The Louisiana Purchase

Louisiana Purchase

The Louisiana Purchase was an incredible deal for the United

States, the final cost totaling less than five cents per acre at $15 million (about $283 million in today's dollars). France's land was mainly unexplored wilderness, and so the fertile soils and other valuable natural resources we know are present today might not have been factored in the relatively low cost at the time.

The Louisiana Purchase stretched from the Mississippi River to the beginning of the Rocky Mountains. Official boundaries were not determined, except that the eastern border ran from the source of the Mississippi River north to the 31 degrees north.

Present states that were included in part or whole of the Louisiana Purchase were: Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming.

Historical Context of the Louisiana Purchase

France controlled the vast stretches of land west of the Mississippi, known as Louisiana, from 1699 until 1762, the year it gave the land to its Spanish ally. The great French general Napoleon Bonaparte took back the land in 1800 and had every intention of asserting his presence in the region. Unfortunately for him, there were several reasons why selling the land was all but necessary:

• 
  A prominent French commander recently lost a fierce battle in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) that took up much needed resources and cut off the connection to the ports of North America’s southern coast.
  
• 
  French officials in the United States reported to Napoleon on the country's quickly increasing population. This highlighted the difficulty France might have in holding back the western frontier of American pioneers.
  
• 
  France did not have a strong enough navy to maintain control of lands so far away from home, separated by the Atlantic ocean.
  
• 
  Napoleon wanted to consolidate his resources so that he could focus on conquering England. Believing he lacked the troops and materials to wage an effective war, the French general wished to sell France's land to raise funds.
  

http://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/

The Louisiana Purchase did not prompt the expedition to explore west of the Mississippi; Lewis was already on his way across the Appalachians in the summer of 1803 when Jefferson sent him definite word of the diplomatic windfall that had occurred in Paris the previous April. Jefferson's hopes had always pointed toward eventual American penetration of the lands beyond the Mississippi, but the French decision to sell this vast territory presented the United States with an opportunity of which the president could only have dreamed for the distant future. Now an expedition became all the more important as an inspection and an assertion of sovereignty over the new empire.  [9]

Jefferson and Lewis agreed that there must be a second-in-command competent to carry on if something were to happen to the commander; Lewis's choice was his old army friend William Clark. Four years older than Lewis, he had also served several years in the army on the frontier and had been Lewis's immediate superior for a time. After resigning his captain's commission in 1796, he had engaged in family business in Kentucky and Indiana. Clark had visited Lewis in Washington and had made Jefferson's acquaintance. In accepting Lewis's offer, Clark wrote, "The enterprise &c. is Such as I have long anticipated"; his words suggest that the two friends had discussed the possibility of such an expedition, and that Jefferson may have earlier given them both some hint of his plans.  [10]

Jefferson had much more in mind, however. The captains were to open a highway for the American fur trade, to win over the Indians from Spanish or British influence, and to lay the foundation for what Jefferson hoped would be a carefully regulated trade and intercourse with the Indians that would avoid some of the evils of unrestrained competition and interracial conflict so common in American experience. Further, they were to observe and record the whole range of natural history and ethnology of the area and the possible resources for future settlers. Jefferson expected a great deal of two infantry officers, but they met the challenge.  [14]

Lewis, a student of plants and animals since boyhood, made significant additions to zoological and botanical knowledge, providing the first scientific descriptions of many new species. Only in recent decades have his contributions been fully appreciated. The captains also made the first attempt at a systematic record of the meteorology of the West and less successfully attempted to determine the latitude and longitude of significant geographical points.  [15]

Jefferson's instructions also reflected his lifelong interest in ethnology, and in carrying them out Lewis and Clark displayed an objectivity and tolerance rare in their generation. Lacking the conceptual tools of the modern anthropologist, they nonetheless provided the first general survey of the life and material culture of the village Indians of the Missouri, the Rocky Mountain tribes, and those of the Northwest Coast. They also achieved, on the whole, a record for peaceful cooperation with the Indians that few of their predecessors or successors could equal.  [16]

Lewis crossed the Appalachians in the summer of 1803, supervised the construction of his keelboat in Pittsburgh, and started down the Ohio on August 31. He picked up Clark at Clarksville, Indiana, and gathered the first of their recruits. Both leaders were commissioned officers in the army, and most of their men were enlisted in the army, some signed up especially for the trip, others already in the service and detailed for the expedition by their commanding officers. Lewis expected that Clark would hold the same captain's rank as he, but red tape in the Department of War resulted in Clark's receiving only a second lieutenant's commission. They concealed this embarrassing fact from the men, and Clark is always "Capt. C." in Lewis's journals. There was no disturbance in their remarkably harmonious relationship, and Lewis apparently treated Clark as "equal in every point of view," a partner whose abilities were complementary to his own. Nonetheless the situation irked Clark, who had been a captain in his earlier period of service and Lewis's superior officer. After the expedition's return he sent the commission back to the secretary of war as soon as possible, remarking that it had served its purpose, and in later years he concealed his lower official status from all but a few.  [19]

A long winter's stay across from St. Louis, at River Dubois in Illinois, waiting for spring and for the transfer of Louisiana to the United States, enabled the captains to gather their men, evaluate and discipline them, and collect some additional information—notably the personal advice of James Mackay and the Missouri River maps of John Evans (Atlas maps 7–12). By the spring of 1804 they had eliminated a few less desirable recruits, had given the rest some idea of what was expected of them, and were ready to begin the great adventure.

