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AP U.S. History 1.4 Period 4: 1800-1848 295 Views


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AP U.S. History 1.4 Period 4: 1800-1848. Federalists opposed to the Louisiana Purchase might argue that the treaty authorizing its sale was unconstitutional because...what?

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Transcript

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the Louisiana Purchase:

00:06

a cup of coffee, two baguettes,

00:09

and a handful of beads. Mm-hmm.

00:13

All right, and here's the map.

00:14

Yep. That's the Louisiana Purchase.

00:16

All right. Federalists opposed to the Louisiana Purchase

00:20

might argue that the treaty authorizing its sale

00:22

was unconstitutional because... what?

00:26

And here are your potential answers.

00:28

[ baby giggle ]

00:28

[ mumbles ]

00:31

[ mumbling continues ]

00:33

Hmm. Well why would Federalists

00:36

have opposed the Louisiana Purchase?

00:38

Hmm? Well, first of all, Thomas Jefferson

00:41

was a Democratic-Republican,

00:44

so maybe they didn't like it because

00:45

he was from the opposing party.

00:48

Yeah. Not like partisan grudges happen anymore.

00:50

Or maybe it had to with Federalists worrying about giving

00:53

too much power to the executive branch, which was a major

00:56

cause of the American Revolution.

00:58

Let's keep that second one in mind as we look to the answers.

01:02

Were the Federalists upset because the Louisiana Purchase B -

01:06

would require the levying of a new tax?

01:09

Well, actually, the U.S. paid France three million bucks

01:11

up front in gold and sold a bunch of bonds

01:13

to pay the remainder, so taxes weren't really

01:15

the issue here for once. [ chuckles ]

01:16

Therefore we can ignore B.

01:18

Did Federalists question the Purchase's constitutionality

01:22

because they thought C -

01:23

it would lead to a war between the United States and Spain?

01:26

Well, there definitely were some unresolved issues

01:29

about whether the Spanish government actually owned

01:30

the territory, but the conflict never had the potential

01:33

of escalating to war.

01:34

Looks like you should really keep better track of your receipts

01:37

there, America.

01:38

Well, maybe the Federalists were upset because the Louisiana Purchase

01:41

D - would circumvent the approval of Congress.

01:45

Well, actually, Congress had to ratify the treaty

01:47

which led to the Purchase in the first place,

01:49

so they definitely had a say in what was about to go down.

01:52

That takes D out of the running.

01:54

Which means that the Federalists opposed

01:56

the Louisiana Purchase because A -

01:58

the Constitution didn't grant the president

02:00

the power to acquire territory.

02:02

Remember what we said about Federalists worrying about

02:04

the expansion of executive power?

02:06

Yeah. Well, the Constitution doesn't explicitly give the

02:09

president the power to acquire new territory.

02:12

So the Federalists thought that if it wasn't in the Constitution,

02:15

the Purchase was, well, surprise, surprise,

02:17

unconstitutional. So A is the right answer.

02:20

To the pleasure of Thomas Jefferson, though, the Purchase

02:22

went through and the United States acquired part or all of

02:25

15 new states for about 236 million dollars in today's dollars.

02:29

Guess you really can put a price on happiness -

02:31

and South Dakota.

02:34

[ woohoo! ]

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