Lewis and Clark Read Free Page A

country for American settlement the following year, Clark was chosen to scout Spanish positions on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers for General Wayne, his commander. Meriwether Lewis, joining Clark’s rifle company in 1795, found the outgoing lieutenant not only an able commander but a friend. The following year, however, poor health and financial problems at home forced Clark to resign, and for the last seven years, he had been living on Mulberry Hill, his family’s plantation in Kentucky.
    On June 19, Lewis wrote to Clark, telling him of the expedition and suggesting he take part in it. Although Lewis had been named leader of the expedition by Jefferson, he courteously offered Clark a partnership: “If therefore there is anything under those circumstances, in this enterprise, which would induce you to participate with me in it’s fatiegues, it’s dangers and it’s honors, believe me there is no man on earth with whom I should feel equal pleasure in sharing them as with yourself; I make this communication to you with the privity of the President, who expresses an anxious wish that you would consent to join me in this enterprise.”
    By July, Lewis had received no answer from Clark, and he became impatient to begin the expedition. On July 26, he wrote to Jefferson to say that a fellow officer, Lieutenant Moses Hook, would be happy to accompany him if he did not hear from Clark.
    But it was more than a month before Lewis was able to leave Pittsburgh. The boat builder had promised the boat would be ready on July 20, but the vessel was not completed until August 31. In the meantime, Clark’s answer arrived, and the great adventure became the Lewis and Clark - not the Lewis and Hook - Expedition.
    Clark had not delayed in answering; the mail had taken a long time going to and from his Kentucky farm. He had answered Lewis’s letter the day after receiving it, after discussing the adventure with his brother. “This is an amence undertaking fraited with numerous dificulties,” he wrote, “but my freind I can assure you that no man lives with whome I would prefur to undertake & share the Dificulties of Such a trip than yourself.”
    Although Lewis had promised Clark that he would be equal in rank, and the president had requested a captain’s commission for him, the War Department made him only a second lieutenant, a grade lower than his rank when he had resigned. Clark was disappointed, and Lewis wrote to his friend: “I think it will be best to let none of our party or any other persons know any thing about the grade, you will observe that [it] has no effect upon your compensation, which by G d, shall be equal to my own.”
    While their slow exchange of letters delayed their meeting, the American negotiators in Paris had been successful. Napoleon, with his affairs in the Americas going badly, and a war with Britain looming, offered to sell all of Louisiana for $15 million. It was more than the Americans were authorized to pay, but would more than double the size of the United States – at a cost of less than three cents an acre. The Americans snatched up the bargain.
    The agreement was dated April 30, 1803; the news reached the United States on July 14, meaning Lewis and Clark would be traveling on American territory as far as the Rocky Mountains. Once across the Continental Divide, the expedition would be in the Oregon country, which stretched from the mountains to the Pacific, and from California northward. The United States laid claim to this region based on the discovery of the Columbia River in 1792 by Captain Robert Gray, who named the river after his ship, the Columbia. Great Britain and Spain also claimed Oregon, but the United States’ claim was a strong one, and the explorations of Lewis and Clark would strengthen it. Jefferson immediately wrote to tell Lewis the news.
    The day the long-overdue keelboat was completed, Lewis started down the Ohio with his dog Seaman, a half dozen recruits, and a heavily laden