Stuff You Should Know - The Louisiana Purchase: Not a Purchase

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

Turns out the Louisiana Purchase was not so much a purchase, but the right to (steal) purchase it from indigenous peoples. But it did transform the United States as we know it. Listen and learn!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace.

I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry is on standby on our phone ready for any issue to arise we're supposed to text her. And of course, that makes this Stuff You Should Know 2022. The Too Much Information Edition. That's right. And you didn't even say a dish. A dish? I know. I'm growing up. Look at me. So how are you doing?

Good. How are you? Good as well. Good. So Chuck, I'm really excited about this one for a number of reasons. One, we get to take a really standard, universally understood part of American history and smash it to bits and explain how it really happened and what it really was and what really went on. I love history stuff like that, don't you? I do. And this is a good one because it is, if you're like someone who enjoys watching Jeopardy or playing in any sort of trivia nights or trivia games, trivial pursuit, Stuff You Should Know, trivial pursuit. Yeah, available everywhere. This is just good info. I feel like these kind of questions, it's the Louisiana Purchase is just such sort of a softball kind of thing for trivia games. And I don't mean that it's easy. I just

mean there's just so much in there. And it's not like people go like, well, how am I supposed to know about the Louisiana Purchase? Like, it reshaped America in ways, or the United States, rather, in ways that were just, the tendrils just kept going and kept going. Yeah, you can make a really good case that it helped shape the world because, you know, it was the thing that jump-started the United States into, I guess, the initiation of it as a up-and-coming world power. Because, yeah, we doubled our surface area in size, the United States did. And I saw it like in Chuck, to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And that's where the list ended. They basically said those three things are the most important

parts of early American history that helped make the country. And there's a lot of really interesting stuff to it, but there's also a lot of the history that just isn't talked about, doesn't get focused on enough. And it was one of the really good things about living in the 21st century is like we're really starting to examine that stuff more. And we're taking these really kind of, you know, primary and basic and kind of watered-down versions of historical events and like really kind of bringing them to life for better or for worse. Yeah, I mean, it's not every day that a new burgeoning nation can get the opportunity to acquire about 850,000 square miles, right? Not acres, square miles, and acquire, as we'll see, more like the right to acquire,

more like the right to kind of take. Yeah, which is how it came out. Oh, I know what you mean. I've done the research. I know where you're going with that. Well, should we go back then to how the name Louisiana, Louisiana, it sounds Italian when I say it. Yeah, I don't think that's how it said. It's really French though, right? Yeah, Louisiana. Yeah, exactly. What was going on was there were people in France there, a lot of people are from France, rather. And in fact, they were bold enough to call it New France. This was King Louis the, what would that be, 14th? Yes. I'm brushing up on my Roman numerals. And King Louis said, all right, Mr. French explorer, I'm going to let my friend, Josh, over here to my right to pronounce your name.

Let me try. Rene Robert Cavalier-sur-de-Lassalle. Quite a name, but Louis said, hey, dude, you've got authority to explore all the western part of this area I call New France. You got a monopoly on trade there on buffalo hides. Go knock yourself out. Lassalle did just that in 1682, floated down the mighty Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and said, you know what, I'm just going to say all of this area belongs to France. And I'm going to name it after the gentleman who handed over my charter, I guess. And it was with an E at the time, La Louisiane. Louisian? I don't know why the Italian keeps popping up. I don't either. The land of Louis. So it was basically, they added an LA at the beginning

and then switched out the A for an E or, you know, that would later become Louisiana. I wonder if that's a Louisiana iced tea bags are a nod to. Is it spelled with an E? Yeah, A-N-N-E, I think. And they take the I out. It's all messed up. I read somewhere, Chuck, that Cavalier, when he got to the Delta of the Mississippi River, where it hit the Gulf of Mexico, he like located the indigenous people that lived around there and read a proclamation to them. It's basically, he said, hey, can you stand still while I read this? And he proclaimed, like you said, that whole area belonging to King Louis. And they're just sitting there like, what are you talking about? Of course they were.

