In January 1804, Captain Edward Preble sent Lieutenant Stephen Decatur the following instructions: “It is my order that you proceed to Tripoli…enter that harbor in the night, board the Philadelphia, burn her and make good your retreat with the Intrepid.” The plan was audacious and filled with risk as the Philadelphia was surrounded by a dozen Tripolitan warships. On the evening of February 16, Decatur entered the harbor and the Intrepid slowly drifted towards the Philadelphia, whose guards hailed the ship asking its intention. Decatur’s Sicilian pilot stated his ship had lost its anchor in the storm and requested permission to tie his ship to theirs for the night and they agreed.

On May 10, 1801, Tripoli declared war on the United States, hoping to coerce President Thomas Jefferson to increase tribute payments, but Jefferson felt the honor of the United States was at stake and he refused. Instead, Jefferson sent Commodore Richard Dale and a small fleet of American frigates to impose a blockade of Tripoli. In September 1803, to better prosecute the war, additional warships were sent to the Mediterranean under the command of Captain Edward Preble along with a star-studded cast of future naval heroes including Oliver Hazard Perry, Issac Hull, Stephen Decatur, and John Rodgers. But before Preble’s fleet was on station and aggressive action could be taken, one of the American ships, the frigate USS Philadelphia under Captain William Bainbridge, met with disaster.

For several centuries, the northern crescent of Africa had been controlled by the Ottoman Empire and consisted of several puppet states including Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli. Each of these Muslim provinces, known collectively as the Barbary States, derived their main revenue from seizing unarmed merchant ships, taking the crews prisoner, and offering to return them for a ransom payment, or, failing that, selling them into slavery. After the American Revolution, as American merchantmen began to ply the waters of the Mediterranean without the protection of the Royal Navy, they suffered the same fate.

The Corps of Discovery began its final push for home in the summer of 1806. The last stretch went fast and between the Missouri’s strong current and an even stronger desire to get home, the men averaged almost eighty miles a day. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had taken thirty men, mostly civilians, and molded them into a fine-tuned, cohesive military unit that had faced every hardship and overcome every obstacle using just their innate skills and faith in each other to complete the greatest expedition in American history.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the Pacific Ocean in November 1805 and built Fort Clatsop on a small bluff roughly three miles upstream from the Columbia. It was here they would spend their final winter away from home, reflecting on their journey thus far, and the hopes for finding a practical trade route from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, between the troublesome Chinook Indians, miserable weather, and a monotonous diet, it would prove to be a most unpleasant three months.

On September 11, 1805, after making final preparations at a camp Lewis and Clark dubbed “Traveler’s Rest,” the Corps of Discovery started up the Lolo Trail towards what would be the most demanding stretch of the entire expedition. The trail was narrow and there was no game to hunt. The pack horses struggled as well and were close to starvation as there was little or no grass on which to feed. Between fatigued men and horses, snow, and a wretched trail, the Corps made barely ten miles a day. Finally, on September 22, as the men were reaching their breaking points, the Corps emerged from their mountain odyssey and found their way to a village of the Nez Perce, the largest and most powerful tribe in the Pacific Northwest.

In late July 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition entered the Rockies, searching for the Shoshone from whom they hoped to purchase horses for their journey over the mountains. Lewis led scouting parties up an Indian trail that led to Lemhi Pass, and on August 12, one of the most memorable days of the expedition, became the first American to cross the Continental Divide. The next day Lewis finally found the elusive Shoshone. On August 17, in a script seemingly out of Hollywood, as the captains and Shoshone Chief Cameahwait sat down for a council, Sacagawea shrieked and began hugging the chief; turns out Cameahwait was Sacagawea’s brother! Fortune was definitely shining on Lewis and Clark.

On May 26, 1804, Captain Meriwether Lewis noted in his journal that he “beheld the Rocky Mountains for the first time…covered with snow and the sun shone on it to give me the most satisfactory view.” Soon thereafter, the Corps came upon the Missouri River Breaks, what Captain Clark called the “Deserts of America,” a stretch of 160 miles running from today’s Fort Benton to Fort Peck Lake, where the Missouri courses between 300 foot tall canyon walls; it remains one of the most remote parts of America. But perhaps the most wondrous site they experienced on their entire journey was the Great Falls of the Missouri, which Lewis called “the grandest site I ever beheld.”

The Corps of Discovery arrived at the Mandan villages near present day Bismarck, North Dakota, in late October 1804 and immediately began work on Fort Mandan on the north bank Missouri River. While at Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark met a French fur trader named Toussaint Charbonneau and his two teenage Shoshone wives who Charbonneau had won in a bet. They hired Charbonneau and his fifteen-year-old wife, Sacagawea, who was six months pregnant, as interpreters. On April 7, 1805, Lewis sent the keelboat back down river to St. Louis with detailed maps of lands west of the Mississippi and extensive reports written by the captains, as well as a treasure trove for President Jefferson, including almost two hundred specimens.

