The Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Louisiana Purchase has been described as the greatest real estate
deal in history. In 1803 the United States paid France $15 million for the
Louisiana Territory--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. The Louisiana Purchase nearly doubled the size of
the United States, making it one of the largest nations in the world.
The Louisiana Purchase consists of three separate agreements between the United
States and France: a treaty of cession and two agreements providing for the
exchange of monies in the transaction. -- this
text and photo courtesy of the National
Archives
photo courtesy of the National
Archives
In a secret message to Congress dated January 18, 1803,
President Thomas Jefferson asked for $2,500 to explore lands west to the
Pacific. Jefferson worked closely with Lewis, co-commander of the expedition, to
ensure that he was well-prepared to anticipate the party's needs. While the
party ran out of such luxuries as whiskey, tobacco, and salt, they had plenty of
rifles, powder, paper, and ink. - Courtesy
of the US National Archives
List of Indian Presents Purchased by Meriwether Lewis in
Preparation for the Expedition to the West. Click
Here - Courtesy of the US National
Archives
Receipt for 130 Rolls of Pigtail Tobacco Purchased by
Meriwether Lewis for the Expedition to the West - Click
Here - Courtesy of the US National
Archives
Receipt for Wine and Kegs Purchased by Meriwether Lewis for
the Expedition to the West. -- Click
Here - Courtesy of the US National
Archives
Meriwether Lewis
1774 - 1809
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Meriwether Lewis
LEWIS, Meriwether, explorer, born near
Charlottesville, Virginia, 18 August, 1774; died near Nashville, Tennessee, 8
October; 1809. He was a great-nephew of Fielding Lewis, noticed above, and
inherited a fortune frown his father, who died when the son was a child.
Meriwether, who was of a bold and adventurous disposition, left school at
eighteen years of age, and in 1794 volunteered in the troops that were called
out to quell the whiskey insurrection in western Pennsylvania. He entered the
regular service in 1795, became captain in 1800, and in 1801-'3 was private
secretary to President Jefferson, who in the latter year recommended him to
congress to command an exploring expedition across the continent to the Pacific.
He set out in the summer of 1803, accompanied by his associate, Captain
William Clark, and a company that was composed of nine young men from Kentucky,
fourteen soldiers, two Canadian boatmen, an interpreter, a hunter, and a Negro
servant of Captain Clark. They began to ascend Missouri river in the spring of
1804, passed a second winter among the Mandans in latitude 47º 21' N., and on 7
April, 1805, continued to ascend the Missouri until the middle of July, when
they reached the great falls. Near the close of this month they attained the
confluence of three nearly equal streams, to which they gave the names of
Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin. They ascended the Jefferson to its source,
traveled through the mountains from August till 22 September, when they entered
the plains of the western slope, in October embarked in canoes on the Kooskoosky,
a branch of the Columbia, and on 15 November reached the mouth of that river,
after traveling more than 4,000 miles from the confluence of Mississippi and
Missouri rivers.
They passed the following winter on the south bank of the Columbia in an
entrenched camp, in March, 1806, began to ascend the Columbia on their homeward
journey, and in May left their boats and made a difficult journey on horseback
across the mountains to the Missouri, upon which they re-embarked in August,
reaching St. Louis in September, after an absence of two years and four months.
Congress made grants of land to the men of the expedition and to their chiefs,
and Lewis was made governor of Missouri territory.
He found the country torn by dissensions, and, although his impartiality and
firmness soon restored comparative order, he began to suffer from hypochondria,
to which he had been subject from his youth. During one of his attacks of
depression he was called to Washington, and
at a lodging-place in Tennessee he put an end to his life. Lewis and Clark,
a county of Montana, is named in honor of the explorers. President
Jefferson said of him: "He was courage undaunted, possessing a
firmness of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from its
direction, and was intimate with Indian character, customs, and
principles." A narrative of the expedition of Lewis and Clark, from
materials that were furnished by the explorers, was prepared by Nicholas Biddle
and Paul Allen, with a memoir of Lewis by Thomas Jefferson (2 vols.,
Philadelphia, 1814; new ed., with additions by Alexander McVickar, New York,
1843).