So, but this was how this part of the world, this part of North America was settled. It was by the French and they figured that, and I mean, this was an enormous swath of territory from Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico, from the west of the Mississippi River, all the way to no one even knows how. Yeah, just go as far as you want. No one had any idea what was over that way except for until you ran into the Spanish in California. I'm not even sure they were there yet. So that's how the English, the Dutch who were up in New York, the French, the Spanish, how all these world powers that were running around North America viewed the whole thing. And that was France's. And so France said, all right, awesome, let's exploit this. We're going to make just a

staggering amount of money. And I'm going to let this one particular person in 1712, Antoine Crozat have the charter to basically develop this territory into New France, like we call that kind of prematurely. Yeah, he didn't get a lot of support from France. They kind of handed this over to him. And like you said, it was such a big area, like it was just too unwieldy basically to control and maintain and try to manage. And he lost a ton of money. I think it only took, it took less than five years when he went back to the King and said, you know what, I appreciate the charter. But with all due respect, I would like to be released from it. And that was fine. He was released from the charter, but the French expeditions kind of continued there for a while.

But it was sort of, they were outnumbered. The settlements were sparse, mostly still indigenous Americans populating the area until 1762 when the Seven Years War happened. And France said, you know what, this territory is now going to belong to Spain. But Spain didn't really know what to do with it either, right? No, they had, I think even less of a presence in this, I guess, Louisiana territory than the French did. I saw that even when Spain kind of ruled this area, as far as the European powers were concerned, for 37 years, there were more French officials calling the shots there than there were Spanish officials. And I think they were the greatest minority of all, the greatest majority were the indigenous tribes in the area. But then as far

as Europeans went, you had English, you had a lot of French people, you had a lot of people who had come down from Canada, the Acadians who went on to become the Cajuns, they were living in the area at the time. And it was just kind of, Spain was just, they just had the thing, they owned it, they weren't doing much with it. Yeah, so they tried here and there to not, you know, to not excellent results. There was a colonial governor named Don Antonio del Ulloa, I guess. Will that be right? I think. Or Ulloa? Yeah. And he said, all right, you know, we own this place technically, guys. So I'd like to try to enforce some of our rules, if you don't mind, about trade. And the French leaders there said, yes, we very much do mind, because you're not calling the shots

around here, despite the fact that you quote, unquote, own this land. So they revolted, drove them out of the colony in 1768. Spain was able to quash that rebellion, get a new governor in there, I guess, I guess they were hoping with a little more backbone, and started saying like, hey, you know, fellow Spaniards, why don't you go and settle that land? Like we got all this great land, please go there and farm and try and, you know, sort of stake our claim. Yeah, Chuck, also one of the reasons that they took so long to encourage people to go do that and just kind of just approach the whole thing with like, it was just kind of there, was because to the Spanish, the Louisiana territory was a buffer between the English and then later on the Americans

to the East, and their territory, Texas, Mexico, California, all that to the West. And it was a really just a nice little kind of no man's land that Spain owned, so that they could be like, you need to get out. But they were more interested in it for the this the kind of distance it put between the English and then the Americans and the Spanish colonies. Yeah, so it served a purpose to them, even if they weren't as intent on, you know, settling it, I guess, right? Right. And then so as far as the Americans were concerned, when America became a country, by the time 1800 rolled around, I think that was the year that Jefferson was elected. And Jefferson kind of approached the whole thing with, we're totally cool, Spain owns the Louisiana

territory. We're okay with that right now. Spain's letting us use the Mississippi. Yeah. It's letting us use the port of New Orleans. It's letting us use the warehouses in the port of New Orleans. These were really big deals, because that was how you got stuff out to Europe in North America, was basically out of the port of New Orleans for a lot of stuff, right? Especially the Midwestern stuff. And as long as things were like that, it was all good. But Jefferson was very smart, and he was like, there's a really good chance things are not going to remain the same for very long. And he was right. Boy, that sounds like a great cliffhanger. I think so. All right. Well, let's take a break. We'll be right back. Jefferson is feeling his oats. He thinks he can tell the

future. And as Josh said, he was kind of right. And we'll explore that right after this. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler, and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw,

inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere, and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love-bombed by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money

he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love-bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub, and also slightly dangerous. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. Rupert Murdoch lost lots and lots of money on MySpace,

because it turned out it was actually not a good business. My name is Joanne McNeill. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the Story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it, the users. Because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. Listen to Main Accounts, the Story of MySpace, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite chats. Chuck, that was a heck of a lead up. I didn't think I was going to quit talking for a second. Just the whole podcast spills out of your mouth from that point on. All right. And you're just sitting there like, I thought we were taking a break. So this is like the end of the

