He reached Washington shortly after April 1, to find that Jefferson had departed for a short rest at his home, Monticello, in Albemarle County, Virginia. On he plodded, losing still more time because one of his horses went lame. Yet Jefferson wanted his special talents. Peace, in short, seemed assured for many years. The undeclared naval war with revolutionary France was winding down. Another tension had ended in 1795 when Spain had opened the Mississippi to the flatboats of the pioneers surging across the Allegheny Mountains. British fur traders were no longer occupying posts on American soil and stirring up trouble. The tribes of the Northwest had been quiet since their crushing defeat at Fallen Timbers in 1794 by General Anthony Wayne. He knew army procedures and could get along in the wilderness, but surely there was nothing in that to command national interest. Knowledge of the Western country, of the army and all its interests and relations. Some of the phrases in Jefferson's letter kept returning to puzzle him. Flat gray skies, leafless trees, the plop-suck, plop-suck of hooves in the thawing mire, followed by long nights in dreary wayside inns. After settling his accounts, he requisitioned three fresh horses, one for riding and two for packing, and shortly after March 10 started for the new federal city of Washington. Now, that was exciting! Lewis, who was given to quick exhilarations and, balancing them, occasional deep depressions, dashed off a boastful note to an army friend-he would now be in a position to "inform you of the most important political occurrences of our government or such of them as I may feel myself at liberty to give" -and then wrote a more circumspect letter to Jefferson accepting the appointment.
Not much even then, but Lewis could retain his rank as job insurance and save living expenses as a member of the president's household. Pay would be five hundred dollars a year. "Your knolege of the Western country," he wrote, "of the army and of all it's interests and relations have rendered it desirable for public as well as private purposes that you should be engaged in that office." Jefferson needed a private secretary with unusual qualifications. His thin, long-nosed face must have shown his mingled delight and astonishment. Luck! It began for Captain Meriwether Lewis, paymaster of the First Infantry Regiment, United States Army, when he reached his regimental headquarters in Pittsburgh on March 5, 1801, after a rough trip from Detroit, and found in his mail a letter from Thomas Jefferson, recently elected president of the United States.
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