Good day citizens and welcome to what would Jefferson do.

Our weekly opportunity to discuss current American events with

President Thomas Jefferson,

who is seated across from me now.

Good day to you, Mr. Jefferson.

Good day to you, Citizen.

Mr. Jefferson, I'd like to present you a letter sent to you by one of your listeners,

Mike Cox wrote in, and he wants to know besides authorizing the Lewis and Clark

expedition did you authorize any other explorations of the West and what were the results of those expeditions?

Well, first I should say that I did not fully authorize, Lewis and Clark.

I suggested that Congress do so and Congress did.

Congress appropriated $2,500 a seed money for what I call the

Lewis expedition and then also made it clear that our Army posts at Harper's Ferry and elsewhere

would cooperate with providing personnel and equipment

and whatever else Lewis might need.

The total cost of the expedition in the end was over $37,000.

At any rate, that was the one that was closest to my own heart.

Lewis was my friend, my protege.

He lived with me in the White House for almost three years before his famous tour.

But he wasn't the only one. I said this was just part of the canvas we were trying to begin to

fill in. The canvas was a sort of white empty tabula rasa beyond the Appalachian Mountains and I wanted us to begin to fill it in with the arteries of the main rivers of America.

So down in the southwest, two expeditions occurred during my presidency.

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