The man Jefferson chose to lead the expedition was Meriwether Lewis, a former army officer, who had lived for two years in the White House as Jefferson's personal secretary. Like Jefferson, Lewis was a Virginia landowner. Jefferson had great respect for Lewis, writing that:
"Capt. Lewis is brave, prudent, habituated to the woods, & familiar with Indian manners & character. He is not regularly educated, but he possesses a great mass of accurate information on all the subjects of nature . . ."
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Grave site of Meriwether Lewis
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Jefferson believed that Lewis had the skills, intelligence, and fortitude to lead a group of explorers to find a route to the Pacific Ocean from the east that would facilitate trade and settlement, specifically along the Missouri River. He wanted Lewis to establish contact and hopefully peaceful relations with the Native Americans along the route, and to identify, describe, and send back samples of minerals, plants, and animals previously unknown to science. Lewis's estimate of how much this expedition would cost? Just $2,500 — an amount Congress approved. While Lewis invited William Clark to share leadership duties with him on the expedition, Lewis himself remained its undisputed head. Over the course of nearly two and a half years, he led a group of about 33 people, including (for more than half the trip) a young mother and her baby, safely across approximately 8,000 miles of territory almost entirely unknown to anyone other than its Native American inhabitants. After the expedition, Lewis was appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory.
Meriwether Lewis died tragically in October of 1809, just three years after the expedition ended, while traveling along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee to Washington, D.C., in order to prepare his journals for publication. Today, you can visit Lewis's grave at what is now the Meriwether Lewis Park in Tennessee, and view the monument erected in his honor. This tall stone column has been broken off at the top, symbolizing the sudden loss of Lewis, the great American explorer, in the prime of his life.
