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The Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition stretched the boundaries of the United States from sea to shining sea. Thus July 4, 1803, was the beginning of today’s nation.
low ground or inferior bottomland was planted to corn, to provide food for slaves and animals. Fertile land—identified by hardwood growth—was saved for tobacco.
they were always land-rich and cash-poor. Small wonder Jefferson was obsessed with securing an empire for the United States.
the person engaged should be attended by a single companion only, to avoid exciting alarm among the Indians.
More generally, the frontiersmen complained that the government attempting to collect the tax neglected to provide western settlers with protection from the Indians, failed to build western roads or canals, and favored the rich absentee land speculators, the biggest and most important of whom was President Washington himself, over the simple, hardworking frontiersman who was trying to acquire land and build a home.
The army he entered had many officers who were tied by blood or marriage to distinguished families. More than a third were sons of officers in the Continental Army or in the militia during the revolution.
critical fact in the world of 1801 was that nothing moved faster than the speed of a horse.
the notion of a power source other than muscle, falling water, or wind, was utterly alien to virtually every American.
Never in their lives did they imagine the possibility of a black man’s becoming a full citizen. William Clark tried to adopt a part-Indian boy as his own son. He would not have dreamed of adopting a black boy as his own son.
In 1801, the European nations were no more capable of exploring, conquering, settling, and exploiting the western two-thirds of North America than they had been in the preceding three centuries. Nor was the United States—not
In Washington, Lewis
had the honor of copying and then delivering Jefferson’s first State of the Union Address to Congress. This broke the precedent set by Washington and Adams, who had delivered their speeches in person. Jefferson thought that practice a bit monarchical; besides, he disliked making public speeches.
The people who were going to transform the Mississippi Valley, from its source to New Orleans, into farms and villages would come from the United States, not from Spain. Time would come soon enough to take Louisiana from the hapless Spanish.
he flatly declared that his government would consider any attempt to land French troops in Louisiana a cause for war.
The thought that Napoleon might be willing to sell all of Louisiana had not occurred to anyone.
winter of 1802–3, he got a passport for Lewis from the British minister, and another from the French. Simultaneously he moved forward with the Monroe project to purchase New Orleans from Napoleon.
The other half involved preparing Lewis for the scientific observations he would be responsible for making. That meant study. Hard, intensive study in a variety of disciplines under a severe time pressure.
At Harpers Ferry, he got fifteen muzzle-loading, flintlock, long-barreled rifles, sometimes called “Kentucky” but more properly “Pennsylvania rifles.” They were the sine qua non of the expedition.
In mid-April, Lewis set off to the east.
I Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America, have written this letter of general credit for you with my own hand, and signed it with my name.” In its final version, dated July 4, 1803, this must be the most unlimited letter of credit ever issued by an American president.
July 4, 1803, the nation’s twenty-seventh birthday, was a great day for Meriwether Lewis. He completed his preparations and was ready to depart in the morning.
“Sixty million francs for an occupation that will not perhaps last a day!” he exulted. He knew what he was giving up and what the United States was getting—and the benefit to France, beyond the money: “The sale assures forever the power of the United States, and I have given England a rival who, sooner or later, will humble her pride.”
Angry partisanship was the order of the day. Senator John Quincy Adams complained in his diary, “The country is so totally given up to the spirit of party, that not to follow blindfold the one or the other is an inexpiable offence.”
It seems this feeling is not new in past or present politics
How anxious he was to get going he demonstrated on the morning of August 31. The last nail went into the planking at 7:00 a.m. By 10:00 a.m., Lewis had the boat loaded.
Lewis was referring to malaria, which was endemic in the Ohio, Mississippi, and lower Missouri Valleys.
Peruvian bark. It came from a South American tree and contained many alkaloids, the most important being quinine and quinidine.
men were sworn into the army, in solemn ceremony, in the presence of General Clark, the Corps of Discovery was born.
the corps consisted of the captains—and Clark’s slave,
This was practice—the longitude and latitude of the mouth of the Ohio were known—but Lewis and Clark worked at it as if it were the real thing, because soon enough it would be.
Napoleon had gotten it right: he might as well sell and get some money for the place, because the Americans were going to overrun it anyway.
For the next seven years, only Dearborn, Jefferson, a clerk or two in the War Department, and Meriwether Lewis and William Clark knew that, as far as the army was concerned, Captain Lewis was in command of the Corps of Discovery, with Lieutenant Clark as his second-in-command.
Jefferson had just taken the lead in founding the United States Military Academy at West Point.
He regretted the influence of the Roman Catholic priest among them, a typical Virginia planter’s prejudice, and regretted too that the men regarded the cultivation of the soil as a “degrading occupation.”
Lewis and Clark were as free as Columbus, Magellan, or Cook to make their mark on the sole basis of their own judgments and abilities.
At 6:00 a.m., May 22, they were on their way.
May 23, he wrote, “Capt Lewis’ assended the hill which has peninsulis projecting in raged pints to the river, and was near falling from a Peninsulia of rocks 300 feet, he caught at 20 foot. Saved himself by the assistance of his Knife.”
There is another tantalizing item. The next day, the expedition passed Boone’s Settlement. The village consisted of a colony of Kentuckians led by Daniel Boone, who had settled there in 1799 on a grant of land from the Spanish government.
Did Lewis and Clark meet Daniel Boone? Did they shake his hand? Did he wish them luck, offer advice, or a drink? Did he pass the torch?
But had he met Boone, surely Clark would have written about it. And there is no known Lewis entry for the day.
The United States had bought Louisiana from Napoleon, but not the loyalty or alliance or subservience of the people who lived in Louisiana.
Roman legions put vinegar in their drinking water, but Lewis and Clark had taken no such precaution.
Alcohol in any form has always been a curse and a necessity to military leaders.
In other words, don’t run out of booze until there is no turning back.
No American, not even the professional naturalists such as John James Audubon and Alexander Wilson, had ever seen anything to surpass it.1 Lewis was fully aware of the magnitude of the discoveries and greatly excited by the opportunity to be the one to note and describe plants and animals new to science.
The animal was a coyote. Lewis and Clark were the first Americans to see one. The captains set a precedent; millions of Americans who came after have also failed in their attempt to kill the coyote.
As Jefferson repeated to every delegation of western Indians, Americans sought commerce, not land.
When these results were explained to Little Thief, he and the others “petitioned for Pardin for this man.” Clark and Lewis explained to the chiefs the necessity for the beating. They must have been persuasive, for Clark recorded that the chiefs “were all Satisfied with the propriety of the Sentence & was witness to the punishment.”
Clark provided a fitting epitaph in his journal: “This Man at all times gave us proofs of his firmness and Deturmined resolution to doe Service to his Countrey and honor to himself.” The captains concluded the proceedings by naming the river Floyds River and the bluff Sergeant Floyds Bluff.
The voyagers informed the captains that these animals were “Petite Chien,” or prairie dogs. The animal was new to science; the captains gave the prairie dog his first formal description.
On September 11, as the keelboat moved past a bend in the river, the bowman spotted Shannon sitting by the bank. The keelboat came to and Shannon came aboard. He was extremely weak—indeed, nearly starved to death. As his comrades gave him jerked meat, he related his story.
