Extract from Thomas Jefferson’s Instructions for Meriwether Lewis

20 June 1803

The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by it’s course & communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce.

PrC (DLC); dateline at foot of text. Published in PTJ, 40:177.
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June 20, 1803
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