History In January of 1803, President Thomas Jefferson got the idea of expanding our nation and exploring the lands to the west. With this idea, he went to congress to get an expedition approved, that would cost approximately 2,500 dollars.However, before he started making these preparations, he needed a leader and people to follow him. The person he chose was Meriwether Lewis because of his serving in the state militia and being a trusted leader there. So he sent a letter to him describing his intentions and Lewis decided to take the position as leader with William Clark as co Captain Lewis had previously served with Clark in the army. Meanwhile in France, Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France, was looking at selling a large portion of what is now the western United States for a price of fifteen million dollars. This was known as the louisiana purchase which nearly doubled the size of the United States (see Figure 2) This purchase made the expedition that Thomas Jefferson was waiting for even more iminite. In May of 1804 Lewis and clark set out on one of the largest and most challenging expeditions of all time ,an expedition to find a different …show more content…
With his knowledge of literature, Lewis began writing journals about everything he saw, his scientific studies, his personal thoughts, and orders given by people. This ability to read and write helped him gain ranks in the army thus leading Thomas Jefferson to hire Lewis as his personal secretary, which allowed him to take the opportunity to further his studies on his scientific achievements. This unique ability to read and write led to Thomas Jefferson asking Lewis to write down everything about the exploration west, Lewis did write down every detail of every single day. Everything we know about the life of meriwether lewis came from the journals he