U.S. Census Office, Map Showing the Acquisition of Territory and Its Distribution Among Political Divisions, 1776-1874 (1874)

The 828,000 square miles of land that made up the Louisiana Purchase were bought by the United States for the price of $15 Million in the year 1803, nearly doubling the size of the territory that made up the United States. The land purchased stretched from just west of the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast of modern Washington state and Oregon, and touched both the northern and southern borders of the United States. The aquisition of this territory came under the idea of Manifest Destiny: the belief that it was not only the right but the duty of the American people to expand westward and aquire the entirety of the Continental United States. Four decades later, in 1845 and 1848, came the Texan Annexation and the First Mexican Cession. These aquisitions gave the United States the territories which make up modern Texas, as well as modern day California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. The Second Mexican Cession in 1853, also known as the Gadsden Purchase, made up the finality of America's movement west, granting the United States with small portions of Arizona and New Mexico. The entirety of these land aquisitions came to make up the Continental United States, with Alaska and Hawaii being aquired much later. From this map, featured in the Statistical Atlas of the United States Based on the Results of the Ninth Census 1870, the viewer is able to see the political divisions, or borders, that were drawn following the aquisition of all of these territories.