Compare And Contrast Monroe And Thomas Jefferson

Jack Chase

Hist. 17A

Kelly Gerhold

11/00/2017

Lewis & Clark Endeavors

In 1803, France is at war with Britain and the US is doing what they can to avoid becoming any part of their conflict. At this time, Thomas Jefferson is president of the United States and wants to procure other opportunities to expand the US. “Napoleon, who had now risen to power in the French Revolution, threatened to block American access to the important port of New Orleans on the Mississippi River.”(1) Obtaining Louisiana would allow trade in the states to become more accessible on an international scale through the convenience of the New Orleans ports adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico. Having a great deal of confidence in his protégé James Monroe, Jefferson sent him to

As a fall back plan, in case things in Paris didn’t go as planned, Jefferson also had some negotiators go to Britain to discuss other possible alliances. Napoleon, whom was leading a revolution also needed money and decided to sell the entirety of Louisiana to America for the low price of 15 million. Though the federal government wasn’t specifically defined as having the authority to make a purchase such as that but Jefferson thought about being “troubled by the inconsistency, but in the end decided that the Constitution's treaty-making provisions allowed him room to act.”(1) This was known as the Louisiana Purchase and it consists of land from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and allowed Americans to expand even further without worry of a foreign entity keeping them from doing so or causing tension between two countries with the necessity of the trade route for the US. Thomas Jefferson decides with all of the new territory and so much of it undiscovered that he needs to get a group together that will find out everything they can about the new territories and locate a possible connection between the Mississippi River and

“The Lewis and Clark Expedition paddled its way down the Ohio as it prepared the Expedition to be launched officially from Camp Wood, just outside St. Louis, in the summer of 1804” (2), and the Corps of Discovery’s official mission would commence near the outskirts of St. Louis in 1804 where they would move upstream of the Missouri River to a place called Fart Mandan that was used at a trading post where they would wait out the winter. The Corps were tested with several bumps in the road that would slow and threatened the journey like the insects they would encounter, heat they would have to endure and injuries that were unavoidable given the working conditions they were under. There was a man by the name of Charles Floyd, that Lewis and Clark liked the most out of the crew, died of what was labeled as his appendix bursting and was “the only person to die on the two and one-half year journey.” As they continued forward in their quest they eventually make it to a village inhabited by the Mandan Indians whom belonged to a large trade network in the West. This is where they recruited a Frenchman by the name of Toussaint Charbonneau, that they would use as a means of translation between their current