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Random Facts about how the United States got its Lands
HOW THE UNITED STATES GOT ITS LANDS
The United States bought Louisiana, the vast region between
the Mississippi River, the eastern and northern boundary of
Texas (then belonging to Spain), and the dividing ridge of
the Rocky Mountains, together with what is now Oregon,
Washington Territory, and the western parts of Montana and
Idaho, from France for $11,250,000. This was in 1803. Before
the principal, interest, and claims of one sort and another
assumed by the United States were settled, the total cost of
this "Louisiana purchase," comprising, according to French
construction and our understanding, 1,171,931 square miles,
swelled to $23,500,000, or almost $25 per section--a fact
not stated in cyclopedias and school histories, and
therefore not generally understood. Spain still held Florida
and claimed a part of what we understood to be included in
the Louisiana purchase--a strip up to north latitude 31--and
disputed our boundary along the south and west, and even
claimed Oregon. We bought Florida and all the disputed land
east of the Mississippi and her claim to Oregon, and settled
our southwestern boundary dispute for the sum of $6,500,000.
Texas smilingly proposed annexation to the United States,
and this great government was "taken in" December 29, 1845,
Texas keeping her public lands and giving us all her State
debts and a three-year war (costing us $66,000,000) with
Mexico, who claimed her for a runaway from Mexican
jurisdiction. This was a bargain that out-yankeed the
Yankees, but the South insisted on it and the North
submitted. After conquering all the territory now embraced
in New Mexico, a part of Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and
California, we paid Mexico $25,000,000 for it--$15,000,000
for the greater part of it and $10,000,000 for another
slice, known as the "Gadsden purchase." In 1867 we bought
Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000. All the several amounts
above named were paid long ago. As for all the rest of our
landed possessions, we took them with us when we cut loose
from mother Britain's apron string, but did not get a clear
title until we had fought ten years for it--first in the
Revolutionary War, costing us in killed 7,343
reported--besides the unreported killed--and over 15,000
wounded, and $135,193,103 in money; afterward in the War of
1812-15, costing us in killed 1,877, in wounded 3,737, in
money $107,159,003. We have paid everybody but the Indians,
the only real owners, and, thanks to gunpowder, sword,
bayonet, bad whisky, small-pox, cholera and other weapons of
civilization, there are not many of them left to complain.
Besides all the beads, earrings, blankets, pots, kettles,
brass buttons, etc., given them for land titles in the olden
times, we paid them, or the Indian agents, in one way and
another, in the ninety years from 1791 to 1881, inclusive,
$193,672,697.31, to say nothing of the thousands of lives
sacrificed and many millions spent in Indian wars, from the
war of King Philip to the last fight with the Apaches.
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