Jefferson enlarged the United States with the Lousiana Purchase. Bought in 1803, Thomas Jefferson originally wanted to buy just the city and port of New Orleans for $10 million American dollars. He sent James Monroe and Robert Livingston to Paris to try to negotiate the purchase. Instead, Emperor Napoleon offered them the whole Louisiana Territory, a piece of land that contained all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River, most of North Dakota, nearly all of South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide, and Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans. He asked for only $15 million dollars ($11,250,000