October 20 · This Day in America
By a vote of 24 to 7, the United States Senate approves a treaty with France and doubles the size of the country in an afternoon. For fifteen million dollars — roughly three cents an acre — Thomas Jefferson has acquired 828,000 square miles stretching from New Orleans to the future Montana. He had only sent envoys to buy a port; Napoleon, needing cash for a European war, offered the whole of Louisiana instead. Jefferson, a strict reader of the Constitution, could find no clause that plainly let him do this. He did it anyway, and let the Senate bless it. The land was not empty — it was home to dozens of Native nations whose long story the purchase would painfully reshape. But on this day the American map leaps west of the Mississippi, and the idea of a continental republic stops being a dream and becomes a deed.
Source: www.senate.gov
Also on this day · 1973
Ordered to fire the Watergate special prosecutor, the Attorney General resigns rather than obey. So does his deputy. Only the third-ranking official, Robert Bork, carries out President Nixon's order to dismiss Archibald Cox. In a single night the country watches a president try to fire the man investigating him — and watches the rule of law strain, hold, and ultimately answer back.
Source: millercenter.org