The rank in the title looks like a mistake and is not. Lewis wanted Clark as his equal and pressed for it; Jefferson duly asked the Senate to appoint him a captain, and the Senate refused. Clark's commission came through as a second lieutenant. Lewis's response was to disregard the paperwork entirely — at his insistence Clark exercised equal authority, and the expedition went out with two commanders whose formal ranks were nothing alike and whose actual authority was identical. There was no legal basis for it whatsoever. It is also worth noticing how unusual it is that it worked. Divided command is one of the reliable ways to lose a campaign; these two ran a party of soldiers through unmapped country for two years and came back without the arrangement breaking down once. The division of labour was practical rather than ceremonial: Clark concentrated on drawing the maps, managing the expedition's supplies, and leading the hunting parties that kept everyone fed. He was the one who put the country on paper, and the paper is what the United States actually got out of it. The figure has him in 1803, before any of it — dark blue coat with red facings and a single gold epaulette, white breeches, boots, plumed bicorne, sword. One member of that expedition should be named here, because he is usually left out. York was an enslaved man owned by Clark, and he went the entire distance and back. Native nations along the route treated him with respect and their interest in him, in Clark's own account, played a real part in the diplomacy the expedition depended on. He was not freed at the end of it. Clark went on enslaving people for the rest of his life and left some of them to his children in his will. The other half of the command is Captain Meriwether Lewis. The president who asked the Senate for the captaincy and did not get it is Thomas Jefferson. And the territory they set out through was being governed, and steadily bargained away from its inhabitants, by William Henry Harrison. Model: 10131 / W. Britain / 1/30 scale / matte finish / 1 piece set
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