Answer:
The Louisiana Purchase was the sale by France in 1803 of more than 2,144,476 km2 of land to the United States at the price of 3 cents per acre, more than $ 15 million, the equivalent sum in 2019 dollars to $ 333,495,000.
This territory represents 22.3% of the current area of the United States. Indeed, the French colony of Louisiana included many more territories than the current state of Louisiana. The territories sold include parts located to the west of the Mississippi River in present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, parts of New Mexico, North Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, portions of Montana, Wyoming, and part of Colorado east of the Rocky Mountains, portions south of present-day Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta located in the Missouri River Basin, and present-day Louisiana on both sides of the Mississippi, including the city of New Orleans.
The purchase was important to the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, who faced some internal resistance to the operation. Although there were doubts about the constitutionality of the acquisition of the territory, he decided to buy Louisiana because he did not like the idea that France and Spain had the power to block the access of US merchants to the port of New Orleans. This negotiation opened the access to the Pacific Ocean to the United States and dramatically increased its territory.
