Jefferson and the West.

By 1800 Europeans and Americans understood the basic geography of the world's continents, with the exception of the western two-thirds of North America as well as the interior of Africa, the Arctic, and Antarctica. France, England, Russia, Spain, and the United States all eyed the region beyond the Mississippi River in North America for its commercial potential but never had explored it sufficiently. Even Indian communities knew only the terrain of specific subregions that they hunted or cultivated regularly. They too lacked a continental perspective. Thomas Jefferson, obsessed with cartography and natural history, understood the necessity of exploring and mapping the vast region west of the Mississippi. Through the 1790s he tried in vain to obtain funding for a scientific journey to the Pacific Ocean. At the time of his inauguration in 1801, Jefferson—one of the early republic's most learned men...