The Louisiana Purchase [Hardcover]

Most high school students ought to remember learning a little something about the Louisiana Purchase, but this pivotal event in American history has rarely received sustained attention until this year, the event's bicentennial. Noted historian Fleming's brief study, an entry in Wiley's Turning Points series, presents an overstuffed look at the machinations that prompted Napoleon, famous for his conquests and colonial aspirations, to sell this vast piece of land for $15 million. Fleming's account highlights the importance of two leaders, Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon, along with their closest advisers, but the most memorable figures are the handful of diplomatic negotiators working behind the scenes, like Robert Livingston, the ambassador to France who originated the idea of buying the Louisiana territory, thereby easing the threat of war between the U.S. and France. The narrative weaves in several key events on both sides of the Atlantic, including the rampant yellow fever in Santo Domingo that substantially delayed and weakened Napoleon's troops, volatile conversations between Jefferson and his cabinet about whether the purchase required an amendment to the Constitution and Napoleon's near retraction of the sale. The story carries a surprising amount of drama, though Fleming (Liberty! The American Revolution) does little to play this up. His narrative is straightforward but cluttered with detail, showing more breadth than depth, and is intently focused on the "mix of destiny and individual energy and creativity" that supported one of the world's great diplomatic triumphs.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fleming needs no introduction to history buffs, and in this concise new history of the Louisiana Purchase, the latest entry in Wiley's Turning Points series, he offers a treasury of forgotten details and new insights about this landmark deal that doubled the size of the country and opened the way to expansion west of the Mississippi. Conventional high-school civics classes traditionally presented a foresighted Thomas Jefferson driving a hard bargain to grab the new territories from the French for pennies on the dollar. Instead, Fleming reveals a less than glorious Jefferson, sending signals to Napoleon that we wouldn't mind at all if the French overthrew the black hero of Santo Domingo, Toussaint L'Ouverture. Fleming's presentation is compelling even in its brevity, thanks in large part to his capsule descriptions of the colorful cast of characters--not the least of which was the French foreign minister, Talleyrand, and the American envoy to Paris, Robert Livingston. An informative addition to the literature of this period. Allen Weakland
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

"...competently written and sure footed..." (Times Literary Supplement, February 2004)

Most high school students ought to remember learning a little something about the Louisiana Purchase, but his pivotal event in American history has rarely received sustained attention until this year, the event's bicentennial. Noted historian Fleming's brief study, an entry in Wiley's Turning Points series, presents an overstuffed look at the machinations that prompted Napoleon, famous for his conquests and colonial aspirations, to sell this vast piece of land for $15 million. Fleming's account highlights the importance of two leaders, Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon, along with their closest advisers, but the most memorable figures are the handful of diplomatic negotiators working behind the scenes, life Robert Livingston, the ambassador to France who originated the idea of buying the Louisiana territory, therefore by easing the threat of war between the U. S. and France. The narrative weaves in several key events on both sides of the Atlantic, including the rampant yellow fever in Santo Domingo and substantially delayed and weakened Napoleon's troops, volatile conversations between Jefferson and his cabinet about whether the purchase required an amendment to the Constitution and Napoleon's near retraction of the sale. The story carries a surprising amount of drama, though Fleming (Liberty! The American Revolution) does little to play this up. His narrative is straightforward but cluttered with detail, showing more breadth than depth, and is intently focused on the "mix of destiny and individual energy and creativity" that supported one of the world's great diplomatic triumphs. (July 11)
Forecast: This could do well in a bicentennial display with John Kukla's A Wilderness So Immense and Charles Cerami's Jefferson's Great Gamble, which offer fuller accounts of the purchase (Publishers Weekly, May 26, 2003)

"...there should be more books like this: concise, tightly argued, clearly written..." (Sunday Times, 31 August 2003)

From The Louisiana Purchase

Like many other major events in world history, the Louisiana Purchase is a fascinating mix of destiny and individual energy and creativity. . . . Thomas Jefferson would have been less than human had he not claimed a major share of the credit. In a private letter . . . the president, reviving a favorite metaphor, said he "very early saw" Louisiana was a "speck" that could turn into a "tornado." He added that the public never knew how near "this catastrophe was." But he decided to calm the hotheads of the west and "endure" Napoleon's aggression, betting that a war with England would force Bonaparte to sell. This policy "saved us from the storm." Omitted almost entirely from this account is the melodrama of the purchase, so crowded with "what ifs" that might have changed the outcome-and the history of the world.

