{"id":120165,"date":"2024-12-25T17:25:30","date_gmt":"2024-12-25T17:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/greenland-is-a-no-but-what-territories-has-the-u-s-purchased-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2024-12-25T17:25:30","modified_gmt":"2024-12-25T17:25:30","slug":"greenland-is-a-no-but-what-territories-has-the-u-s-purchased-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/greenland-is-a-no-but-what-territories-has-the-u-s-purchased-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenland is a no, but what territories has the U.S. purchased? – USA TODAY"},"content":{"rendered":"

President-elect Donald Trump<\/a> floated the idea on Sunday that the U.S. should buy the Arctic island of Greenland<\/a> because of its strategic importance to the U.S. and NATO.
\u201cFor purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of\u00a0Greenland\u00a0is an absolute necessity,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social.
That statement was not well received by Greenland politicians, as the large island has been part of Denmark for over 600 years.
While Greenland is currently not for sale, the U.S. has purchased land and territories from other countries in the past.
The Louisiana Purchase has been described as the greatest real estate deal<\/a> in history, according to the National Archives. In 1803, the United States paid France $15 million for the Louisiana Territory, approximately 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River. The lands acquired stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border. Thirteen states were carved from the Louisiana Territory.
In 1819, Spain gave East Florida<\/a>\u00a0to the United States. Although they received no compensation, according to the State Department, the United States agreed to assume liability for $5 million in damage done by American citizens who rebelled against Spain.
During his tenure, U.S. President\u00a0James K. Polk<\/a>\u00a0oversaw the most significant territorial expansion of the United States following the Louisiana Purchase.
Following Texas\u2019 successful war of independence against Mexico in 1836, Polk annexed Texas in 1845, and by 1846, the United States declared war on Mexico<\/a>, resulting in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.
Under the treaty\u2019s terms in 1848, Mexico gave up approximately 525,000 square miles (55% of its prewar territory) in exchange for a $15 million lump sum payment.
The U.S. made the Gadsden Purchase in 1853 to acquire a nearly 30,000 square-mile region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico in a treaty signed by the American ambassador to Mexico, James Gadsden. The purchase was the last major territorial acquisition<\/a> in the contiguous United States, according to the National Archives.
The U.S. purchased Alaska<\/a>, a territory from Russia, in 1867 for 586,412 square miles of territory for $12 per square mile, less than two cents an acre, for a total of $7.2 million. Alaska didn\u2019t gain statehood until 1959, becoming the 49th state in the Union.
The United States acquired Guam and Puerto Rico<\/a> during the Spanish-American War in 1898, where the U.S. victory forced Spain to give up control of these territories through the Treaty of Paris; this treaty also granted the U.S. control of the Philippines, but the nation would later gain full independence in 1946.
The Spanish-American War increased the strategic value of Hawaii<\/a> as a base for military operations in the Philippines, which led to its annexation in 1898. Hawaii became a U.S. territory in 1900, and in 1959, it became the 50th state in which 90% of the islanders supported statehood.\u00a0
The matai (local chiefs) of Tutuila, the largest island in American Samoa<\/a>, gave the island to the United States in 1900. Manu’a followed in 1904 and Swain Island joined the territory in 1925 by an act of the Congress. Authority was transferred to the Department of the Interior (DOI) in 1956.
Beginning in 1867, the United States made several attempts to expand its influence into the Caribbean and asked Denmark if they were willing to sell the Danish West Indies, according to the State Department. Unlike Greenland<\/a>, the Danes were willing to sell the islands to the U.S. for $25 million in the 1917 Treaty. After the transfer, the U.S. government changed the name of the territory to the Virgin Islands of the United States.
Reuters contributed to the reporting of this story.<\/em>
Victor Hagan is the Alabama Election Reporting Fellow for the USA TODAY Network. He can be reached at vhagan@gannett.com or on X @TheVictorHagan. To support his work, subscribe to the Advertiser.<\/em><\/p>\n

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President-elect Donald Trump floated the idea on Sunday that the U.S. should buy the Arctic island of Greenland because of its strategic importance to the U.S. and NATO.\u201cFor purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of\u00a0Greenland\u00a0is an absolute necessity,\u201d Trump wrote on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":120166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-120165","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}