He gives a thorough and engaging account of the fateful transaction that doubled the size of the young nation, as well as all that led up to it. In doing so, he casts doubt on some well-worn clichés about the purchase (“four cents an acre”) and explains the many shifting forces of people — European, American, and native — and political currents that led it to come to pass.When the Revolutionary War ended, the United States found itself in possession of a vast, mostly unsettled region between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River. It was the realization of a part of the former colonists’ ambitions. Long banned by royal decree from settling over the mountains, the pent-up populations of the coastal states now spilled through the Cumberland Gap to take possession of the vast interior.
That led to two problems. The first — the reason for King George’s ban on settlement — was conflict with the native tribes already living there. The second was that the newly settled lands had one natural outlet for trade: the mouth of the Mississippi, the tributaries of which drained the land on the other side of the divide. Unless American farmers could send their produce down the river, they faced the arduous and expensive transport back over the mountains to find a market for it. The mouth of the river, dominated by the city of New Orleans, was in foreign hands — an existential threat to the livelihood of every American west of the Appalachians.
