Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West

by Stephen E. Ambrose

man did more for human liberty than Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and of Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom, among other gifts to mankind. Few men profited more from human slavery than Jefferson.

In an age of imperialism, he was the greatest empire builder of all. His mind encompassed the continent.

Jefferson and the subscribers wanted to tie the two coasts together, using the Missouri-Columbia waterway to form the knot, in order to create a continent-wide empire for the United States. It was a breathtaking vision.

Michaux got started in June 1793, but he had scarcely reached Kentucky when Jefferson discovered that he was a secret agent of the French Republic whose chief aim was to raise a western force to attack Spanish possessions beyond the Mississippi.

By August 23, the expedition was almost at the ninety-eighth meridan, the generally agreed-upon eastern border of the Great Plains of North America.

Lewis reasoned that the north fork had to run an immence distance through the Plains to pick up enough sediment to make it so cloudy and turbid, whereas the south fork must come directly out of the mountains. The bed of the south fork was composed of smooth stones, “like most rivers issuing from a mountainous country,” and the bed of the north fork was mainly mud. He and Clark talked it over, without reaching a precipitate conclusion. “Thus have our cogitating faculties been busily employed all day,” Lewis wrote.

Most modern US military aren't this astute.