PRESIDENT THOMAS JEFFERSON’S BIGGEST FAILURE?
A Lesson In How Time Changes Perceptions
Dear Readers: This American’s brain is fried from watching & re-watching a debate between two congressional candidates, an AOC-like Democrat and an America-First Republican. [Hopefully, my brain will recover soon so I can finish my article.] In the meantime, I resurrected this article I wrote for local newspapers last year. I hope you enjoy it. While you are reading this, I will be attending a Buffalo Roundup. Seriously. Diane
“The Lewis & Clark Expedition Was A Failure”
It is hard for any 21st Century American to view The Corps of Discovery’s 8,000-mile journey from coast to coast, crossing some lands yet unseen by any human being, as a failure. But, THAT is just how most Americans, politicians and media of the early 19th Century viewed the expedition’s results.
President Thomas Jefferson and his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, worked hand in hand beginning in 1802, researching and organizing. They studied what was already known about the Louisiana Purchase’s terrain, how to reach the Pacific Ocean overland, what was needed to reach & return, and many other topics prior to launching this very risky expedition.
Lewis was so intimately familiar with Jefferson’s thoughts that our third president needed only to issue the following final instructions to him.
“The object of your mission is single, the direct water communication from sea to sea formed by the bed of the Missouri & perhaps the Oregon.” [Writer’s Note: It is unclear what Jefferson meant by “Oregon.” In earlier writings Jefferson referred to “Oregon” as a river.]
The existence of such a waterway, called the Northwest Passage, had been speculated upon and dreamed about for generations. Numerous explorers had tried and failed to find this mythical waterway. And Lewis & Clark also failed. This failure, coming just a few years after a similar failure by a Canadian explorer, resulted in the death knell for this long-held myth.
The 828,000 square miles of the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of our young republic, from New Orleans north to the present-day southern edges of Alberta & Saskatchewan, Canada. It included all of present-day Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota, Missouri, Iowa and parts of present-day Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota.
Yet, seven years after the Corps’ return to civilization (September, 1806), the Louisiana Purchase ($15Mil) didn’t seem like much of a bargain: The Indians were up in arms, American companies had failed to establish trading posts in the West, the great northwestern empire was still to be determined, and the distances involved seemed to preclude any significant economic activity in the territory called Louisiana.
The passage of time certainly changes perceptions. Without Jefferson’s vision would America have become the world leader we became after World War II?