The great event of Jefferson’s first term was the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory, that vast tract of land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. The purchase of this land from Napoleon was not a premeditated act but rather the result of seizing an opportunity that presented itself. President Jefferson started out merely to buy New Orleans from France but ended up with more than 800,000 square miles. The agreed-on price was about $15,000,000, or something like two cents per acre. Napoleon had forced Spain to give Louisiana back to France after Spain had held the territory nearly forty years. Just before the letter in the following account was written, the Spanish Intendant (director) of New Orleans, who had not yet turned over the city to France, closed the port to American commerce. Because most of the produce of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys reached eastern and foreign markets via New Orleans, closing the port seemed almost an act of war against the United States. At this point Jefferson sent James Monroe to Europe as special minister to buy New Orleans. It turned out just then that Napoleon needed money to renew his war against England, and the entire territory was purchased within a few weeks. The events which led to the purchase are described in the following letter that Jefferson wrote on February 3, 1803, to Robert Livingston, the American minister to France. Jefferson Writes to Robert Livingston A late suspension by the Intendant of New Orleans of our right of deposit there, without which the right of navigation is impracticable, has thrown this country into such a flame of hostile disposition as can scarcely be described. The western country was peculiarly sensible to it as you may suppose. Our business was to take the most effectual pacific measures in our power to remove the suspension, and at the same time to persuade our countrymen that pacific measures would be the most effectual and the most speedily so. The opposition caught it as a plank in a shipwreck, hoping it would enable them to tack the western people to them. They raised the cry of war, were intriguing in all the quarters to exasperate the western inhabitants to arm and go down on their own authority and possess themselves of New Orleans, and in the meantime were daily reiterating, in new shapes, inflammatory resolutions for the adoption of the House.