210th Anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase

[Oldguy]

There is no way that the French could have held on to that territory. After the disaster of the French Revelution, France suffered the disaster of Napoleon's attempt to conquer the world, only to end up defeated by England and Prussia. Spain was a rotten empire by then, and would never have been a contender for the teritory. The USA would have ended up with it one way of the other...most likely by waging war on the French, which were already in serious decline after having lost Canada to the British, and haiti to a slave revolt. Napoleon knew this when he sold it to us. He actualy got a good deal. The Spainards might have taken heed of all this in 1898, before the war where they lost Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Phillipines.

It all could have just as easily ended up as Mexico, instead of the US. Or, the private fiefdom of Aaron Burr and Zebulon Pike.