For the first stage of the journey, as far as the Mandan villages, they followed the footsteps of others. There were maps of the route, however sketchy, and the Indians had had some acquaintance with traders. In this period the captains devoted much time to informing the Indians of the change of sovereignty, to insuring as much as possible that the Indians transferred their nominal allegiance, and to alleviating intertribal conflicts. The journey was marred in this period by some disciplinary problems, by the death of Sergeant Charles Floyd—the only man of the Corps who died on the trip—near present Sioux City, Iowa, and by their nearly violent encounter with the Teton Sioux near present Pierre, South Dakota.

They passed the winter of 1804–5 at Fort Mandan, near the Mandan and Hidatsa villages in North Dakota; the wait for the Missouri to thaw allowed them to gather much information from the Indians on the geography as far as the Missouri headwaters. In April 1805, they sent back their heavy keelboat and some enlisted men and "proceeded on" up the Missouri in canoes and pirogues. With them now was the Shoshone woman Sacagawea, with her husband Toussaint Charbonneau and their infant son Jean Baptiste. More than four months of travel, including a month-long portage of the Great Falls of the Missouri, ended at the Continental Divide on the Montana-Idaho border, with the dawning realization that the portage to the waters of the Columbia would not be the simple matter they had hoped.  [20]

Promises of guns and trade maintained the expedition's friendly relations with the Shoshones; in exchange, the captains secured horses and guides for the trip across the mountains. They could not have known it beforehand, but they had come to one of the most difficult places for crossing the Rockies, and they had barely enough time to make the trip before winter closed the trails. After a cold, hungry trek across what Sergeant Patrick Gass called "this horrible mountainous desert," they reached the country of the Nez Perces on the Clearwater River in Idaho; there they built canoes and hurried on down the Clearwater, the Snake, and the Columbia to the Pacific.  [21] All the way from Fort Mandan they had journeyed through country known only to the native inhabitants, until they neared the mouth of the Columbia and reentered the world of known geography. Clark's note of November 7, 1805: "Ocian in view! O! the joy," though premature, expressed the emotions of them all.

They passed a dreary, damp winter at Fort Clatsop, on the Oregon side of the Columbia estuary, knowing that snow would delay their returning earlier. Nonetheless, they accomplished considerable scientific work there, and the journals are rich with ethnographic and natural history materials. Jefferson had considered the possibility of at least part of the party returning by sea, if they should meet any trading vessels on the coast. The captains had apparently abandoned this idea, and in any case they met no ships, though evidence of white contact with the local people was abundant.

On March 23, 1806, they began their return by canoe and horseback, delaying a month among the Nez Perces in Idaho waiting for the snow to melt in the Bitterroot Mountains. Having crossed the Bitterroots, they split the party. So confident were they now of their ability to survive that they separated in order to add to their geographical knowledge. Lewis crossed the Continental Divide to the northeast to find a shorter passage over the mountains and to explore the Marias River in present Montana, while Clark went southeast to travel down the Yellowstone. Lewis's trip led him to a tragic encounter on the Marias in which he and his men killed two Blackfeet, the only real violence of the trip. Clark's journey was relatively uneventful.

      Left Pittsburgh  [2] this day at 11 ock with a party of 11 hands 7 of which are soldiers, a pilot and three young men on trial they having proposed to go with me throughout the voyage.  [3] Arrived at Bruno's Island  [4] 3 miles below    halted a few minutes.    went on shore and being invited on by some of the gentlemen present to try my airgun  [5] which I had purchased brought it on shore charged it and fired myself seven times fifty five yards with pretty good success; after which a Mr. Blaze Cenas  [6] being unacquainted with the management of the gun suffered her to discharge herself accedentaly    the ball passed through the hat of a woman about 40 yards distanc cuting her temple about the fourth of the diameter of the ball; shee fell instantly and the blood gusing from her temple    we were all in the greatest consternation    supposed she was dead by [but] in a minute she revived to our enespressable satisfaction, and by examination we found the wound by no means mortal or even dangerous; called the hands aboard and proceeded to a ripple of McKee's rock*  [7] where we were obleged to get out all hands and lift the boat  [8] over about thirty yards; the river is extreemly low; said to be more so than it has been known for four years; about [blank] we passed another ripple near [erasure]    Past another bear or ripple with more dificulty than either of the others    halted for the night much fatiegued after labouring with my men all day—  [9]    the water being sufficiently temperate was much in our favor; gave my men some whiskey and retired to rest at 8 OClock—

       Arrived as Massac  [2]    engaged George Drewyer  [3] in the public service as an Indian Interpretter, contracted to pay him 25 dollards pr. month for his services.—    Mr Swan  [4] Assistant Millitary agent at that place advanced him thirty dollars on account of his pay.—

http://geography.about.com/od/historyofgeography/a/louisianapurcha.htm

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led a government-sponsored expedition to explore the vast wilderness of the west soon after the signing of the Louisiana Purchase. The team, also known as the Corps of Discovery, left St. Louis, Missouri in 1804 and returned to the same spot in 1806.

Traveling 8,000 miles (12,800 km), the expedition gathered huge amounts of information about the landscapes, flora (plants), fauna (animals), resources, and people (mostly Native Americans) it encountered across the vast territory of the Louisiana Purchase. The team first traveled northwest up the Missouri River, and traveled west from its end, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Bison, grizzly bears, prairie dogs, bighorn sheep, and antelope were just a few of the animals that Lewis and Clark encountered. The pair even had a couple of birds named after them: Clark’s nutcracker and Lewis’s woodpecker. In total, the journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition described 180 plants and 125 animals that were unknown to scientists at the time.

The expedition also led to the acquisition of the Oregon Territory, making the west further accessible to the pioneers coming from the east. Perhaps the biggest benefit to the trip, though, was that the United States government finally had a grasp on what exactly it had purchased. The Louisiana Purchase offered America what the Native Americans had known about for years: a variety of natural formations (waterfalls, mountains, plains, wetlands, among many others) covered by a wide array of wildlife and natural resources.