How Thomas Jefferson politicked his way into the Louisiana Purchase
Channel: CBS News
Uploaded:
Duration: PT357S
Read a transcript preview of “How Thomas Jefferson politicked his way into the Louisiana Purchase” from CBS News, uploaded on 2026-10-23.
Transcript preview
Language: English (original, YouTube automatic captions)
[0:00] Welcome back to the Takeout. I am, as
[0:02] I've said here before, a proud graduate
[0:04] of the University of Missouri. Attending
[0:07] Missou, as we affectionately refer to
[0:09] it, was one of the most important
[0:10] decisions of my life. My career,
[0:13] therefore, is a product of the Louisiana
[0:15] Purchase. Stay with me. After America
[0:18] expanded through that Louisiana
[0:20] purchase, Congress decades later passed
[0:22] a law to set aside public lands for
[0:25] higher education, furthering Thomas
[0:27] Jefferson's idea of the democratizing
[0:29] power of education. And the University
[0:32] of Missouri was the first land grant
[0:34] college to arise from that law. To help
[0:37] us understand Jefferson, the Louisiana
[0:40] Purchase, and its enduring meaning in
[0:42] America, I sat down last week with Laura
[0:44] Brown, a public scholar and a