The French army was so beleaguered from battle and disease—by the end of the war, more than 80 percent of the soldiers sent to the island had died—that Napoleon Bonaparte, looking to cut his losses and refocus his attention on his military battles in Europe, sold the entire territory of Louisiana to Thomas Jefferson’s negotiators for a paltry fifteen million dollars—about four cents an acre. Without the Haitian Revolution, it is unlikely that Napoleon would have sold a landmass that doubled the size of the then United States, especially as Jefferson had intended to approach the French simply
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