Lewis & Clark: Journey to Another America

Topic 5: The Geo-Political Context of the Expedition
By James E. Lewis, Jr., Kalamazoo College

The following text is excerpted from the essay in Lewis & Clark: Journey to Another America

Your mission has been communicated to the Ministers here from France, Spain & Great Britain, and through them to their governments: and such assurances given them as to it's objects as we trust will satisfy them. the country of Louisiana having been ceded by Spain to France, the passport you have from the Minister of France, the representation of the present sovereign of the country, will be a protection with all it's subjects: And that from the Minister of England will entitle you to the friendly aid of any traders of that allegiance with whom you may happen to meet.
---Thomas Jefferson, instructions to Meriwether Lewis

I now have lost all hope of the waters of this river [the Marias] ever extending to N Latitude 50° though I still hope and think it more probable that both white earth river and milk river extend as far north as latd. 50°.
---Meriwether Lewis, journal entry, July 22, 1806

On successive Tuesdays in mid-January 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent important messages to Congress. The first asked the Senate to advise and consent to dispatching James Monroe on a special diplomatic mission to Paris to address the crisis caused by France's reacquisition of the vast province of Louisiana from Spain. The second called upon both houses of Congress to fund the expedition across Louisiana up the Missouri River, "even to the Western ocean," that would shortly be known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition. These two requests were hardly unrelated. The uncertain, overlapping, and evolving diplomatic claims to western North America formed a key element in the geopolitical context of the expedition. At the same time, the relationship between Monroe's mission and the Lewis and Clark Expedition was not as simple as hindsight might suggest. To see the mission and the expedition as twin expressions of that confident expectation of the nation's continental future that would later be called "manifest destiny" is, quite simply, to misunderstand them.

From its initial planning in January 1803 to its eventual return to St. Louis in September 1806, the expedition unfolded within a geopolitical context that was crowded and unstable. East of the Rocky Mountains, France, Spain, and Great Britain asserted claims or exercised influence. West of the Rockies, Lewis and Clark traveled through some of the most hotly contested lands in North America, as Spain, Great Britain, the United States, and Russia had each staked a claim in the region. Everywhere they went, moreover, the members of the expedition would pass through lands controlled or contested by one or more of the dozens of Indian nations between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. But the geopolitical context of the expedition extended far beyond western North America to include eastern Asia and western Europe. Across the Pacific was China, whose teas, silks, porcelains, and spices fueled hopes of finding a more direct and less costly trade route. Across the Atlantic were France and Great Britain, whose descent into renewed warfare in the spring of 1803 meant new problems and opportunities for American policymakers.

Changing circumstances dramatically altered Jefferson's, and Lewis and Clark's, understanding of the context of the expedition over time. By examining their thinking at key points from early 1803 to late 1806, it becomes apparent that the expedition fit within a far more limited vision of national expansion than the concept of "manifest destiny" would suggest.

Photo credit: Transfer of Louisiana by Fred Kaiser. In James W. Buel, ed, Louisiana and the Fair. St. Louis, World's Progress Publishing Co., 1904. Copyprint of engraving. Missouri Historical Society Library.

1. The author refers briefly to the mid-nineteenth-century idea of "manifest destiny." What does that concept mean to you? Where have you encountered it before? To what events has it generally been applied?

2. How did the uncertainty about--and the changing status of-- Louisiana affect Jefferson's and Lewis' efforts to plan the expedition? Where do you see evidence of altered plans between Jefferson's initial proposal to Congress and Lewis' and Clark's final departure from St. Louis?

3. The author argues that, throughout the period of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson was motivated by concerns--about how to hold together the union and who would settle the trans-Mississippi West--rather than confidence. Were these fears justified? What evidence from the first decades of American history would have prompted or validated his concerns? When would you place the shift from concern to confidence in American foreign policymaking--in terms of North America? In terms of the Western Hemisphere? In more global terms?

4. It seems clear that Jefferson, at least, could imagine a United States bounded on the west by the Mississippi for some time into the future. How might it have altered American history if the trans-Mississippi west had remained in the hands of someone else--whether European or Native American--for another 25 years? Another 50 years?

Back to top

DeConde, Alexander. This Affair of Louisiana. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976.

Guiness, Ralph B. "The Purpose of the Lewis and Clark Expedition." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 20 (June 1933): 90-100.

Jackson, Donald. Thomas Jefferson & the Stony Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Kaplan, Lawrence S. Thomas Jefferson: Westward the Course of Empire. Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1999.

Lyon, E. Wilson. Louisiana in French Diplomacy, 1759-1804. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1934.

Onuf, Peter S. Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.

Tucker, Robert W., and David C. Hendrickson. Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Whitaker, Arthur Preston. The Mississippi Question, 1795-1803: A Study in Trade, Politics, and Diplomacy. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1934.