William Clark
1770-1838
Clark, William, soldier, born in
Virginia, 1 August, 1770; died in St. Louis, Maine, 1 September, 1838. He was
the youngest of six brothers, four of whom were distinguished in the revolution.
He removed with his family in 1784 to the falls of the Ohio, in Kentucky, the
site of the present City of Louisville, where his brother George Rogers had
built a fort. That part of the country was then known as "the dark and
bloody ground," on account of the frequent Indian raids, and young
Clark became early acquainted with the methods of Indian warfare. He was
appointed ensign at the age of eighteen, and on 7 March, 1792, became a
lieutenant of infantry. He was assigned to the 4th sub-legion in December of
that year, was made adjutant and quartermaster in September, 1793, and resigned
in July, 1796, on account of ill health.
Soon afterward he removed to St. Louis, and in March, 1804, was appointed
by President Jefferson a second lieutenant of artillery, with orders to join Capt.
Meriwether Lewis's exploring expedition from St. Louis across the Rocky
mountains to the mouth of Columbia river. Clark was really the principal
military director of the expedition, materially assisted Capt. Lewis in the
scientific arrangements, and kept a journal, which was afterward published. His
intimate knowledge of Indian habits and character had much to do with the
success of the exploration. He was promoted to first lieutenant in January,
1806, and was nominated to be lieutenant colonel of the 2d infantry, but was not
confirmed by the senate. He resigned from the army, 27 February, 1807, and
officiated as Indian agent till he was appointed by congress brigadier-general
for the territory of Upper Louisiana. During the war of 1812 he declined the
appointment of brigadier-general in the army, and also the command then held by
General Hull. President Madison appointed him
governor of Missouri territory in 1813, and he held the office till the
organization of the state in 1821, when he was, against his will, a candidate
for election to the same office, and was defeated. He remained in private life
till May, 1822, when President Monroe made him
superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Louis, and he held this office till his
death.
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CLARK, George Rogers, soldier, born
near Monticello, Albemarle County, Virginia, 19 November, 1752; died near
Louisville, Kentucky, 18 February, 1818. He spent his early life in Caroline
county, Virginia, and enjoyed some educational advantages from a noted Scotch
teacher, Donald Robertson, in King and Queen county among whose pupils was James
Madison. He fitted himself for a surveyor, and at the age of twenty practiced
his profession on the upper Ohio, and became a farmer. Two years later he served
under Governor Dunmore in his campaign against the Shawnees and their allies,
which ended in the treaty o1: Camp Charlotte, memorable as the occasion of the
undying speech of Logan, the Mingo chief. Early in 1775 Clark went to Kentucky,
and was occupied in surveying; but, as the western Indians were induced by the
British to take up the tomahawk, he became the natural leader of the people in
the detente of their infant settlements, was made a major of the militia in
1776, and chosen as a delegate to the Virginia convention, to urge upon the
state authorities the claims of the colony for government and detente.
He arrived at Williamsburg just after the convention had adjourned, but
succeeded in procuring the formation of the new county of Kentucky, and a supply
of ammunition for the detente of the frontier. It is said that Clark, seeing
that his appeal for powder was likely to remain unheeded, exclaimed: "A
country which is not worth defending is not worth claiming." The 500
pounds of powder thus obtained was conveyed by land to the Monongahela, and
thence by water to the Three islands, a few miles above where Maysville now is,
and there secreted, while Clark and his escort went to Harrodsburg for horses
and a guard for its conveyance to that station. At length it reached the place
of its destination, but not without the loss of some of the party who first
attempted its acquisition. Early in 1777 Clark repelled the Indian attacks on
Harrodsburg, sent out spies to Illinois, and on their return hastened on foot to
Virginia to lay before the governor and council his plan for the conquest of the
Illinois country and the repression of the murderous Indian forays from that
quarter. His scheme was approved, and he was made a lieutenant colonel,
authorized to raise the necessary troops, and pushed on with his little force to
a small island opposite the present City of Louisville, where he erected
block-houses, drilled his men, and planted corn. Hence the name of Corn island.
