Early America's Most Important Expeditions: The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Zebulon Pike's Expeditions

Throughout his presidency at the beginning of the 19th century, Thomas Jefferson had worried about the future of the western U.S., seeing that settlements in the Ohio Valley and lower South relied upon the Mississippi River. France's controls over the region, in his estimation, put the U.S. at a severe disadvantage. His solution proved successful beyond his wildest imagination, for Napoleon did not only sell New Orleans to the U.S, the portion that Jefferson instructed his ministers to mak...