Although the two men believed they would share the captaincy of the Expedition, word that Clark would remain a lieutenant arrived shortly before they departed St. Army in Ohio, Clark had been Lewis’s commanding officer. Only a few years earlier, when both men had served in the U.S. Lewis’s regard for Clark grew out of shared service. Anticipating the rigors of a journey to the Pacific Ocean, Lewis informed Clark that “…under those circumstances in this enterprise, …it’s fatigues, it’s dangers and it’s honors, believe me there is no man on earth with whom I should feel equal pleasure in sharing them as with yourself.”
When Meriwether Lewis accepted command for the 1803 Expedition, however, it wasn’t the eldest Clark brother he sought as co-commander, but a younger member of the Clark clan, William. Twenty years before the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Thomas Jefferson asked William Clark’s older brother and Revolutionary War hero, George Rogers Clark, to head an overland expedition to the Pacific. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark shared equally in the tasks and responsibilities of their cross-continental journey. Although Clark’s captaincy was late in coming, to have called the famous journey of 1803 to 1806 simply the Lewis Expedition would have been inaccurate in spirit, if not in fact. In 2001, President Clinton promoted Clark from Lieutenant to Captain. One hundred sixty three years after his death, William Clark received a promotion. William Clark by Charles Willson Peale, from life, 1807.
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