In August Jefferson retired for two months to Monticello, where his library contained more reliable maps of the American west than were available in the capital. As he hunched over these maps, it soon became apparent to him that locating the border of the Purchase was an interpretive act. Back in Paris, Livingston was also looking at maps and conferring with Talleyrand about the boundaries of what he had just bought: “I can give you no direction,” Talleyrand said. “You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you will make the most of it.”
Jefferson proceeded to do just that. His highly creative reading revealed that the eastern border of Louisiana was the Perdido River (near present-day Pensacola), so the United States had purchased West Florida (the current Gulf Coast). This imaginative interpretation later prompted Henry Adams to observe that Jefferson “was forced at last to maintain that Spain had retroceded West Florida to France without knowing it, that France had sold it to the United States without suspecting it, that the United States had bought it without paying for it, and that neither France nor Spain, although the original contracting parties, were competent to decide the meaning of their own contract.
Once unleashed, Jefferson’s expansive instincts roamed southwest to the Rio Grande, where he discovered that the Purchase included all of modern-day Texas.
Author’s Note:
Livingston and Monroe concurred with Jefferson’s expansive interpretation of the borders question, especially regarding West Florida. See Robert Livingston and James Monroe to Madison, 7 June 1803, MP (State) 5:72-77.
Source:
Ellis, Joseph J. “The Purchase.” American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic. Vintage Books, 2008. 222-23. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Quoted in JMP 2:1291.
Adams, History, 1:30-51.
Further Reading:
Robert Robert Livingston / “The Chancellor”
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, 1st Prince of Benevento, then 1st Prince of Talleyrand
Louisiana Purchase / Vente de la Louisiane (Sale of Louisiana)
I'd call that the old 2-for-1 special. What a world it was before satellites, airplanes, and geographically accurate maps. Though, it was probably a bit more than 2.