Louisiana Purchase
Many years after the Revolutionary War, Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from France. The year the Louisiana Purchase happened was 1803 and the land cost $15 million. The Louisiana Territory included the land from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Colorado to New Orleans. This gave Americans a lot more room to expand because it doubled the size of our nation. There were lots of good things to come of this purchase but it caused some bad things like the War of 1812 but the pros heavily outweigh the cons because today there is no issues that involve the Louisiana Territory.
Lewis and Clark
Thomas Jefferson needed somebody to go explore and find out what the Louisiana Territory that he had just bought contained. There were two leaders of this expedition along with the help of many others. Their names were Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. These two men were both very knowledgeable and had the qualities of leaders. The main purposes for the expedition was to find the Northwest Passage, make maps of the new land, make peace with the Indians, and to document new species and bring back specimens. The expedition started on May 21, 1804 in St. Louis, Missouri. They made it to the Pacific Ocean on November 15, 1805 but they had to come all the way back. They had many encounters with Indians and all of them were friendly and peaceful except for one. The only bad encounter they had was with the unfriendly Blackfeet tribe (none of the other Indians they encountered like the Blackfeet).