A Transformation over Time

“Americans today live their lives in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase. It reshaped our hemisphere so completely that we cannot easily imagine anything different.”

— John Kukla, historian, 2003

Photo of St. Louis with its Gateway Arch monument

The Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri: On this site on March 9, 1804, Captain Amos Stoddard of the U.S. Army took formal possession of the Louisiana territory and raised the American flag.

Part of the National Park Service, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, was completed in 1965 as a monument to Thomas Jefferson and the “opening” of the west. Today, the exhibits at the Museum of Westward Expansion, located beneath the Arch, present a more complex history of the territory. Similarly, historians continue to examine and debate the negative and positive consequences of the Louisiana Purchase and its aftermath. Some regard it as a great achievement, while others view it as the beginning of a tragic chapter in our history.

Go to "My Work" and review the notes you've taken. Then, consider whether the Louisiana Purchase was "most splendid" by using Arrange It to list both its positive and negative consequences. Click the "Arrange It" button to get started.