18th century. Spain is not doing so hot financially because of just kind of constant warring in Europe for many hundreds of years. Oh, dude, it was really bad that century. It was a bad century for the European powers. Yeah. I mean, it's just a money drain on everyone. So Spain is hurting financially. And just before the turn of the century in 1799, Napoleon seizes control in France. And he says, you know what Napoleon wanted to do? He wanted to rule the world. The Antichrist. Exactly. So part of that obviously would include the Americas. And that's not just Louisiana territory, but like all of the Americas, Central America down to South America. And so he tried to do so in 1800. They signed a secret treaty with Spain called the Third Treaty

of San Ildefonso. You got it again, buddy. You're on a roll. And the Louisiana territory, which included New Orleans, of course, came back to France and said, here you go, Spain. We'll help you out with your money problems. And I understand the nephew of the Queen of Spain wants some area to call his own. So you can have Etruria in Italy, which is now, I think, Tuscany, Lazio, and Umbria there in central Italy. And they said, great. Thank you so much. Yeah. So Spain says, like a blackjack dealer, like I'm out of the Louisiana territory and France is like, yes, we've got it back. And from what I understand, Napoleon viewed this largely as a storage and shipping and exporting center. New Orleans was like the crown jewel

of Louisiana territory. But he viewed it more as an assist to the real gem in the French empire, which was Saint-Domingue, which is now called Haiti, which was one of the most profitable plots on earth at the time. I read, Chuck, that Saint-Domingue, and I looked it up. I'm pretty sure that's how you say it. Yeah, you're right. Before the revolt in, I believe, 1800, they were just the taxes alone that were paid by the goods that were produced there is equal to $12 billion in US dollars today. Geez. Yeah. And that was just the taxes that were being paid, let alone all the productivity. So Napoleon viewed the Louisiana territory as like the place that all that stuff could come to and things spread out to the rest of the world. That was how he viewed

it. The other thing about the French having it is that Jefferson was like, man, this is not good because we've got really good stuff going on with the Spanish letting us use the Mississippi River and the New Orleans. And I don't think the French are going to do that. And he turned out to be right. Yeah, because like you said, they had a sweet deal going. The one thing we didn't mention was that part of the agreement was Spain because they still wanted that buffer to be intact. So they said France can have it back. But you can't give it away or sell it to anybody else. Right. Okay. Napoleon, will you shake on that? And he went, sure. My word is my bond. Yeah, for sure. So that was a big important part of it. Like you said, Jefferson is getting a

little bit nervous because New Orleans was very important to us as well at the time. Tensions are mounting. In 1802, Spain revokes those rights that they had previously given US traders in New Orleans. And they were like, wait a minute, you said you could keep our stuff here and use these warehouses. They said not so much anymore. And Jefferson said, Napoleon, he's behind all this. I know he is that little stubby brunt. He's trying to keep this clean. It's really hard when I'm doing Jefferson because you know that guy. Yeah, he had a potty mouth. Potty mouth. So he said this is all Napoleon, I bet. And I bet you anything that they're going to shut everything down soon. And so, you know, this got people pretty upset in the early United States. There were

people that said, no, let's take it back by force. There was a senator in Pennsylvania named James Ross who was very big on that and lobbied for Jefferson to send an actual army down there of 50,000 men to take this land. Yeah, because there was a big deal, you know. Oh, it was a huge deal. Other, the Federalist Party said, no, screw that. Let's just secede and let's form our own nation, which includes New Orleans. And so things were getting really up to sort of like a fever pitch about whether or not the United States was going to have access to this territory for shipping. Right. Before we continue, Chuck, I want to show you a little magic trick. You ready? Yes. I'm going to delete a thousand email drafts right now. What did I do? You called Napoleon a runt

