But this was not simply an exploring expedition. It represents better than any other one event the expansion of this nation from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The expedition was great not merely even in what it symbolizes. It was grandly great in itself, in its inception, and in execution. It was the herald of the American democracy making its way across the continent to the Pacific, but it was more. There was the highest nobility of purpose in its inception, and matchless skill and fortitude in its execution. Not only in the train of its consequences, but in every aspect was it glorious and worthy of a national celebration. The burden of the special message of January 18, 1803, through which President Jefferson secured an appropriation for it, was the maintenance of the factory system, or the trading posts, among the Indian tribes of the west. Jefferson took keenest delight in a project to extend the bounds of knowledge and which he hoped would open a water route of commerce across the continent with Asia. Yet on the face of it the Lewis and Clark expedition had primarily its inception as a means for promoting the success of these government trading posts among the Indians. This governmental policy, connected with the administration of the factory system, was the one comprehensive, wise, and humane national effort to raise a lower race to the plane of civilization. The idea was to supply the Indian at cost, in exchange for his furs and other products, the implements of husbandry and the comforts of civilized life, at the same time to protect him from the demoralizing influences of the vicious among the white men. The Lewis and Clark expedition was thus in its origin associated with a work of the largest philanthropy, "a system," says Captain Chittenden, author of "The American Fur Trade in the Far West," "which, if followed out as it should have been, would have led the Indian to his new destiny by easy stages, and would have averted the long and bloody wars, corruption, and bad faith, which have gained for a hundred years of our dealings with the Indians the unenviable distinction of a 'Century of Dishonor.'"