On 24 June, 1778, during an eclipse of the sun, he set sail, passed safely over
the rapids, and soon landed at the old deserted Fort Massac, and, marching
thence six days across the country, a portion of the time without food, took
Kaskaskia by surprise, 4 July. The other French villages in that quarter
followed suit and surrendered at discretion. The Illinois country was thus
captured without the firing of a gun or the loss of a man. Clark conciliated the
surrounding Indian tribes, changing enemies into friends. All this tended to
alarm the British. Governor Hamilton at Detroit marched a large force, mostly
Indians, and retook Vincennes early in December of that year.
This intelligence soon reached Kaskaskia. "I must take Hamilton,
or he will take me," said Clark; and with fewer than 170 men, all told,
he marched across the country in midwinter, through the submerged hinds of the
Wabash and its tributaries, sometimes breaking the ice, too thin to bear them,
often wading up to their armpits in water, with scanty food, but buoyed up by
patriotic hopes. They at length appeared before the astonished garrison, plied
successfully their unerring rifles, and in a few hours Col. Hamilton yielded up
the fort, surrendering to Clark and his ragged followers, 24 February, 1779. The
weakness of his force and the poverty of Virginia alone prevented his attempting
the capture of Detroit. Early in 1780 Clark established Fort Jefferson, a little
below the mouth of the Ohio. Hearing of the approach of a formidable British and
Indian force against Cahokia, his upper garrison, and the Spanish settlement of
St. Louis, Clark hastened with a party to the relief of Cahokia, reaching there
just in time to repel the enemy. Learning from them that another large force was
marching to Kentucky, he hastened there on foot, with but two companions,
leaving his Illinois troops to follow the retreating enemy to their towns on
Rock river, which they found deserted and destroyed. On reaching Kentucky, Clark
learned of Bird's invasion, capturing Martin's and Ruddell's stations, with 340
prisoners, when he hastily gathered a thousand men, invaded the Shawnee country,
defeated the Indians, and laid waste their villages.
Once more Clark's attention was turned toward Detroit, the headquarters of
British power and influence in the northwest, whence savage war-parties were
constantly sent forth to harass and destroy the infant settlements of Kentucky.
Going to Virginia, he concerted with Governor
Jefferson and council a campaign against Detroit, which met the approval and
assistance of General Washington. Before it
could be carried into effect, Arnold's invasion of Virginia in January, 1781,
occurred, when Clark temporarily headed 240 riflemen and ambuscaded a party of
the enemy at Hood's, on James river; and then hastened forward, with the
commission of brigadier-general, for the execution of his scheme against
Detroit. But it miscarried, owing to the poverty of Virginia, the difficulty of
raising an adequate force with inadequate means, and the powerful opposition of
the enemy, headed by Brant, the great Mohawk chief, McKee, Girty, and other
border leaders, who attacked Clark's detachment and invaded the Bear-grass
settlements around Louisville.
In 1782, after the British and Indian attack on Bryan's station, and the
disastrous defeat of the Kentuckians at the Blue Licks, Clark led forth 1,000
men, driving back the savages on Big Miami, and destroying their villages and
means of sustenance. This was Clark's last important service, as his expedition
up the Wabash in 1786, and his efforts in behalf of France in 1793-'4, against
the Spaniards on the Mississippi, proved abortive. The freedom of Clark's early
life had unfitted him for domestic happiness, and he never married. A tradition
is preserved in the family that he was fascinated with the beauty of the
daughter of the Spanish governor of St. Louis when he relieved that post from an
Indian attack. Observing a want of courage in the governor, he broke off his
addresses to the girl, saying to his friends: "I will not be the father
of a race of cowards."
His last years were spent alone and in poverty, in a rude dwelling on Corn
island, until his sister took him to her home at Locust Grove, near Louisville.
He felt keenly what he considered the ingratitude of the republic in leaving him
in poverty and obscurity, and when the state of Virginia sent him a sword, he
received the compliments of the committee in gloomy silence. Then he exclaimed :
"When Virginia needed a sword, I gave her one. She sends me now a toy. I
want bread!" He thrust the sword into the ground and broke it with his
crutch.
Clark was tall and commanding, brave and full of resources, possessing the
affection and confidence of his men. All that rich domain northwest of the Ohio
was secured to the republic, at the peace of 1783, in consequence of his
prowess. His grave is in Cave Hill cemetery at Louisville, marked by a little
headstone bearing the letters G. R.C. It is said that not half a dozen people in
the United States can point, it out.
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