What Happened in History: Browse Historical Facts on Kudos 365

French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand makes a surprising offer to Robert Livingston, the U.S. minister in France, to sell all of the Louisiana Territory to the United States. Livingston was trying to make a deal to purchase New Orleans, the gateway to the Mississippi River. The unexpected offer came at a time when Napoleon Bonaparte desperately needed funds to finance his ongoing wars in Europe particularly with England and plans for a French New World empire were failing.The transaction with France to purchase 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million was signed on April 30, 1803. As a result, the United States doubled its size, expanding the nation westward. More