The Louisiana Purchase and Westward Expansion

In 1800 Spain agreed to return control of Louisiana and New Orleans to France. Just three years later, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for about $15 million. The new territory doubled the size of the United States. It also now shared a border with Texas. From the first settlements at Jamestown in Virginia and Plymouth in Massachusetts, settlers in the British colonies had been moving westward. By the 1760s they occupied the entire area from the Atlantic Ocean to the Appalachian Mountains. During the Revolution they migrated over the mountains into Tennessee and Kentucky. With the Louisiana Purchase, the people of the United States were free to push across the Mississippi River toward Spanish Texas.