Episode Details

In this episode, we explore how haiti forced the louisiana purchase. Welcome to today's Dick Dive. I'm your host. And today we are digging into a stack of Wikipedia notes on one of the most famous real estate deals in human history. Hello, everyone. Glad to be here. So we're talking about the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. And if you're listening, you probably have this like mental image from grade school. Oh, absolutely. The whole Thomas Jefferson signs a neat little piece of paper, hands over a giant check and boom, the U .S. magically doubles in size. Exactly. But. The numbers we are looking at in these sources are just staggering. We are talking about 828 ,000 square miles of land, which is massive. Right. It's over 26 % of the present day contiguous United States. And they got it all from France for 15 million dollars. Yeah. Which averages out to what about three cents an acre? Yep. Three cents initially led by Choussaint Louverture. Correct. And Napoleon was absolutely determined to crush it. So he sends a massive military force commanded by his brother -in -law, General Charles Leclerc. To restore slavery. Yes. But it was a catastrophic failure. The French military met fierce resistance. And on top of that, a devastating outbreak of yellow fever sweeps through the French camps. I read that it absolutely decimated their ranks. It did. Over two thirds of Napoleon's troops died in the Caribbean. So Napoleon's sitting there in Europe looking at the board. His Caribbean sugar engine is gone. His military is crushed. And without Santa Ming, Louisiana is just, well, it's useless to him. Exactly. It went from a strategic asset to an indefensible liability almost overnight. Plus, war with Britain was imminent. Right. The piece of Amiens was collapsing. And Napoleon knows the British Navy is far superior. They