and he actually was average size. He was. He was. It's a big deal and it all came down to a difference between the French foot and the English foot. I know. There's a mistranslation and so it was actually like 511. Right. That's true. I'm not trying to correct you. I'm just trying to save us from those emails. I knew that. But what I, my point is Jefferson, I've seen his diaries, he very much called him a runt whether or not he was average size or not. Did he really? Wow. Well, also Jefferson was like, I think nine and a half feet tall. So he would have considered someone 511 a runt. Yeah. Anyone under seven feet tall was a pretty small person to Jefferson. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So because of the Haitian Revolution, like Haiti

became the first black run country outside of Africa in the world because there was a slave revolt. And it was, I mean, that's an enormous deal even in retrospect. But at the time, it was, it was like earth shattering for Europe because, you know, France was making so much money off of this. But, you know, they, it was having a trickling outward effect on all the other countries as well who were really benefiting from this incredibly productive forced slave labor. And so when that stopped, it had a really huge effect on the economy. And to Napoleon, it was like, well, then what's the point of Louisiana Territory anymore? If it was just a supporting character for Saint Domingue. And now Saint Domingue is now Haiti and we don't have any interest in it anymore.

Like there's no point in owning the Louisiana Territory. And he started stroking his chin. And he thought, first he thought, I should grow a soul patch. And then after that, he said, what is a soul patch? And then the third thing he thought at that moment was, I'm going to sell New France, the Louisiana Territory to the Americans. Yeah. I mean, the other reason too is like he was mad with power, but he also had a lot of irons in the fire. And Louisiana was a long ways away. So he was like, you know, and also to take on like more warring now way over there. It's like, I'm spread a little bit thin, even though I am, everyone knows I'm average height, right? And everyone nodded and said, yes, yes, yes. And he's like, in history will view me that way,

right? As just an average height person. And then we're like, yes, sir, absolutely, sir. And he said, okay. He said, so selling it won't make me look short. And they went, nope, not at all. He said, okay, well, we'll proceed then. I saw he also thought, Chuck, that it would be really great to basically help a fledgling nation become a really big nation, like have a family balance out and temper. Well, more, more to be an enemy of his enemy, which was the Brits, right. And to kind of give the Brits a run for their money. So he did all these things in one master stroke, which is selling the Louisiana territory. Boy, looking, I mean, things were just wild back then with world shaping stuff. I would argue that still goes on today. Not like that.

No. Really? I mean, do you think? I think NATO's fighting a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine right now. So I would say so. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, these things happen. I'm just saying it seemed like back then, it was happening everywhere all at once. No. Yeah. I still think that it happens today. I don't know. But not everywhere all at once. Like Canada's not at war with the US to try and take territory in Mexico. Canada's greatest trick is convincing the world that they're laid back. Are they laying in wait? Oh, boy. That's all we need. 10 million guns, Chuck. That's all I have to say. All right. So this is, let's call it 1802,

because that was the year that it was. And Jefferson, and you know, it takes a long time to get word about stuff, as I realized when I was reading this. Jefferson doesn't know, you know, that Napoleon's hatched this plan to sell this territory back, or not back to us, but to us. So he orders our minister to France, Robert Livingston, to go to France to their foreign minister and say, his last name was Tallyran, great name, and say, hey, listen, we'd like to put a stop to the acquisition of the territory from Spain, unless it's already finalized. And in the back of his head, he was like, if it is finalized, you know, maybe go over and see if you can buy New Orleans, see if they'll put New Orleans up for sale. Anyway, okay, I'll go over there.

And he took a future president with him, right? Or was he former president? Future. I think we'd only had... Yeah, I always get the order mixed up there in the early days. I think Jefferson was the third. I really hope Jefferson was the third. But yeah, James Monroe went along to help Livingston too. And they started negotiating. They were authorized to spend up to $10 million. And they started negotiating with a guy named Barbe Marbois, Francois Barbe Marbois. And he was a politician. I don't think he was the foreign minister, because I think Tally Rand was the foreign minister, right? Tally Rand was the foreign minister, correct. Okay. So Barbe Marbois was a politician who was close to Napoleon,

who was instructed to basically broker the steal. And then Tally Rand came along and said, I'm going to help out too. And so as they started to talk and negotiate, I think within the first couple of days, maybe, Barbe Marbois and Tally Rand said, henceforth known as the French contingent, they said, hey, how about this? Would you guys be interested in purchasing the whole Louisiana territory? And Monroe and Livingston were like, oh my God, oh my God, pretty cool. And they were like, oh, I don't know. I think Monroe examined his fingernails and said, well, we'll think about it. We might take it off of your head. Yeah. How much do you want? And the French said 22 million bucks. And he leaned over and said, well, if Jefferson wanted 10 million for New Orleans,

