Editing Ouachita Parish, Louisiana (section)

===Acquired by United States===
Other settlers and merchants were attracted to the trading post, which became known as Fort Miro, with a town developing by 1805, two years after the United States acquired the [[Louisiana Purchase]] from France. This was the vast former French territory (France had reacquired it from Spain for a brief period) west of the Mississippi and outside the Southwest and California, which were still Spanish territory. In 1819 the Americans renamed Fort Miro as the Ouachita Post. A year or so later, they changed the town's name to Monroe, after the first [[steamboat]] to reach it in travel up the Ouachita River. The arrival of the powered paddle wheeler was a landmark event, as it connected the town to much easier travel to and from other markets and stimulated its growth.

On March 31, 1807, the [[Territory of Orleans]] was divided into 19 sub-districts. The very large Ouachita Parish was one of these original 19; later it was broken up into eight other parishes (Morehouse, Caldwell, Union, Franklin, Tensas, Madison, East Carroll, and West Carroll), as more settlers entered the area and developed towns and plantations. Some brought slaves with them, but many bought slaves at markets. In the early 19th century, a total of one million slaves were forcibly moved through the domestic [[History of slavery|slave trade]] from the Upper South to the Deep South of the cotton plantation districts. They traveled overland or were shipped in the coastwise trade to Gulf ports.