Lewis and Clark Expedition, Part 3: Leaders of the Corps of Discovery
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.
Tom Hand, creator and publisher of Americana Corner, discusses how Lewis and Clark came to lead the Corps of Discovery, and why it still matters today.
Images courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery - Smithsonian Institution, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Park Service, Wikipedia, National Guard eMuseum - Commonwealth of Kentucky, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Missouri Historical Society, Wikipedia - Amon Carter Museum of American Art.
In 1801, Meriwether Lewis was a Captain serving as the paymaster for the First Infantry Regiment of the United States Army. In March, he received a letter from Thomas Jefferson, the newly inaugurated President, asking Lewis to become his private secretary. Lewis, whose family was friends with the Jefferson clan, accepted at once, and thus began a close working relationship, one in which Jefferson became a father figure to Lewis and mentored his young subordinate on policy matters, including his dreams of western exploration and expansion.