President Jefferson was a gaunt, thin-legged, sandy-haired, homely man, careless of his clothes and simple in his customs, but he passionately loved his country, and he had great dreams for it. His dreams he made come true.
He long had been fascinated by the western half of the continent. His keen hazel eyes had pored over the rude maps, largely guesswork, sketched by adventurers and fur-hunters. These eyes had travelled up the water-way of the uncertain Missouri, to the Stony Mountains, as they were called; thence across the Stony Mountains, in search of that mysterious Columbia River, discovered and christened by an American. Twice he had urged the exploration of the Columbia region, and twice explorers had started, but had been turned back. Now, as President, he clung to his dream of gaining new lands and new commerce to the American flag; and scarcely had Minister Livingston been sent the instructions to open the Mississippi, than President Jefferson proceeded with plans for opening another, longer trail, that should reach from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
He had in mind the person who could lead on such a trip: young Captain Meriwether Lewis of the First Infantry, U. S. A.; his private secretary at $500 a year, and to him like an own son. They were together day and night, they loved each other.
A Virginian, of prominent family, was Captain Lewis, and now barely twenty-nine years of age. Slim, erect, sunny-haired, flashing blue-eyed, handsome and brave, he had volunteered before to explore through the farthest Northwest, but had been needed elsewhere. This time President Jefferson wisely granted him his wish, and asked him to make an estimate of the expenses for a Government exploring expedition by officers and men, from St. Louis up the Missouri River and across the mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
Young Captain Lewis figured, and soon handed in his estimate. He was of the opinion that at an expense of $2500, which would cover everything, a party of eighteen men might travel across-country from the Mississippi River, over the mountains, and to the Pacific Ocean and back again! He had figured very closely, had young Captain Lewis—perhaps because he was so anxious to go.
President Jefferson accepted the estimate of $2500, and in his message of January 18, 1803, to Congress, he proposed the expedition. He urged that at this small expense a party of soldiers, well led, could in two summers map a trail clear to the western ocean; bring back valuable information upon climate, soil and peoples, and make Americans better acquainted with their own continent; also encourage the traders and trappers to use the Missouri River as a highway to and from the Indians, thus competing with the British of Canada.
Congress voted to apply the $2500 on the proposed expedition. We may imagine how the tall, homely President Jefferson beamed—he, who so firmly believed in the expansion of American trade, and the onward march of the American flag. And we may imagine how young Captain Lewis glowed with joy, when now he might be definitely named as the leader to carry the flag.
President Jefferson advised him to go at once to Philadelphia, and study botany, geology, astronomy, surveying, and all the other sciences and methods that would enable him to make a complete report upon the new country. At Lancaster, nearby, the celebrated Henry flint-lock rifles were manufactured, and he could attend to equipping his party with these high-grade guns, turned out according to his own directions.
There should be two leaders, to provide against accident to one. Whom would he have, as comrade? He asked for his friend, William Clark, younger brother to the famed General George Rogers Clark, who in the Revolution had won the country west of the Alleghanies from the British and the Indians, afterward had saved the Ohio Valley from the angry redmen, and then had defied the Spaniards who would claim the Mississippi.
As cadet only seventeen years old, and as stripling lieutenant appointed by Washington, William Clark himself had fought to keep this fertile region white. “A youth of solid and promising parts and as brave as Cæsar,” was said of him, in those terrible days when the Shawnees, the Mohawks and all declared: “No white man’s cabin shall smoke beyond the Ohio.”