What Was the Lewis and Clark Expedition?

In history books the names of two men, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, are always linked. Their names could almost be one word: LewisandClark. They had much in common. They were both from Virginia. Both served in the US Army in the late 1700s, where they became friends. Both men were intelligent and brave. Born leaders, they were experienced woodsmen who could survive in the wild. But their names are linked because together they were cocaptains of a famous journey across the North American wilderness. They headed up a two-year-long trip all the way from the Midwest to the Pacific Ocean—and back again. Their journey became known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

In 1801, when Thomas Jefferson became the third president, the country was made up of seventeen states. The country went only as far west as the Mississippi River. In 1803 the United States paid France fifteen million dollars for a huge parcel of western land—828,000 square miles. The sale, which was called the Louisiana Purchase, more than doubled the size of the United States! In time, many states would be carved out of the land—Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska—as well as parts of other states—Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Louisiana.

President Jefferson believed that the future of America lay in the West. Now that so much new land belonged to the United States, he wanted to have it explored. He hoped to find a waterway across North America to the Pacific Ocean. He wanted to learn all about the western Indian tribes and their way of life. Controlling the rich western fur trade was another of Jefferson’s goals.

So what did Jefferson do? He planned for a party of explorers to take a river trip across North America. Nobody knew what they would find.

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was born April 13, 1743, in Shadwell, Virginia. At twenty-six, after his father died, he inherited a large estate and built a house called Monticello on it. Jefferson, who owned some two hundred slaves, lived at Monticello for most of his life, except for the years he spent in Paris and his eight years in the White House. At twenty-eight, he married Martha Wayles Skelton. They lived happily together until her death ten years later. Although Martha had given birth to six children, only two daughters lived to adulthood.

As a member of the Second Continental Congress, Jefferson wrote a document that is revered and respected to this day—the Declaration of Independence. After the thirteen colonies became the United States of America, Jefferson served as secretary of state under his Virginia neighbor, America’s first president, George Washington. In 1796, he became vice president under the second president, his old friend John Adams. Four years later he was elected as the third president of the United States, serving two terms, from 1801 to 1809. One of his foremost achievements was the Louisiana Purchase. Thomas Jefferson died on the same day as John Adams. That day was July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.