December 20, 1803

Louisiana Purchase transfer

France transfers Lower Louisiana to the United States at New Orleans

Laussat governed French Louisiana for twenty days before handing it to the Americans — long enough to release its inhabitants from oaths they had sworn weeks earlier.

20 December 1803: credentials exchanged at New Orleans

At New Orleans on 20 December 1803, French commissioner Pierre-Clément de Laussat exchanged credentials and a written act of transfer with U.S. commissioners William C. C. Claiborne and James Wilkinson, delivering Louisiana under the terms of the Franco-American treaty.

Laussat released Louisiana's inhabitants from their oaths of fidelity to France, and the United States flag was raised — amid the inhabitants' acclamations, as the American commissioners reported to Secretary of State James Madison.

Three languages of allegiance

Claiborne proclaimed that residents now owed allegiance to the United States, promising protection of liberty, property and religion. The proclamation appeared in English, French and Spanish.

He was not made governor of the Territory of Orleans that day: he exercised temporary governor-general and intendant powers, and Jefferson's formal nomination followed in November 1804.

Only Lower Louisiana

The ceremony transferred Lower Louisiana. Upper Louisiana, centred on St. Louis, was not formally transferred until March 1804 — winter travel kept it outside the completed ceremony for nearly three more months.

What changed hands was European claims and colonial administration; the treaty used the historically uncertain bounds of colonial Louisiana, and the transfer did not extinguish the sovereignty or land rights of the Native nations controlling much of the region.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 3 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The treaty did not clearly delimit every boundary of Louisiana. Later disputes with Spain and Britain mean maps showing a perfectly fixed 1803 purchase perimeter can be misleading.
The cession instruments are officially dated 30 April 1803, when terms were agreed, although editorial scholarship notes that the physical documents were signed several days later.