Lewis and Clark and Exploring the Louisiana Purchase

Klepeis, Alicia Z. Lewis and Clark and Exploring the Louisiana Purchase. Part of the Primary Sources of Westward Expansion. 2018. 64p. ISBN 978-1502626394. Available at 917.8 KLE on the library shelves.

The new constitution of the United States described in details how states could join the fledgling country, but there were no directions on how to add territories not part of a state. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson had the opportunity of purchasing the Louisiana Territory, then controlled by France. There were no rules on how to do so, and no certainty there would be approval from the Congress, who controlled the purse strings. Jefferson forged ahead and struck a bargain with Napoleon to purchase over a million square miles of territory for $15 million, doubling the size of the country overnight with a largely unexplored and unknown area of the world for most Americans living on the East Coast.

Jefferson then commissioned a team to explore this new territory and exert American sovereignty over it. The Lewis and Clark expedition set out from St. Louis, then the westernmost point in the United States, and over the course of two years reached the Pacific in the Oregon territory and returned to St. Louis to report on their discoveries and the contacts they made with Native groups along the way. This expedition spurred western expansion and a race to the West Coast.

Fans of history will appreciate the quotes drawn from primary sources to support the text, and will see in their own words how people perceived these events at the time.    

Books in the Primary Sources of Westward Expansion series include Native American Resistance, Homesteading and Settling the Frontier, The Gold Rush, The Transcontinental Railroad, Lewis and Clark and Exploring the Louisiana Purchase, and Manifest Destiny and the Mexican-American War.