The land was sold for $15M, but was that transferred as gold, or promise of gold? How was the money transported? How long did it take to make the transaction finalized such that Napoleon could spend his newly earned cash?
Thank you for the great question! I have been studying the history of early Jeffersonian Era for a while now; a particular interest of mine has been the Louisiana Purchase.
In 1803 things were just warming up for Napoleon, who was serving as the First Consul of the Republic of France. He would become Emperor in May of the following year. France had regained La Louisiane from the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso on 1 October 1800. Napoleon had run into a small problem with the Haitian Revolution. As a result, he decided to sell off his colonial possessions in North America. He planned to use the money to invade England as a part of the War of the Third Coalition. After coming to an agreement, the United States still needed a way to pay for the deal. Even though we are commonly told in school that Louisiana was bought for “dirt cheap” this was not the case. The agreed upon price of eighty million francs was a ton of money for a newly emerging country to pay. That amount of money could not be taken out of tax revenue from the expanding nation or borrowed from American investors. The US had to go to the English and the Dutch to be able to afford the purchase.
The John and Francis Baring Company, with the help of Hopes of Amsterdam were able to finance the deal. Twenty million francs were put down immediately by the United States government. The other sixty million francs were paid in US government bonds (something had had not yet been used in European markets). According to The Baring Archive, the bonds were payable two times per year with a six percent interest rate, and they were originally redeemable between 1819 and 1822.The banking houses later purchased the bonds from the French government for fifty-two million francs. The dealings consisted of a down payment on six million francs, followed by two million francs for a period of twenty-three months.
I hope this answers your question!
Sources:
http://www.baringarchive.org.uk/features_exhibitions/louisiana_purchase/2
http://www.baringarchive.org.uk/features_exhibitions/louisiana_purchase/4
http://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-louisiana-purchase
https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/timelines/the-louisiana-purchase/
https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/louisiana-purchase
The Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Fleming
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