We’d already decided to go back on our founding statement and keep slavery by the time the Louisiana Purchase happened. We didn’t create it, but the western world was already starting to consider it a problem. And we had the audacity to declare it was a self evident truth that all men are created equal. Except in some states. Whining about who started what when is just playing the distraction game. We knew it was wrong, but we did it anyway.
The United States inherited the institution of slavery from France (via Spain, then briefly France again) through the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Upon acquiring the territory, the U.S. government took ownership of a region where slavery was deeply embedded, with roughly half of the 60,000 non-native inhabitants in the Louisiana Territory being enslaved Africans at the time of the sale.
Slavery was established by French colonists in the early 18th century, with the Code Noir (Black Code) governing the treatment, legal status, and duties of enslaved people and free people of color.Transition from Spain: While France originally introduced slavery, the territory was under Spanish control from 1762 until immediately before the 1803 sale.
The United States inherited the population, enslaved people, and legal frameworks established by both nations. Instead of abolishing slavery, the U.S. purchase authorized the expansion of slavery into the new western territories, which became a focal point for political conflict, leading to the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
The U.S. accepted the existing French/Spanish practices that recognized enslaved people as property. In 1803-1804, Louisiana was organized into territories that implemented slavery laws similar to the American South. The sale itself was prompted by the success of a slave rebellion in Haiti, which decimated Napoleon’s forces and prompted him to abandon his American empire, making the purchase possible.
Essentially, the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the United States and expanded the “empire of slavery” in the United States, creating new battles over slavery that would eventually contribute to the Civil War.
Except that is not true as you stated it.
Our nation as Americans was already going down the path of abolition even before we declared Independence, but the crown kept vetoing our laws which essentially forced us to have an institution we did not desire to have kept around.