22 million for all of it, it's not a bad deal. No. And Monroe said, it's me on the eel day. Wait, what would that be? Nick's the deal, which I actually is the opposite of what he would have said. But anyway. Well, he said, let's try and talk him down. Yeah, I think they countered with 8 million. Right. They settled on 15 of just 5 million more than he was authorized to pay for New Orleans alone. You get another 845,000 square miles. Right. That is bargain. And that's how this whole thing's gone down in history, as far as most people look at that the French made a terrible real estate deal and the Americans made out like bandits. Because I think National Geographic said

it was equivalent to 15 million dollars at the time. It was equivalent to 342 million in 2020 dollars. I did the math. It's up to 394 now. Okay. But at the time in 2020, that came to about 91 cents an acre, which is, I mean, in today's money, that's 91 cents an acre. So it's an incredible deal. So of course they went for it. But like you said, that the mail was really slow at the time. So they couldn't wait to get authorization from Jefferson. They had to just decide on their own that this was too spectacular of a deal to walk away from. And they were going to spend 50% more than they were authorized to buy the Louisiana Territory. And they did. And it took two months for Jefferson, the president, to find out that this deal had gone down two months. Yeah.

So yeah, there wasn't time to go back, didn't spend another two months getting word back to Napoleon's party, the French contingent, excuse me. Right. And apparently the whole, they were putting pressure on the Americans by saying like, well, Napoleon's reconsidering this deal and the Americans were like, okay, all right. Classic moves. Yeah. He's not really sure now. The offer might be off the table. So they announced the deal 4th of July, 1803. Most people in the United States were obviously super psyched. But not everyone. It seems that people in New England were, they had a problem with it. They were like, hey, listen, we are kind of broke anyway. And we've already got enough land to like, who wants 850,000 square miles to have to take care

of when we're a fledgling nation. And what we need now is to keep our coffers full. And Massachusetts congressman Joseph Quincy said, you know, we should secede because of this. There was a lot of threats to secede. Thank goodness that doesn't happen anymore. Right. Right. But they, you know, that didn't happen obviously. There was another issue which was that Jefferson was a real strict constitutionalist and did not believe in a president just sort of exceeding their power. And he was like, you know what? I don't even know if what we did was strictly legal. This guy helped write the constitution. Yeah. And he was like, can you have someone check that? But I don't think we're allowed to even do this, are we?

I mean, he was right. No, there's no, if you limit the presidential powers to a strict reading of the constitution, no. Nowhere in there does it say the president is allowed to acquire land for the nation. Right. I mean, they can go buy a condo or something if they want to privately. Sure. I think. You know, the condo White House, that's what they call that, White House West. Nice little place on the Pacific Ocean. That's right. But he was worried about this. So he said, like, hey, maybe we should pass a constitutional amendment about this? Yeah. And they, you know, everyone was kind of debating. They were like, you know what? I don't think we need to add a constitutional amendment. I think it's probably okay. You know, all the,

all the early brilliant minds and early U.S. government were trying to figure this out, kind of thinking that, hey, we got to move through with the purchase and we'll kind of figure it out later. If we need to add an amendment, maybe we can do that retroactively. And then his treasury secretary, Albert Gallatin said, you know what? This should be allowed under your authority to make treaties. That's how I read it at least. And Jefferson said, that sounds good. Let's debate it. They debated it in 1803 in October and the Senate voted 24 to 7 that it was all good. Yeah. Which makes sense. I think it was upheld later on in 1823 by the Supreme Court by no less than Jefferson's political rival, John Marshall, Justice John Marshall, said, yeah,

actually, this is totally correct. The president's allowed to make treaties under the Constitution and you can acquire land through treaties. Ipsofacto, the president can acquire land. And ever since then, that's just been, you know, part of America, although it'll probably be reversed in the next couple of years. How about a break? Yes. All right. Let's take a break and we'll talk about the fact that this really wasn't a purchase outright. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take

a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism.

