The Louisiana Purchase and Lewis & Clark Expedition
Above is a 42-minute full length documentary on Lewis and Clark, and their expedition.
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LEQ: How did the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis & Clark Expedition transform the nation?
The Louisiana Purchase was conducted in October 20th of 1803, by the third United States president, Thomas Jefferson. The Louisiana Territory was bought from France, and was approximately 828,000,000 square miles of territory, ranging from New Orleans northeast to the Great Lakes, and northwest of modern-day Montana. The adding of this territory to our nation more than doubled it's original size. It was bought at such a great bargain by Thomas Jefferson, with 4 cents per acre, sold by Napoleon, because France was in need of money for battles it was dealing with. After the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, Thomas Jefferson had the idea of conducting an expedition in the newly purchased land. He conducted this for the reasons of finding the fabled Northwest Passage (a mythical passage that the people in the time before the expedition believed to be real, it supposedly was a path taken through North America and lead from the Atlantic Ocean from the Pacific Ocean), to map the territory, and recording of the flora and fauna of the West, which meant bringing back specimens and keeping a journal of sketches and observations. He decided that his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis should lead the expedition and that William Clark, should co-lead alongside Lewis. The expedition was also conducted so that Lewis and Clark could map the territory, trade and communicate with the Indian tribes that lived in the Louisiana Territory, record and study the flora and fauna of the West (by bringing back specimens and keeping a journal including sketches), etc. The expedition lasted from 1804 to 1806. They ran along into many Indian tribes such as the Sioux, and tried to bring peace to the land, by trading with the Indians and negiotating. All of this changed and transformed our early nation because it opened up communications with the Indians and made allies with some of the tribes, it nearly doubled the size of our nation, and gave us a look scientifically into all of the new species and plants that populated the Louisiana Territory. **See sources (cited) used on Citations page (in the More tab)** |