Search results
Aug 24, 2023 · Louisiana was named after Louis XIV of France, who ruled the European country from 1642 to 1715. The first person to use the term “Louisiana” was French explorer Rene Robert Cavelier de La Salle. However, Louisiana was not an official state–nor was the United States an independent country–at the time its land was discovered around 1683.
- November 16, 2003
Claiming the region for France was La Salle’s primary objective, so once he reached that point near the mouth of the Arkansas River where Marquette and Jolliet had turned back, he set up the French coat of arms, planted a cross, and declared the land the property of the French king, Louis XIV. (Louisiana is, of course, the state whose history ...
Louisiana was named after Louis XIV, King of France from 1643 to 1715. When René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed the territory drained by the Mississippi River for France, he named it La Louisiane. [26] The suffix –ana (or –ane) is a Latin suffix that can refer to "information relating to a particular individual, subject, or place."
Sep 17, 2024 · This map, dated 1765, shows the Louisiana Territory as claimed by France. French colonial Louisiana refers to the first century of permanent European settlement in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans contributed to the development of a complex frontier society at the geographic nexus of the Americas.
- Overview
- 1. France had just re-taken control of the Louisiana Territory.
- 2. The United States nearly went to war over Louisiana.
- 3. The United States never asked for all of Louisiana.
- 4. Even that low price was too steep for the United States.
- 5. The Louisiana negotiations helped put James Monroe in the proverbial poor house.
- 6. Napoleon’s brothers tried to talk him out of it.
- 7. Many Americans likewise opposed the Louisiana Purchase.
- 8. The treaty did not state specific boundaries.
- HISTORY Vault: America the Story of Us
A look behind the scenes of the historic real-estate deal.
French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle first claimed the Louisiana Territory, which he named for King Louis XIV, during a 1682 canoe expedition down the Mississippi River. France ceded the land to Spain 80 years later—and lost most of its other North American holdings to Great Britain—following its defeat in the French and Indian War.
In 1800, however, French leader Napoleon Bonaparte pressured Spain to sign the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso, under which he received the Louisiana Territory and six warships in exchange for placing the Spanish king’s son-in-law on the throne of the newly created kingdom of Etruria in northern Italy. When word of the secret agreement leaked out, President Jefferson became extremely worried. French-controlled Louisiana would become “a point of eternal friction with us,” he wrote in April 1802, and would force us to “marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”
Under a 1795 treaty with Spain, U.S. merchants and farmers could send their goods down the Mississippi River and store them in New Orleans without paying export duties. For many Americans, this so-called right of deposit was important enough that talk of war began proliferating when it was revoked in October 1802. Former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, using the pen name Pericles, wrote that the United States should “seize at once on the Floridas and New Orleans and then negotiate.”
Meanwhile, the governor of the Mississippi Territory claimed that 600 militiamen would be enough to grab hold of New Orleans, and Federalist Senator James Ross of Pennsylvania advocated taking possession of the city with 50,000 men. Even Jefferson’s own party, the Democratic-Republicans, supported a resolution that would keep 80,000 men ready to march at a moment’s notice. This bravado arose largely because Napoleon’s powerful army had yet to arrive in Louisiana. Several thousand troops slated for the territory were instead being decimated by a slave rebellion and yellow fever in Saint Domingue (now Haiti), and additional troops were stuck in a Dutch port waiting for the winter ice to clear.
On the advice of a French friend, Jefferson offered to purchase land from Napoleon rather than threatening war over it. He instructed his two chief negotiators, special envoy James Monroe and minister Robert Livingston, to pay up to $9.375 million for New Orleans and Florida (the later of which remained under Spanish control). If that failed, they were to try to get back the right of deposit.
Livingston also floated a plan for the United States to take over the two-thirds of Louisiana located north of the Arkansas River, which he argued would serve as a crucial buffer between French Louisiana and British Canada. But although the Americans never asked for it, Napoleon dangled the entire territory in front of them on April 11, 1803. A treaty, dated April 30 and signed May 2, was then worked out that gave Louisiana to the United States in exchange for $11.25 million, plus the forgiveness of $3.75 million in French debt .
Napoleon wanted the money immediately in order to prepare for war with Great Britain. But despite landing Louisiana for less than three cents an acre, the price was more than the United States could afford. As a result, it was forced to borrow from two European banks at 6 percent interest. It did not finish repaying the loan until 1823, by which ti...
After spending three years as governor of Virginia, Monroe purportedly hoped to retire from politics and make some money opening a law practice and developing his landholdings. Barely a month went by, however, before Jefferson nominated him as a special envoy to help Livingston with the Louisiana Purchase negotiations. “Were you to refuse to go, no other man could be found who does this,” Jefferson wrote to him in January 1803, adding that “all eyes, all hopes, are now fixed on you.”
In order to raise money for the passage to France, a cash-strapped Monroe sold off his silver flatware, porcelain plates and a white-and-gold china tea set. The future president, who served from 1817 to 1825, remained in debt for the rest of his life, even after receiving a $30,000 congressional appropriation for “public losses and sacrifices.”
A few days before Monroe arrived in Paris, Napoleon’s brothers Joseph and Lucien found out about his plans to sell off Louisiana. According to Lucien’s memoirs, the two of them visited Napoleon at Tuileries Palace, where they found him bathing in rose-scented water.
When Joseph intimated that he would lead the opposition to the deal, Napoleon accused him of being “insolent.” He then purposely soaked his brothers by falling backwards in the tub. The argument allegedly continued after Joseph went home to change. Lucien declared that “if I were not your brother I would be your enemy,” and Napoleon responded by smashing a snuffbox on the floor.
Members of the Federalist Party, already a significant minority in both houses of Congress, worried that the Louisiana Purchase would further reduce their clout. In summing up the feelings of his cohorts, former congressman Fisher Ames wrote, “We are to give money of which we have too little for land of which we already have too much.”
Only one Federalist senator supported ratification of the Louisiana Purchase treaty, which passed by a 24-7 vote. Jefferson himself had doubts about the legality of the Louisiana Purchase, saying he had “stretched the Constitution until it cracked.”
When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark departed from St. Louis in May 1804 to explore the northern portion of Louisiana, the exact boundaries of the newly acquired territory had yet to be hashed out. Based on an analysis of old French maps, the United States claimed West Florida, an area along the Gulf Coast in present-day Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
Spain disputed this until 1819, when the Adams-Onís Treaty gave the United States all of Florida in exchange for surrendering its claim to Texas. In the north, Great Britain and the United States agreed in 1818 to establish the 49th parallel as the border between them from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains.
America The Story of Us is an epic 12-hour television event that tells the extraordinary story of how America was invented.
WATCH NOW
- Jesse Greenspan
You may know that Louisiana was named for French King Louis XIV. The territory was named in his honor by French explorer La Salle, who claimed the territory to the west of the Mississippi River in the 1680s for France. The huge land tract—the Louisiana Purchase—would later form all or parts of 15 states and two Canadian provinces.
People also ask
Why was Louisiana named after King Louis XIV?
How did Louisiana get its name?
Who first landed in Louisiana?
How did New Orleans get its name?
When did Louisiana become America's 18th state?
Why did Louis XIV move to Louisiana?
René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle (born November 22, 1643, Rouen, France—died March 19, 1687, near Brazos River [now in Texas, U.S.]) was a French explorer in North America who led an expedition down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers and claimed all the region watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries for Louis XIV of France, naming the region “Louisiana.”
