Friends visit him at Monticello
In 1804 Jefferson was elected president again by a greater majority than before. After serving a second term, he, like Washington, refused to be president for a third time. He retired to Monticello, where he spent his last days pleasantly and where hundreds of friends from all parts of America and Europe came to consult him. The people called him the "Sage of Monticello."
Died July 4, 1826
Jefferson lived to see the first two great states, Louisiana and Missouri, carved out of the Louisiana Purchase. He died at Monticello, July 4, 1826. On the same day, at Quincy, Massachusetts, died his longtime friend, John Adams. These two patriots, one the writer the other the defender of the Declaration of Independence, died just half a century after it was signed.
LEWIS AND CLARK, AMERICAN EXPLORERS IN THE OREGON COUNTRY
A vast unexplored country
Gray visits the Pacific
118. Discovery of the Columbia River. The purchase of the Louisiana territory by Jefferson opened up a great new field for settlers. It was necessary to know something about the new territory. It was a vast unexplored country stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rockies. The Pacific shore had already been visited by explorers. Boston merchants had sent Captain Robert Gray to the Pacific coast to buy furs of the Indians. He did not try to find an overland route, but sailed around South America and up the coast to Vancouver Island, where he obtained a rich cargo of furs. He then made his way across the Pacific to China, and came back to Boston by way of the Cape of Good Hope—the first American to carry the Stars and Stripes around the world.
Discovers the mouth of the Columbia