Thomas Jefferson by The Editors of TIME

Author:The Editors of TIME [The Editors of TIME]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO011000;HIS036030;
Publisher: Liberty Street
Published: 2016-03-01T20:30:00+00:00

Danticat, who was born in Haiti, is the author of the novel The Dew Breaker

WESTWARD BOUND

Thomas Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark to explore the vast wilderness beyond the Missouri River and chart the young country’s future. Their daring journey continues to offer lessons about how America can find its way in the world

BY WALTER KIRN

Jefferson dispatched Meriwether Lewis (left), William Clark and their Corps of Discovery on a two-year exploration of the Louisiana Purchase

THERE ARE SO MANY lessons and morals to be drawn from the expedition of Lewis and Clark that each generation tends to pick a new one according to its temperament and needs. Here is one that seems suitable: If we as Americans could see the future, we might never set to work creating it.

When they dipped their oars into the Missouri River and started rowing west through Indian country over 200 years ago, the captains were looking for something they would never find—because it wasn’t there. The Northwest Passage, the fabled missing link in a continuous navigable waterway between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, existed only in the explorers’ minds, but its image was enough to move them forward, and that was enough to alter history. Their adventure, like most great ones before and since, was born of equal parts hope and ignorance, sustained by fortune and determination, and consummated by an accomplishment that was unimaginable at the outset but, looking back, appears inevitable. Columbus, remember, was trying to reach India.

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