Before his inauguration on March 4, 1801, President Thomas Jefferson asked
Meriwether Lewis, a 29-year-old career officer in the U.S. Army, to join him in
the White House as his personal secretary. Jefferson knew Lewis and Lewis's
family, as they were neighbors of his Monticello, Virginia, estate. Lewis, a
staunch Jeffersonian Democrat, tested the loyalty of top Army officers to the
President and reported back to Jefferson. Lewis was sent with sensitive
messages to the ministers of foreign powers, and generally assisted the
President. But most of all Lewis listened. Lewis absorbed Jefferson's ideas on
geography, science, politics, American Indians, and diplomacy. It seems that
Lewis was being groomed to lead Jefferson's expedition into the West.
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