On October 14, 1803, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark met in Clarksville, Indiana Territory, and commenced the most famous partnership in American history. They planned to leave with the spring thaw and reach the Mandan villages, 1,300 river miles above St. Louis, and spend the winter there before proceeding west. On May 21, 1804, the Corps pushed out into the current of the Missouri and, as the men moved north, they entered an enchanting land that very few would ever see again. But despite the idyllic surroundings, the Corps of Discovery was still an independent military expedition traveling in hostile territory. 

In March 1801, Captain Meriwether Lewis received a letter from Thomas Jefferson, the newly inaugurated president and a family friend, asking Lewis to become his private secretary. At the time, Lewis was a twenty-seven-year-old captain serving as the paymaster for the First Infantry Regiment. Over the next two years, Jefferson tutored Lewis on the lands west of the Mississippi and in the sciences of astronomy, botany, and anatomy in anticipation of an exploratory expedition to the Pacific Ocean. But both Jefferson and Lewis recognized the need to find a capable second officer for the expedition, and the man Lewis wanted to fill this coveted position was William Clark.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson drafted his official instructions for a great expedition to explore the Louisiana Territory and asked his private secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead it. Once assembled, the Corps of Discovery would operate like a small frontier garrison with rigidly maintained discipline. In the end, the group went forward remarkably prepared for what they would encounter over the next few years, a testament to the thorough planning of President Jefferson.

The dream of finding an all water route across North America, the mythical Northwest Passage, had been imagined since the time of Christopher Columbus, but three hundred years after the Admiral of the Ocean Seas completed his epic voyages, the vast interior of the continent was still essentially unknown to Europeans. As early as 1783, Thomas Jefferson had wanted to send an expedition to explore and chart the great unknown west of the Mississippi, and over the next twenty years, Jefferson tried on several occasions to enlist the support of some brave adventurer to undertake the exploration but with no success.

The midnight deal Robert Livingston, United States Minister to France, struck with French Finance Minister Francois Barbe-Marbois to purchase the Louisiana Territory was arguably the most impactful treaty in the history of the United States. While the purchase seemed like a gift from heaven, there were several significant issues with it. For one, the American commissioners were not authorized to purchase Louisiana; they had been instructed to purchase New Orleans and West Florida. Second, they had only been authorized to spend $10 million; they had exceeded that amount by half. Finally, there remained the legality of the purchase as the Constitution did not specifically grant the executive branch the power to purchase new lands.

When word leaked out that Spain had secretly agreed to transfer Louisiana and, possibly Florida, to France, the news hit like a thunderbolt. President Thomas Jefferson fully understood the significance of trading a weakened Spain for a powerful Napoleonic France as the country’s neighbor. In April 1802, Jefferson wrote to Robert Livingston, U.S. minister to France, to inform Napoleon, “There is on the globe one single spot the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market.” Jefferson directed Livingston, who had been busy for months laying the foundation for the purchase of New Orleans, to warn Napoleon that France acquiring Louisiana “rendered it impossible that France and the United States can continue long friends.”

Because of several treaties in the 18th century, Spain controlled the entire west bank of the Mississippi and the east bank for a stretch of 150 miles, from Natchez to the Gulf of Mexico. Especially unfortunate for western Americans, Spain also controlled the river port of New Orleans, the key to the continent. The rapid influx of Americans into the region following the American Revolution became a great concern for Spanish officials, as the population of Kentucky and Tennessee grew tenfold, from 30,000 to 300,000, between 1784 and 1800.

In 1682, Robert de la Salle, a French explorer and fur trader, reached the mouth of the Mississippi River and claimed the interior of North America for King Louis XIV. Four decades later, Jean-Baptiste de Bienville founded New Orleans, creating a massive strategic arc across North America stretching from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico. And from within this domain, the French controlled the core of the continent and the hugely profitable fur trade. But their hold did not go unchallenged and in a series of wars throughout the eighteenth century, the British dispossessed the French of its colonies in North America. As the final war drew to a close, France secretly transferred Louisiana and the river port of New Orleans to Spain rather than have Louisiana fall into British hands. When Napoleon came to power in 1799, he had visions of reestablishing a North American empire and in October 1800, he forced Spain’s King Carlos IV to give Louisiana back to France. 

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced into the Second Continental Congress what has come to be known as the Lee Resolution, calling for a complete separation from Great Britain. This leap of faith into the unknown space of independence finally had been publicly demanded and a contentious debate ensued. Congress created a committee to draft a declaration of independence in the event they chose that course of action. The committee included Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, and Thomas Jefferson, and chose Jefferson to be the main penman.