Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier

The introduction discusses then-President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The “best land bargain ever made” (13), this purchase from Napoleon Bonaparte doubled the current size of the United States for only 15 million dollars (approximately 370 million in today’s dollars). Jefferson, in an effort to discover the true dimensions and resources of this newfound land, authorized Meriwether Lewis to put together an expedition to the Pacific Ocean. Specifically, Lewis intended to find an all-water route through the vast new lands to facilitate exploration and trade. The author argues that the Louisiana Purchase and Lewis’s expedition constituted the true beginning of America, rather than the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Additionally, Ambrose points out that Jefferson, rather than following the imperial traditions of European nations, did not intend to subjugate the Western states and territories to the Eastern ones, but rather made sure that all new states were equal to the original 13 colonies in power and independence. The state of democracy and religious liberty enjoyed by Americans throughout the nation’s history can be directly traced back to Jefferson’s efforts at the turn of the 19th century to construct the United States to preserve those values.