Bicentennial Anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase
https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=343
General Information
Source:
Creator:
NBC Today Show
Katie Couric
Resource Type:
Copyright:
Event Date:
Air/Publish Date:
1802 - 1806
10/07/2002
Copyright Date:
Clip Length
Video News Report
NBCUniversal Media,
LLC.
2002
00:03:21
Description
Author Douglas Brinkley discusses the Louisiana Purchase for its bicentennial celebration. Ambassadors
Robert Livingston and James Monroe were sent to France to purchase the city of New Orleans. Instead
they purchased the entire Louisiana Territory.
Keywords
Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte, Westward Expansion,
Territorial Expansion, Trans-Appalachian West, Mississippi River, Lewis and Clark Expedition,
Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Zebulon Pike, Pike's Peak, Robert Livingston, James Monroe,
Douglas Brinkley, Early Republic
Citation
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Page 1 of 3
MLA
"Bicentennial Anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase." Katie Couric, correspondent. NBC Today Show.
NBCUniversal Media. 7 Oct. 2002. NBC Learn. Web. 20 March 2015
APA
Couric, K. (Reporter). 2002, October 7. Bicentennial Anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. [Television
series episode]. NBC Today Show. Retrieved from https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k12/browse/?cuecard=343
CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE
"Bicentennial Anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase" NBC Today Show, New York, NY: NBC
Universal, 10/07/2002. Accessed Fri Mar 20 2015 from NBC Learn:
https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=343
Transcript
Bicentennial Anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase
KATIE COURIC: Tell us about, give us a thumbnail sketch, if you would, Douglas, about the, the history
of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY (author,
The Mississippi and the Making of Nation
): Well, first off, in 1802, Thomas Jefferson made it very clear that we needed to control the port of New
Orleans, that was what he was after.
COURIC: Why was that so important?
BRINKLEY: Well, because if you controlled New Orleans, you controlled all the commerce. So if you
were a farmer in Ohio, let's say, and you were growing crops, there was no way without the railroads to
get it to the East Coast. So you'd have to go down the Ohio River, down the Mississippi to the port of
New Orleans where the currency in French was called Dix notes where the land of Dixie comes from.
COURIC: Right.
BRINKLEY: And people would then sell their produce and then have to go around Florida all the way to
the East Coast to sell their goods. So New Orleans was just central for commerce. And a whole group of
new frontiersmen were coming there. And so he dispatched Robert Livingston to Paris and, with the idea
for about five million, maybe six million, buying New Orleans. Instead, Napoleon Bonaparte came back
and said, “You can have the whole Louisiana territory for 15 million.” There were no telephones, there
was no cables that could be sent. So Livingston, along with James Monroe, had to think for themselves
and said, “We want it, we'll take it.” And Jefferson was ecstatic when he got the news. And he announced
it to our country on July 4th, 1803. Then in December, 1803, in New Orleans where the transfer
agreements were signed, right there at the Cabildo at Jackson Square, New Orleans, the French tricolor
went down, the American stars and stripes went up, and everything changed. Westward expansion started
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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at that point. And Jefferson dispatched Lewis and Clark to find out what he got with the purchase. And
also, an unsung hero named Zebulon Pike who went north from St. Louis to put American flags in
modern-day Illinois and Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, later went across the plains. Pike's Peak's named
after him. He kept detailed journals. Was arrested by the Spanish in Santa Fe but came back, and he
published his journals, Pike, 10 years before Lewis and Clark did their’s. And it created a whole kind of
western stir in the imaginations of Americans.
COURIC: Which makes you wonder Douglas what would have happened if the Louisiana Purchase had
not been, or had never come to be?
BRINKLEY: It would have been a completely different country, we would have been hemmed in by the
Appalachian Mountains or the Mississippi river would have been our western most frontier. We would
have been, Jefferson sold this idea for security purposes and reasons, we were worried about the French in
the plain states, we were worried about the British north of us, the Spanish south of us. We wouldn’t of
had this sea to shining sea. What’s amazing about Jefferson is that he, in his mind, said, “I want an empire
of liberty.” He envisioned that the United States was going to pull the United States together when many
federalist politicians were outraged. They thought acquiring all this new territory was going to divide
America. And the slavery issue was part of it too. Some of the southern parts here were slavery still
existed, you had a delegate balance of senators that you had to deal with. But Jefferson’s, in my view, his
number one accomplishment was not writing the Declaration of Independence.
COURIC: Not being the founder of the University of Virginia.
BRINKLEY: Not being the founder of the University of Virginia, there are many other things I think we
could say it was. I think it was the astute diplomacy that he did to acquire Louisiana territory and to
double the size of our country, and to have a vision of this great new nation.
COURIC: Well, Douglas Brinkley this book is
The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation
written with Stephen Ambrose. Thank you so much for coming by, it’s nice to see you again and again.
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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