In 1803, one of the largest land purchases was made. The Louisiana Purchase. The Louisiana Purchase had a huge impact on the future of the United States. What would have happened if we hadn't purchased the land? The Louisiana Purchase had a huge affect on the United States, because of the amount of new land that there was.
Napoleon Bonaparte was the leader of France. He originally bargained with Spain the rights of the United States. The bargain was the kingdom Etruria in Italy for the United States. Spain happily agreed and the Treaty of San Ildefonso was signed. Napoleon planned on using the land of Haiti (which was owned by France) as a war base. He planned on sending soldiers to the United States from there. The people of Haiti revolted, though and Napoleon’s plan failed. For this reason, he sold the United States the land of Louisiana.
The final cost of Louisiana was 15 million dollars. Today if the same amount of land was purchased, it would equal 242.7 million dollars. There were over 800,000 square miles purchased. 14 whole or partial states were purchased. This nearly doubled the size of the United States.
Thomas Jefferson was the president during the time of the Louisiana Purchase. He was the one who decided to purchase the land of Louisiana. This was a wise decision because, the price of the land would have increased over time. This was only one of the big accomplishments during his presidency. He was also the one to hire Lewis and Clark to go on their expedition.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were hired by Thomas Jefferson to explore the new land. The cost for the trip was going to be around $2,500. Since there were no forms of modern transportation at the time, Lewis and Clark had to do the whole trip by foot or boat. They started the trip in 1803. Lewis and Clark called their expedition “The Corps of Discovery”. They were successful and brought back their findings to Jefferson.
My original driving question was: What impact did the Louisiana Purchase have on the future of the United States? If it wasn't purchased, would we have the same protection we do today? If the United States would have waited to buy the territory, the price of the land would have increased dramatically, and the amount of land might have even gotten smaller. The United States might not have become the great country that it is today.
I wonder, after reading this piece, if it was assigned to you, or one that you wanted to do from your own sense of interest. The reason I am wondering is because it seems a bit sterile; there is nothing particularly wrong with the piece, other than missing transitions, and more syntactic technique (which I would love to help you with) but there is a general lack of passion over the topic. Now, if it was assigned or not, the issue remains the same: how do we breath passion into a topic when we are simply reporting information? Well, I would like to help you wrestle with that if you would let me :)
ReplyDeleteAs organization, punctuation, and grammar go, this piece was very well written. But I think Mr. Johnson was right about making your voice show more, because you are usually really good at that.Other than that, I think it was a perfect length.
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ReplyDeleteI had never known about the Louisiana Purchase. I thought it was really informational. I thought you could have added a bit more detail into the piece, but over all it was great.
ReplyDeleteYour authors note was pretty helpful, and this piece was very informative. I think you acchieved your goal at being organized, and each of the paragraphs had a topic sentence. Maybe next time try to add more transitions, as it was sort of like a different topic each paragraph, with nothing keeping the "flow" going. But other than that small thing, this piece was awesome! Keep up the good work!
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