In any event, he passed over the teen-age Lewis and chose instead a French botanist, André Michaux, who got started in June 1793. But he had scarcely reached Kentucky when Jefferson discovered that Michaux was a secret agent of the French Republic, whose chief aim was not to explore or collect natural-history specimens but to raise an army of American militia to attack the Spanish possessions beyond the Mississippi. At Jefferson’s insistence, the French government recalled Michaux.