Narcissists are everywhere and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love bombed by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub and also slightly dangerous. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. Rupert Murdoch lost lots and lots of money on MySpace because it turned out it was actually not a good business. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it, the users. Because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms

to follow. Listen to Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Okay, Chuck. So, up to now, we've basically just been laying down the generally understood Louisiana Purchase, maybe with a few more details than most people know, more than I knew before we started researching this, I should say. But at this point, we reached the actual geopolitical layer of this historical event, of how the people at the time understood what was going on. Because in retrospect, like I said, everybody looks at the Louisiana Purchase like the greatest real estate deal of all time.

If you look up greatest deal in history, the Louisiana Purchase is cited as the greatest deal ever in almost every return on whatever search engine you use. So, at the time, they didn't really consider it that. It wasn't like a purchase of land. Instead, it was a transfer of what the French had acquired through the doctrine of discovery, which is essentially this kind of, again, a geopolitical layer of legal fiction that is laid over actual land that basically says, if you go to an area and you find people there, but they're not Christians, you can claim that land as yourself and deal with the people who are indigenous as you see fit without interference from the other European powers.

Right. So, that's what they purchase. You could call it a preemption or a territorial abstraction, but yeah, it basically meant you're, we almost bought the right to steal that land from Native Americans without Spain or France laying any claim to it. I would agree with what you just said fully, but I would remove almost from it. Right. Fully, I guess is the word I meant. Yeah. It's crazy. And that whole doctrine of discovery thing, by the way, came from a papal bull, a papal decree from 1492, coincidentally, where the Pope said, essentially that, like if you find a place that's considered terra nullis,

which is unpopulated, essentially unpopulated by Christians, that's your land. So, it was basically legal cover for the genocide that followed from that point on. Yeah. And it's at this point that we're going to recommend again, I know I mentioned it before, but the great documentary series from 2021 called Exterminate All the Brutes. You of all people would love it. It's really good. You would love it. Raul Peck's series explores basically, it was on HBO, I think, but just sort of the history of colonialism, but more than that, the way he tells it through a modern lens and then just sort of from the dawn of time, once people started being mean to each other,

basically, really, really tough, heady documentary series. Yeah. It sounds like my Friday night for sure. Well, several Friday nights, but yeah, sure. Okay. If you watch that all in one Friday night, then very dark Saturday to follow. So, okay, I'll check it out. What's it called again? Exterminate All the Brutes. Okay. I'll check it out because I happen to have HBO Max.

Oh, well, me too. Maybe it's on there. For my money, one of the best streaming services. So, just to kind of button this whole thing up, basically what happened under the doctrines of discovery and the preemption that America bought from France said that you can go do whatever you want with this land. You can acquire it however you want to. We're not going to do it. You don't actually get any land from us. You get us saying this is yours now and the rest of Europe,

we have to leave these guys alone while they do whatever they want. This is now part of their sovereign territory. From one Christian nation to another, basically. Exactly. That's right. So, the thing is, I guess the Americans that were running the show at the time, led by Jefferson, were well aware. This is, there's plenty of people out there and probably even more than we realized. I'm sure there's indigenous groups that we've not even encountered yet. He sent Lewis and Clark out in 1804, like the year after the purchase was announced.

But they had to get that land somehow. And this preemption gave them the right to do it however they pleased. Treaty, paying people off, just straight up extermination. However America wanted to do it from that point on, that was Europe was just going to sit back and let it happen. Yeah. And it was kind of a mix of all those things. The US did pay, I mean, it's a lot of money, but it's still not a lot of money. About $8.5 billion in modern dollars to Native Americans for the land within

the Louisiana territory. But as we'll see, that happened in a lot of different ways. And there were some modern sort of reparations that happened as a result here and there. There was a land deal, and these are just some examples. There was always sort of the threat of violence hanging over every deal that was made. So you have to factor that in. There was a land deal with a Native nation. This was after we made the deal with France. And the SAC and Fox Nation sent some people to St. Louis, sent a delegation there to say, hey, we murdered three squatters on our land. I would really like you to not retaliate on this because that would start a big mess.

