Tom Holland argues the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled US territory, was technically illegal under the Constitution but shows Jefferson's pragmatism in subordinating principle to the result he wanted. ✦ AI generated
Tom Holland · The Rest Is History · 2026-07-09 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 25:59
this is actually illegal under the constitution. You know, it doesn't say anything about the right of the federal government to purchase foreign territory, but Jefferson goes ahead and does it anyway because ultimately, I think when self-interest is up against ideals, Jefferson is a good enough politician to lay down his principles in favor of the end result that he wants.
verbatim transcript · starts at 25:59
25:59ultimately, I think when self-interest is up against ideals, Jefferson is a good enough politician to lay down his principles in favor of of the end result that he wants. And and you can absolutely see why he would have um seized every opportunity to obtain Louisiana because it's much much a block of territory. is much larger than the current state. So it's about 16 times. It's basically the
26:24whole of middle America. It's the flyover states. >> I look at a map. I mean, it's not just Louisiana. It's Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, much of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana. I mean, it's basically the middle third of the United States. >> Well, it's basically doubling the size of the United States when when that when the Louisiana purchase goes through. >> So, it adds over 800,000 square miles to
26:45the US. So, that is an incredible achievement. But even with the uh Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson's gaze is fixed um even further westwards. And so one year after the Louisiana Purchase, he commisss an expedition to explore not just the this new territory that the United States has obteded, but to go even further west as far as the Pacific. And this is the the the Lewis and Clark expedition named after the two men who
27:11led it. And it's an incred, you know, it's at a kind of key moment in um establishing Americans sense of what the continent is that their their state has been founded on. So in part, it's a scientific expedition. It brings back lots of of new plants and flowers, and Jefferson's a great gardener. He he adds lots of these to his flower beds. Also brings back some fossils, which I I
27:35love. And Jefferson again keeps some of these. And in fact, his Jefferson's only real disappointment is that they don't find mastadons. So these kind of prehistoric elephants, yeah, that Jefferson had been hoping were were roaming the grasslands of California. Um, but they're not found. So it's a scientific expedition, but you know, Jefferson is always about power as well as about kind of intellectual exploration. So it is a an expedition in