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When he became president, Thomas Jefferson wanted to expand the country's territory.

And his idea of exploring the continent's west had been this lifelong obsession.

And this is how we got the Lewis and Clark expedition.

It's the subject of Craig Fairman's new book.

Freeman says there was this tension at the heart of the story.

Jefferson wanted expansion, but he also said he respected the sovereignty and land rights of native people.

And to understand how this story takes shape,

Freeman says you have to go back before the expedition itself to the early years of the Republic

when the big questions about land and power were first being worked out.

And one of these moments comes on February 25th of 1793,

when President Washington had gathered his cabinet at the president's house in Philadelphia.

And this is where Fairman says one of the central questions of the early republic is being asked, how a new

country, which is still defining itself, would understand its relationship with the indigenous

nations who already controlled much of that land. At the center of it was a tension that

would run through everything that followed between the language of sovereignty

and the pressure of expansion.

Here's Craig Fairman.

So in this meeting, George Washington is president, and they're kind of figuring things out,

not just what they should do right now, but what kind of precedence they're setting for

America going forward.

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