And so William Henry Harrison, who was the governor of the Indiana territory, and now Louisiana, which was, this is a lot of area that William Henry Harrison was covering, signed, put a lot of heat on them, and they signed away 3.6 million acres of land along the Mississippi, including about 1.6 million that was part of the Louisiana Purchase Territory for $3,324 in goods. And if that sounds like a paltry amount, you're right. But even at the time, it was like the SAC and the Fox would have considered it paltry because I read that they made something like $60,000 a season just from selling furs alone. So this was an insulting amount of money. Supposedly William Henry Harrison was like

particularly adept at creating these treaties. And this was the first one. And they ended up basically negotiating with this contingency of, or this contingent of SAC and Fox leaders, but also not people who were recognized in those tribes as having the authority to sign away their land. But they signed something. William Henry Harrison said, good enough. This is legal. We now own that land. Please get out. Right. And this is one of those that was brought up later in 1973. There was a commission, a federal commission that looked back on this land deal and said, you know what? It was worth about 60 cents an acre at the time. We purchased it for a half cent an acre. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to pay

you back now here in the early 1970s, that 59 and a half cents. Here's $2 million. And they said, well, wait a minute though, this is 1973. You're not including inflation or interest. You're paying us for what you owed us in 1804 using 1973 money. And they went, excuse me, what? Here's your check. Just go about your day. And that's exactly what happened. And that was the first deal, the first treaty that was formed after the Louisiana purchase that affected land from Louisiana territory. And it just kind of went on from there. Some tribes were given money. Some tribes were forced out for no money whatsoever. I think the Blackfeet famously lost 12 million acres and were given no money at all. And they weren't exactly like the Indigenous

tribes weren't exactly treated like royalty by the French or the Spanish, but they weren't forced off of their land en masse like they were once America owned the Louisiana territory. Like it was a brand new show that they had not been prepared for. They lived and worked and followed their traditional ways among the French and the Spanish who made concessions to them and recognized a lot of their tribal territory and their tribal customs. But they still considered the land belonging to France or belonging to Spain, but they weren't moved off. And then America came along and were like, get out. We've got a lot of people back east and we are spreading westward. And essentially what they did was just continue to push and push and push the Native Americans

all the way into the Pacific basically. Yeah. And one of the things they would do is like they would clear out one tribe and the, you know, we call it the west, it was the Louisiana territory to make room to move like an east coast tribe or a southeastern tribe or a northeastern tribe, then they would move them into that land and say, here you can have this, but not for long, because we're also going to remove you. And it was just, like you said, it was just sort of shuffling these tribes one at a time further and further west, which, you know, obviously culminated in the Trail of Tears, which we had a, I think that was a two-parter, right? Yeah, it was. That was one of the best two-parters we've done, I think. It rivaled evil Knievel. Even Mark Ruffalo

tweeted out about that episode. I forgot. Hulk himself. That's right, he did. Hulk himself. Hulk himself. So it was just sort of the beginning of a new day for indigenous Americans. No more, you know, basically sort of living with Europeans and kind of sharing the land. It was like, no, this is ours and we're removing you, you know, permanently. Yeah. And I mean, just like that 1492 papal decree of the Doctrine of Discovery, America kind of formulated its own stuff, like the Manifest Destiny, which essentially said, like, we were given this land to take it over from coast to coast. This is, America was meant to do this, to become this continental nation and become a superpower. And that was used as a reason, like just, we were supposed to do it.

We were destined to do this. So let's just keep doing it. And another one that was used is that the Native Americans weren't using the land. They weren't putting it to use. So we're going to put it to more productive use and make money off of it, which if so facto means we should have it. So these were kind of like the rationales for pushing further and further west. And we did it with such gusto, Chuck, that the Louisiana Purchase was signed in 1803. 50 years later, the Gadsden Purchase purchased Southern Arizona and Southwest New Mexico from Mexico, I believe. And at that moment, 50 years after the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size, the contiguous 48 states as they are today was set. 50 years is all it took for us to take over

the entire North American continent, aside from Canada and Mexico. Wow. That puts it into perspective. We were vigorous, I should say. So like you mentioned earlier, Lewis and Clark were then sent out because we didn't really know even what we had as far, like the borders were very hazy. They were hazy when Spain had it. They were hazy when France had it. They knew the Northern and Southern borders because you had the Gulf of Mexico and you had the Canada and the Northern territories. But as far as West goes, they're like, I don't know. And everyone would look at each other and they would look at map makers and they would all shrug and go, I don't know. So in fact, in the purchase, they referred to the land of the colony or province of Louisiana with the same

