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Originally Posted by DGG
In the 1860's, the USA had already gained so much territory it pretty much owned all of its current territory on the American continent (except for the scarcely populated Alaska).
Personally, I believe the Louisiana Purchase to be of the greatest importance. Without it, the USA could never have had a Western frontier, would never have reached the Pacific and become an important power in that ocean. The growing conflict between Free States and Slave States would have evolved very differently if it would not have been for the frontier, the annexation of new territories and political disagreement on extending slavery to new territories or not. Even if the Union woudl have won the War Between the States, the USA would not have been a Super Power if the Mississippi would have been its western border.
Would Louisiana have become American anyway? We don't know, but history would have been very different anyway.
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Actually eventually the US would have in fact gotten the entire continent regardless of the Louisianna Purchase or not. You have to remember that was a time when Americans felt they had a manifest desitny to reach and control the land between the Atlantic and Pacific. It would have been far bloodier had it not been for the purchase, but it would have happened anyway. As you pointed out the purchase had already happened by the time of the Civil War. Had it turned out differently and the south won there would have been two part of the purchase, one belonging to the south and one belonging to the north.
No the Civil War was the only think that could have prevented the US of today from existing. The French and Spanish were already waning, not to mention that their US possessions were thousands of miles away from the mother country. Mexico could have not withstood a US effort to gain control of the land in the southwest even before the Civil War. That was war the defining moment of the 1800's for the US in some cases for good and in some for bad, but in the end it was the one event of that time period that made us who we are.
I would think that such divergent voices on just about everything basically agreeing on this would have given you a clue that we are right. After all it is our history is it not?