Louisiana Purchase Controversy In The Early 1800's

Throughout Thomas Jeffersons’ Presidency, several unforeseen circumstances get in his way. These situations illustrate how the United States acquires land and how the Constitution works. One of these unexpected dilemmas, known as the Louisiana Purchase, provided the nation with the land to expand into the western portion of the United States and achieved one of the most important factors of the purchase, New Orleans. The Louisiana Purchase caused major controversy in the early 1800’s. Jefferson believed that, for a nation that was for the people, the federal government should not assume it has any power or authority over anything but what the Constitution grants. Jefferson was not legally allowed to make the purchase, but he did so for the benefit of the United States. Jefferson placed special emphasis on the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights: “The Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are …show more content…
His platform was “a program of limiting federal power; as a strict constitutionalist, he asserted that the federal government should not assume any powers not explicitly granted to it by the Constitution.” Jefferson believed that rights not explicitly stated in the Constitution should be given to the states. However, when the huge opportunity approached Jefferson to purchase Louisiana from France, he overstepped all of these boundaries. He used the governments’ power to purchase the land from France without the complete knowledge of Congress. Also, being a strict follower of the Constitution, Jefferson knew that he needed to have the offer approved yet he did not have the time. Even though many people thought that Jefferson was prohibited by the Constitution to make the purchase, the Constitution never specifically stated that the President had no rights to supervise this