Cabinet Collaboration on Critical Messages

"His first letter was to Jefferson, and the captain wanted to get it exactly right. Perhaps he remembered his time at the White House and the way Jefferson and his cabinet had collaborated on important messages. Lewis sought Clark’s input. He also wrote at least two drafts of the letter, starting the first while he was still in the pirogue, his handwriting wobbled by the waves. Lewis wanted to make the president happy. He wanted to protect the Democratic-Republicans from partisan attacks. Most of all, he wanted the expedition to look like a success. He started by announcing that they had “discovered the most practicable route which does exist across the continent by means of the navigable branches of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers.” The route was not what they’d expected. Between those branches, even with Lewis’s shortcut, there was a “passage by land of 340 miles.” Lewis thought about how to describe that stretch. In a draft, he called the Rockies “a most formidable barrier.” In his final letter, he softened this phrase, calling the mountains “the most formidable part” of the route."

"After the vote, Jefferson worked harder than ever. He wrote a flurry of letters—at least eight in seven days, each one marked confidential. He returned to the other diplomats, using the same script he’d tried on Irujo. This time, it worked. “He is ambitious in his character of a man of letters,” the British official wrote. But he assumed the Americans were more interested in the Gulf Coast than the Pacific Northwest, and he issued a passport. The French diplomat asked if Irujo had signed off. Jefferson considered this and then said he “ought to.” That was good enough for the Frenchman, who simply copied the passport from his British counterpart."