extent it now has in the hands of Spain. And then it had when France possessed it and France and Spain both shrugged. So they sent Lewis and Clark out and Jefferson said, hey, when it comes to that Western border, just go nuts. Don't feel like you got to really be too restrictive on where this Louisiana territory ends. And so they said, how about the Rocky Mountains? And they said, great, they sound lovely, perfect. Right. And America's tactic strategy, national strategy, you could say, was just to keep pushing westward, right? So when you reached America's border, just keep going. And we would show up in mass and these British, like the British apparently controlled Oregon territory, which I didn't realize, but it explains Washington and British

Columbia's names. And we'd just show up along the Oregon Trail. And enough of us would show up that the Brits would finally be like, fine, forget it here, just take this. We want British Columbia, you take Washington and Oregon. And we did that in Texas. And that's how we just kept acquiring more and more land just by virtue of showing up in numbers and being willing to shed blood, pay money, and do all sorts of stuff to acquire that land. That's right. Quite a story. Yeah. And I mean, it's not like this is all just a nothing but a negative story. I mean, depending on your perspective, yeah, it's pretty negative in a lot of ways. But also, I mean, it's not like America's just like the worst country that ever existed. Like America's

done a lot of really great stuff for the world, spread democracy, spread peace, done a lot of shady stuff too. I think everybody who's ever listened to the podcast knows that I am aware of that. But it's also done a lot of really cool stuff for the world. So in one sense, the Louisiana Purchase helped kickstart that country that would go on to do some really cool, important things. Unfortunately, on the other hand, it gave us the Midwest. Oh man. I had a feeling that was building towards a joke, a punchline. I meant everything. Good payoff. Okay. So you got anything else about the Louisiana Purchase? No. I think I'm well-armed for Jeopardy, though.

Okay. I am too. Let's get it on, as Alex Trebek used to say. If you want to know more about the Louisiana Purchase, you can search that on, well, on your favorite search bar. But also, I'm sure HowStuffWorks has some good stuff on it. So why not start there? And since I said HowStuffWorks and it's 2010 again, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this support for you, Josh. Oh, okay. Thank you. For the whole Sans Serif debacle. In retrospect, it was a little unfair when I was like, what? You never knew Sans Serif meant no serifs?

I didn't take it that way at all. But I know how you feel right now because I just QA'd our How Vampires Works episode worked episode. Oh, from back then? Yes. And you said you didn't like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I was like, what? All right. Here we go. I just listened to the Lysus Played Episode, guys. It felt like I had to back up Josh in regards to Serif and Sans Serif. I'm an architect and endured many grueling years of architectural school during which we primarily prepared graphic and architecture role presentations in lieu of exams and papers. So you can imagine the aesthetic mind of a young architect can get

obsessed with selecting the perfect font to align with the architectural concept they're about to present. I wasted many hours selecting the perfect font and as did most other students in my class. I mean, now my mid-30s and have been practicing for over 12 years and made no connection to the meet. 12 years. Would you hire a 24-year-old architect? I don't know. If he was precocious and went, he or she, you know, started attending Harvard at 15 maybe. Okay. All right. Look at me. I'm being aegis. Now my mid-30s have been practicing for 12 years and made no connection to the meaning of Serif until two or three years ago. Like Josh, I was well aware of the idea of Sans, but never put the two and two together. Awesome. You could

take everything Josh stated word for word and apply it to me. You guys make me laugh a lot, but this is one of the better chuckles I've had while listening to Josh go on about Sans Serif, his Sans Serif revelation and the likeness to my own. Unlike Josh though, I never admitted it aloud and I felt it was about time. So Josh, thanks for sharing and letting me know that I'm not alone. Kind regards from Tim. Tim, thank you for that support. That was very nice of you. And I feel like I'm the midwife of helping you birth your own admission. I just got weird, but sure. As Bob Newhart would put it. Yeah. Thanks again, Tim. And if you want to be like Tim, you can send an email to stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com.

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