Lewis’s Estimate of Expenses

Lewis’s Estimate

Before asking Congress to authorize a Pacific expedition, President Jefferson needed an estimate of expenses. Sometime in the first half of December 1802, he asked Meriwether Lewis to make it. In The President’s Secretary, Arlen Large describes the circumstances:

In December the President asked Lewis to make a roughly itemized estimate of the Pacific expedition’s cost. Adding up Indian presents, camp equipment, weapons and whatnot the secretary arrived at a nice round guess of $2,500. Jefferson was ready to ask for this down-payment appropriation in his 15 December 1802 annual message to Congress, but Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin urged him to submit the request separately.

Donald Jackson includes the undated document, endorsed by Jefferson, in his Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition:

Recapitulation of an estimate of the sum necessary to carry into effort the Missie. expedicion—

Mathematical Instruments	$217
Arms & Accoutrements extraordinary	” 81
Camp Ecquipage	“255
Medecine & packing	” 55
Means of transportation	“430
Indian presents	“696
Provisions extraordinary	“224
Materials for making up the various articles into portable packs	” 55
For the pay of hunters guides & Interpreters	“300
In silver coin to defray the expences of the party from Nashville to the last white settlement on the Missisourie	“100
Contingincies	” 87
$2,500

—Meriwether Lewis^[1]Donald Jackson, ed. Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents: 1783-1854, 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1:8–9.

Actual Costs

The report on the expedition’s actual cost—likely made by the War Department in early 1806—gives a total of $38,722.25. Historian Donald Jackson suggests a more accurate accounting would add the cost of returning Mandan Chief Sheheke back home (some $10,000) and the extra pay for personnel ($11,000). Also, he suggests that the funds for the “pay, subsistence, and clothing” of the men already in the service, should be subtracted. Two reasons the estimate was so much lower than the reality was that the low number would appeal to Congress and only 10 or 12 men were thought to be a sufficient for the expedition’s success. Jefferson’s open letter of credit indicates that both he and Lewis expected the costs to be much higher than $2500.^[2]Ibid., 2:424–431, especially notes 1 and 25.

Jefferson formally asked for the $2500 appropriation in a secret message to Congress delivered by Lewis on 18 January 1803. Much of the expedition’s actual expenditures went towards outfitting the expedition, Lewis’s medicinal purchases, and soldier pay.