User:Righeous J/sandbox

France controlled this vast area from 1699 until 1762, the year it gave the territory to its ally Spain. Under Napoleon Bonaparte, France took back the territory in 1800 in the hope of building an empire in North America. A slave revolt in Haiti and an impending war with Britain, however, led France to abandon these plans and sell the entire territory to the United States, which had originally intended only to seek the purchase of New Orleans and its adjacent lands. The purchase of the territory of Louisiana took

Mississippi River. Contrasting the Louisiana Purchase, The Mexican Cession of 1848 is a historical name in the United States for the region of the present day southwestern United States. Mexico ceded it the U.S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, but had not been part of the areas east of the Rio Grande which had been claimed by the Republic, though the Texas Annexation resolution two years earlier had not specified Texas's southern and western boundary. The cession of this territory from Mexico was a major goal of the war. Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico were captured soon after the start of the war and the last resistance there was subdued in January 1847, but Mexico would not accept the loss of territory. Therefore during 1847 United States troops invaded central Mexico and occupied the Mexican capital of Mexico City, but still no Mexican government was willing to ratify transfer of the northern territories to the U.S. It was uncertain whether any treaty could be reached. There was even an All of Mexico Movement proposing complete annexation of Mexico among Eastern Democrats, opposed by Southerners like John C. Calhoun who wanted additional territory for white Southerners and their black slaves but not the large population of central Mexico. Eventually Nicholas Trist negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, explicitly redefining the border between Mexico and the United States, in early 1848 after President Polk had already attempted to recall him from Mexico as a failure. Although Mexico did not overtly cede any land under the treaty, the redefined border had the effect of transferring Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico to the control of the United States. Equally important, the new border also acknowledged Mexico's loss of Texas, both the core eastern portion and the western claims, neither of which had been formally recognized by Mexico until that time. The U.S. Senate approved the treaty, rejecting amendments from Jefferson Davis to also annex most of northeastern Mexico and by Daniel Webster not to take even Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico. The United States also paid $15,000,000 for the land, and agreed to assume $3.25 million in debts to US citizens. While technically the territory was purchased by the United States, the $15 million payment was simply credited against Mexico's enormous debt towards the U.S. at that time.

Today I’m going to talk about some of the facts about The Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cession. I will compare and contrast some of the similarities and differences between the two. The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America in 1803 of 828,000 square miles of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana. The U.S. paid 50 million francs plus cancellation of debts worth 18 million francs, for a total sum of 15 million dollars (less than 3 cents per acre) for the Louisiana territory The Louisiana territory encompassed all or part of 15 present U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The land purchased contained all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River; most of North Dakota; most of South Dakota; northeastern New Mexico; northern Texas; the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans; and small portions of land that would eventually become part of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.