The reports of the Lewis and Clark expedition . . . electrified the nation with their descriptions of a region of broad rivers and rich soil, of immense herds of buffalo and other game, of grassy prairies seemingly as illimitable as the ocean. . . . From the Louisiana Purchase would come, in future decades, the states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and large portions of what is now North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Colorado, and Louisiana. For the immediate future, the purchase, by doubling the size of the United States, transformed it from a minor to a major world power. The emboldened Americans soon absorbed West and East Florida and fought mighty England to a bloody stalemate in the War of 1812. Looking westward, the orators of the 1840s who preached the "Manifest Destiny" of the United States to preside from sea to shining sea based their oratorical logic on the Louisiana Purchase.

TURNING POINTS features preeminent writers offering fresh, personal perspectives on the defining events of our time.

"An extraordinary new series intended to capture extraordinary moments in history."
–Chicago Tribune

In 1801, relations between the world’s only two republics, the United States and France, were at a low ebb. American merchants had just lost millions of dollars to French privateers in the "Quasi-War" of the late 1790s, and Napoleon was scheming to acquire the Louisiana Territory from Spain and create a "wall of brass" that would halt America’s westward expansion. Yet only a few years later, Napoleon agreed to sell Louisiana to the United States for $15 million. How did America manage to double its territory and end French colonial ambitions in the New World–without firing a shot?

This lively book by noted historian Thomas Fleming delivers the answers. Taking us behind the scenes in Thomas Jefferson’s raw "federal village" of Washington, D.C., and inside the duplicitous world of Napoleonic Paris, Fleming shows how Bonaparte haters in Spain, the French army’s disastrous failure in Haiti, some wily American negotiating, and Napoleon’s resolve to renew his war with "perfidious Albion" led to the momentous French decision to sell Louisiana–and cede 838,000 square miles of land to the United States. Along the way, we meet a host of fascinating characters as they attempt to advance their nations’ interests–and their personal ambitions–through diplomacy, threats, lies, bribery, and treachery:

• President Thomas Jefferson, an impulsive ideologue whose Francophilia was slowly eroded in the face of French deceit
• Secretary of State James Madison, a shrewd, realistic statesman and vital counterweight to Jefferson’s volatility
• Minister Plenipotentiary to France Robert R. Livingston, a Hudson River grandee who was impervious to French insults and snubs
• French Foreign Minister Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, a supremely corrupt aristocrat who regarded Americans with blasé contempt
• First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, the "man of destiny" who had become the all but absolute dictator of France

The story doesn’t end with France’s agreement to sell Louisiana. The United States had only six months to ratify the treaty–and Federalists, with the exception of General Alexander Hamilton, derided the deal as a waste of money. Jefferson himself doubted the constitutionality of the purchase. But in October 1803, the Senate ratified the treaty and a tiny American army occupied sullen New Orleans. Jefferson’s devious rival, former Vice President Aaron Burr, failed in his attempt to utilize this resentment to revolutionize the new territories. The American republic was on its way to becoming a world power.

From The Louisiana Purchase

Like many other major events in world history, the Louisiana Purchase is a fascinating mix of destiny and individual energy and creativity. . . . Thomas Jefferson would have been less than human had he not claimed a major share of the credit. In a private letter . . . the president, reviving a favorite metaphor, said he "very early saw" Louisiana was a "speck" that could turn into a "tornado." He added that the public never knew how near "this catastrophe was." But he decided to calm the hotheads of the west and "endure" Napoleon’s aggression, betting that a war with England would force Bonaparte to sell. This policy "saved us from the storm." Omitted almost entirely from this account is the melodrama of the purchase, so crowded with "what ifs" that might have changed the outcome–and the history of the world.

The reports of the Lewis and Clark expedition . . . electrified the nation with their descriptions of a region of broad rivers and rich soil, of immense herds of buffalo and other game, of grassy prairies seemingly as illimitable as the ocean. . . . From the Louisiana Purchase would come, in future decades, the states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and large portions of what is now North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Colorado, and Louisiana. For the immediate future, the purchase, by doubling the size of the United States, transformed it from a minor to a major world power. The emboldened Americans soon absorbed West and East Florida and fought mighty England to a bloody stalemate in the War of 1812. Looking westward, the orators of the 1840s who preached the "Manifest Destiny" of the United States to preside from sea to shining sea based their oratorical logic on the Louisiana Purchase.

TURNING POINTS features preeminent writers offering fresh, personal perspectives on the defining events of our time.

THOMAS FLEMING is the author of more than forty works of history and historical fiction, including Liberty!: The American Revolution; Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America; and The New Dealers’ War: FDR and the War Within World War II. He contributes regularly to American Heritage and many other magazines and is a frequent guest and contributor on NPR, PBS, A&E, and History Channel programs. A Fellow of the Society of American Historians, he has served as chairman of the American Revolution Round Table and as president of the PEN American Center.