It was all about recon on the Indians.........how to kill them easier..........i bet M Lewis found that out..............and the American illuminati killed him b/c of that.....im in 2025 now, truncated this..

Editorial Note: Jefferson and André Michaux’s Proposed Western Expedition

Jefferson and André Michaux’s Proposed Western Expedition
Editorial Note

Discovered in the vault of the American Philosophical Society in 1979 with supporting financial papers described below, this signed text of the subscription for André Michaux, together with the instructions to the French botanist printed under 30 Apr. 1793, represents the fullest expression, previous to the expedition of Lewis and Clark, of Jefferson’s longstanding interest in promoting American exploration of the vast territory beyond the Mississippi that he was destined as President to add to the national domain and that he came to regard as the foundation of an “empire for liberty” (APS, Year Book [1979], 158–60; TJ to James Madison, 27 Apr. 1809).
Jefferson’s efforts to promote American exploration of the trans-Mississippi West with a view toward finding a convenient water route to the Pacific began at the close of the Revolutionary War. In 1783, while serving in the Confederation Congress, he sought unsuccessfully to induce the conqueror of the Old Northwest, George Rogers Clark, to lead an exploring party from the Mississippi to California in order to counter a British expedition that was reportedly being prepared for this purpose. Three years later, as minister to France, he supported the abortive effort of the Connecticut adventurer John Ledyard to explore this region from the opposite direction by way of Russia. Then, in 1792, against a background of growing British and American interest in the Pacific Northwest stemming from the voyages of Captain James Cook, the Nootka Sound crisis of 1790, and the beginning of American involvement in the region’s fur trade, Jefferson proposed to the American Philosophical Society, according to his later recollection, that it “should set on foot a subscription to engage some competent person to explore that region … by ascending the Missouri, crossing the Stony mountains, and descending the nearest river to the Pacific” (TJ to George Rogers Clark, 4 Dec. 1783; TJ to Paul Allen, 18 Aug. 1813; Donald Jackson, Thomas Jefferson & the Stony Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello [Urbana, Ill., 1981], 42–56, 74).
Although there is no mention of this proposal in Jefferson’s surviving papers of that period, other evidence substantiates his recollection. In June 1792, Caspar Wistar, Jr., a fellow member of the American Philosophical Society, informed the American botanist Moses Marshall—who had earlier shown an interest in exploring the western United States, possibly with the Society’s support, and who was already aware of “the wishes of some gentlemen here to have our continent explored in a western direction”—that “Mr. Jefferson and several other gentlemen are much interested, and think they can procure a subscription sufficient to insure one thousand guineas as a compensation to any one who undertakes the journey and can bring satisfactory proof of having crossed to the South Sea.” Wistar invited Marshall, who lived in Chester County, to come to Philadelphia at once and meet with Jefferson, who, he reported, “seems principally interested” in the expedition, which was to make its way by the Missouri, but nothing came of this suggestion (Wistar to Marshall, 20 June 1792, in John W. Harshberger, The Botanists of Philadelphia and Their Work [Philadelphia, 1899], 106; see also same, 102, 105–6).
Since the plan for a western expedition apparently had been contemplated by Jefferson and other members of the Society for some time, it may well have come to the attention of André Michaux, a French botanist who was visiting Philadelphia during the spring of 1792. Born in 1746 on the royal domain of Satory, a part of Versailles, Michaux had for a number of years joined with his father in farming this land for the French crown before abandoning agriculture after the sudden death of his wife in 1770 and dedicating the rest of his life to botany. He underwent rigorous professional training in this science at the royal gardens of Trianon in Versailles and the Jardin du Roi in Paris and gained valuable practical experience in botanical field expeditions to England, the Auvergne, Spain, and Persia. Upon his return to France from his Persian expedition in 1785, Michaux received an appointment as royal botanist from Louis XVI, a prestigious position that gave him the same status as regular French diplomats. As part of a government effort to revitalize French agriculture and animal husbandry, as well as to reinvigorate French forestry, Michaux was instructed to repair to America and ship back to France such trees, plants, fruits, seeds, and animals as would contribute to these ends (Henry Savage, Jr., and Elizabeth J. Savage, André and François André Michaux [Charlottesville, 1986], 3–39).
Michaux arrived in New York in November 1785 and was struck by the plenitude of natural riches he encountered in the New World, later exclaiming to a French correspondent, “I cannot desire a situation more fortunate than that of having an immense country to visit, immense collections to make, for which I would devote all my life, my time, my fortune” (Michaux to Comte d’Angiviller, 18 Aug. 1786, translated and quoted in Savage, Michaux, 52). Between 1785 and 1792, Michaux applied himself to his mission with unflagging industry and zeal, establishing nurseries first in Bergen, New Jersey, and then outside Charleston, South Carolina, which served as his bases of operations in America. Pursuing his botanical researches, often under the most arduous conditions, in virtually every state from New York to Georgia, as well as in Florida, the Bahamas, and Canada, he dispatched prodigious numbers of American specimens to France, including 60,000 trees. At the same time, he introduced many Asian and European trees and plants to the United States.
During his sojourn in North America Michaux became acquainted with various members of the American Philosophical Society, although not—as far as the record shows—with Jefferson. Michaux, however, was in Philadelphia between 25 Apr. and 27 May 1792, a period when Jefferson and others had a western expedition under consideration, visiting with various members of the Society before embarking on an expedition to Canada (C. S. Sargent, ed., “Portions of the Journal of André Michaux, Botanist, written during his Travels in the United States and Canada, 1785 to 1796,”