Thomas Jefferson
And The Louisiana Purchase
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Although Thomas Jefferson never traveled west of Virginia, he must be considered one of America's foremost influences on the American West. He was the central figure in obtaining the vast lands to the west of the Mississippi River known as the Louisiana Purchase and he systematically planned its exploration.

Jefferson is primarily known as the writer of the Declaration of Independence, the third President of the United States and the founder of the University of Virginia, yet his sense of adventure and discovery was a paramount influence in his life. In that regard, the West was his focus.

Jefferson, certainly among the most brilliant of our presidents and possibly our country, had an extremely complex mind. He was first of all a great visionary and could think conceptually and write poetically. Second, he had an inventive mind of the first rank, always seeking ways of improvement. Third, he had a detailed mind often with a tendency to classify items, almost tediously. In modern terms, he was both strongly right AND left brained (both conceptual and analytical). This great mind was put to use with the purchase of Louisiana in 1803.

It was during 1803 that the Spanish transferred claims to Louisiana to France. At that time, Louisiana was loosely defined as that territory to the west of the Mississippi River and included all the land surrounding the Mississippi River tributaries, including the Missouri, the Platte, the Arkansas, the Washita (or Ouachita) and the Red Rivers. Jefferson was most concerned, however, with New Orleans, the crucial city at the base of the Mississippi. The Crescent city served as the gateway to North America's interior and the center of river trade. With New Orleans within America's control, the future of the regions north would no longer be in doubt because immigration west from the United States could not be stemmed.

Negotiations began at once in France for the purchase of New Orleans. Robert R. Livingston, the Minister to France, began negotiations with France's Napoleon. Future U.S. President, James Monroe was sent from America by Jefferson to team with Livingston. When Napoleon offered to sell all of Louisiana to the United States, Livingston and Monroe, boldly exceeded their authority and accepted.

Meanwhile, Jefferson the adventurer and explorer, was already making plans to search the Missouri River valley and further to determine if a Northwest water-route to the Pacific Ocean could be found possibly linking (with only a minor land portage) the Missouri River with that of the Columbia. Jefferson was already looking at the West and desiring answers to many questions in addition to the best possible route from East to West. He wanted to know about the Indians (and their languages) beyond the Mandan's of the Dakotas, the longitude and latitudes of the rivers at their source, and of the animals and plants unique to the West; even the fertility of the soils.

The handpicked leader was to be his own personal secretary (since 1801), Meriwether Lewis, who had had previous military and Indian experience. Jefferson provided extensive personal time and training to Lewis. Together they prepared a plan for the journey and Lewis carefully purchased the needed supplies. The plotted the invention of a keelboat designed to go against the currents of the Mississippi and the Missouri. Jefferson sent Lewis to Philadelphia to get technical advice and suggestions about desirable objects of observation. Lewis chose William Clark, the younger brother of George Rogers Clark, to be the co-leader of this exploration party. Clark, also with military and Indian experience, had skills in map making and the drawing of birds and animals.

In the spring of 1804, forty-eight men began their trek to the headwaters of the Missouri Rivers and beyond. They wintered in North Dakota and by August of 1805 approached the Continental Divide. They descended the Clearwater and Columbia Rivers, reaching the Pacific Ocean in November. They arrived back in St. Louis in September 1806. To the delight of Jefferson and the nation, voluminous notes of great value to scientists and explorers resulted. Their expedition incalculably influenced the history of the West.

Although the desire to discover a Northwest Passage to the Pacific and the consequent mapping of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers were Jefferson's greatest exploratory priority, Jefferson was also interested in the tributaries of the Mississippi south of the Missouri, chiefly the Arkansas and the Red. William Dunbar, a plantation owner and "pioneer scientist" living near Natchez, was asked by Jefferson to explore these rivers by ascending one, then crossing overland to the other and following it back to the Mississippi. However, there were threats from the Osage nation on the Arkansas and from the Spanish on the Red, so in 1804-05, Dunbar and Dr. George Hunter of Philadelphia (sent along for scientific reinforcement) explored the Washita. Dunbar and Hunter were the first to record the existence of mineral wells at Hot Springs.

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Historical Portrayal Setting
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The Red River still held Jefferson's considerable interest. In 1806, Thomas Freeman, an engineer, and Dr. Peter Custus, a botanist, started the exploratory journey with twenty-four men only to be met by Spanish troops about 600 miles later. Following Jefferson's written instructions, they returned rather than challenge the Spaniards.

Meanwhile, others explorations were being originated outside of Jefferson's control. The most significant was that of Zebulon Pike, who was commissioned by General James Wilkinson to explore the far northern waters of the Mississippi River. Pike mistakenly thought that he had discovered the river's source. Jefferson was to find great value in Pike's journal. A second Pike enterprise (1806-07) into the Southwest took him beyond the peak in Colorado that bears his name to the headwaters of the Arkansas River. On his return, Pike was arrested by Spanish soldiers, imprisoned in Santa Fe, and later deported to the U. S., deprived of all records of his journey.

Pike's explorations may have been a part of an elaborate plan of Aaron Burr and General Wilkinson, to break off the Louisiana Purchase and other lands west of the Alleghenies, and establish a new country with Burr as its president and New Orleans as the capital. Burr had been Jefferson's Vice President during his first term. However, in July, 1804 Burr, in a duel, shot his political rival Alexander Hamilton to death. Then a fugitive in both New York and New Jersey, Burr was to follow a treasonous political adventure. With 60 followers and a bizarre flotilla of five or six flatboats, Burr reached the lower Mississippi in the summer of 1806. Arrested and indicted for treason, Burr was tried before Chief Justice Marshall, whose interpretation of the constitutional definition of "levying war" resulted in Burr's acquittal in 1807. Jefferson followed this unfolding Burr story with great fascination. Meanwhile, Zebulon Pike was exonerated by the Secretary of War, Henry Dearborn, for whom quite possibly he had been gathering secret information.

Although the expeditions of Lewis and Clark to the Pacific and that of Dunbar and Hunter up the Washita River to Hot Springs, were the only true exploratory "successes" in the Louisiana Purchase during Jefferson's presidency, his vision for the West was in full flower as he left office. Through his efforts, along with the diplomacy of Livingston and Monroe, America had gained an extraordinary amount of new territory that was to unlock a fresh and vast body of information. As the patron of exploration, Jefferson had unleashed an unquenchable thirst for Western expansion. The Louisiana Purchase is certainly among Jefferson's most significant legacies.

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