than did the Federal government then I would have changed my support and have probably been called a 'federalist' for my troubles.

I was just more inclined to support the rights of the states over the federal in most issues simply because the states had less power. So I was called an anti federalist until the Louisiana Purchase.

However, I always supported both the state and federal governments and tried to avoid denying either one. Denial is not the purpose. Why? Because both the state and federal governments were just governments. Denials should only be used against those who are unjust (like Napoleon) as it restricts and binds.

Bearing this in mind, to make new states from the Louisiana Purchase (and hence make a stronger federal government) was never a problem for me.

**An interesting footnote is something that influenced me personally. To decide whether the Louisiana Purchase would be worth 'loaning' $14 million to Napoleon I asked my 'Alligator lady' girlfriend, about the dollar amounts she had made from the skins of alligators. She had cornered the market on Georgia Alligator pelts (most of them were actually smuggled in to America's Mississippi territory from then French Louisiana).

We had a straight forward (honest) relationship so we told each other the truth whenever we asked each other direct questions. We never involved ourselves in small talk and never took advantage of our openness to find out information that could be used as leverage in our relationship. Since money was never an issue between us I had no idea about the exact amount of money she had made. However, now I wanted to know the amount in order to determine if the Louisiana Purchase would be profitable.

She had previously talked openly about the alligator pelts that she exported from Charleston Harbor on the East Coast to Europe. The harbor was open to the public so she had readily told the dollar amounts to others. Money was not of personal interest to me during the time I was the president (it prevents corruption) so I had not bothered to keep up with the grand total. I knew it was in the range of a couple hundred thousand dollars, which had increased her worth 50% in two years time and would double it again in about 3-4 more years.

I asked her how much the total amount that the alligator pelts she had shipped to Europe had been worth, in dollars,. She looked at me curiously and I explained why I wanted to know. She replied curtly, 'Just short of $7,900,000' and without telling her trade secrets she added 'Well Charleston is so far from where I am located in the Mississippi Territory that we don't always ship from there'.

Suddenly I was thrust into complete shock from hearing that huge amount and her casual admission of being a major smuggler. Trying not to give up anything myself I said 'Well then I think we should buy Louisiana.' She watched my reaction and only when my face began to relax a bit did she quickly add '$5.4 million of it was pure profit'.

She had only taken 4% of the pelts out of US ports. I found out that she was running most of them out out of Biloxi (which was Spanish and then French territory) on moonless nights and under the eyes of both the French and the Spanish who owned that little strip of land along the Gulf of Mexico east of New Orleans (see map).

We all know that money then was worth more than it does now. This page has different methods by which the amount can be calculated. I calculated the amount that the $7,900,000 she took out in alligator pelts would be worth in 2003 dollars.

$7,900,000.00 in 1800 is worth:
$115,132,821.19 using the Consumer Price Index
$121,478,311.50 using the GDP deflator
$1,980,588,723.33 using the unskilled wage
$3,052,550,824.21 using the GDP per capita
$166,999,249,422.63 using the relative share of GDP

So I decided the Louisiana Territory was worth the purchase if only for the Alligator pelts that could be taken out of there in ten years time.

***Our spies found out that once as a child Napoleon sold his landlord's shovel. Then he said that he knew nothing about it and therefore someone else must have stolen it. Except that he was seen by several people walking through town with the shovel over his shoulder.

He was told that he had to return the shovel or the other peasants would tell the landlord. Then he would probably be dealt with Castilian style (dead with his throat cut). His family got together the money from relatives and made him go buy back the shovel. He pocketed some of the money and offered to pay only part of the money.

The person would not sell it back since they couldn't buy a new shovel for what Napoleon offered for it.

So Napoleon went and bought a better shovel to trade for the old one. He offered the new one in exchange but by this time the new owner of the shovel was suspicious of Napoleon. They had asked and found out from others all the details of the theft.

The problem was that if a thief was not caught often the charges and punishment were transferred fully to those who had received the stolen goods. So the person who was sold the stolen shovel hated Napoleon for putting them in that predicament. They then decided to get revenge and see that Napoleon got punished. So they refused the better shovel immediately when he showed up with it.

So Napoleon beat them with the new shovel almost killing her. He took his landlords shovel from her and seeing the woman was almost dead he took the new one as well. The woman recovered and there was a court case that was pending when the judge got bribed to prevent it from proceeding.

Without his getting punished it established the worst kind of character. This was the pattern of behavior that he continued with for the rest of his life.

Also, we received reports that during wars he had 9 prisoners lined up in front of his tent almost every morning. Then he personally murdered them all. He said that it made him feel superior to them.

He could never have created the horrors that he did if he had devoted his life to building up the new world.

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