America’s Secret Experiment in Hope

Hasan Davis J.D.

Living Historian/Hope Dealer

In January of 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent a confidential message to The United States Congress asking for $2,500 to fund an expedition westward across the continent. On its face, it sounded practical. Commercial. Scientific. Exploratory. A modest request tied to trade routes and geographic knowledge.

But buried inside that request was something much larger.

Jefferson was imagining a nation stretching from ocean to ocean. He instructed Meriwether Lewis to study rivers, plants, animals, weather patterns, minerals, Indigenous nations, commerce, diplomacy, and the possibility of passage to the Pacific. He wanted maps. Trade routes. Influence. Expansion. But he also wanted control.

And inside that contradiction sits one of the most important untold leadership lessons in American history. Because the Lewis and Clark Expedition was not just an expedition. It was a moving society. A temporary nation in motion.

Inside that traveling world were officers and enlisted men. Aristocrats and commoners. Black and white. Enslaved and free. Men and women. Hunters, translators, laborers, soldiers, diplomats, boatmen, Indigenous guides, and knowledge keepers. Not fully equal. Not fully free. Not fully just. I won’t pretend. But they were interdependent. And that matters.

Because for a fleeting moment in the middle of our greatest nation building story, the practical demands of survival forced the expedition to operate more authentically than the whole of the larger American system that launched it. It was the plot twist no one saw coming.

The journey west created conditions where contribution mattered more than status, usefulness outranked hierarchy, and people ignored by the larger culture became essential to the mission itself. That is where York’s story becomes so important.

Yes, York was enslaved. Legally property. Let that sink in. He was denied freedom in the nation whose expansion he helped make possible. Yet within the expedition, it was not only his labor and strength but also his diplomacy, humor, resilience, and humanity the mattered deeply to the outcome of this journey. Not symbolically. Practically. York helped carry the mission. So did Sacagawea.

So did Indigenous nations all along the trail who offered food, maps, interpretation, ecological knowledge, diplomacy, shelter, trade relationships, and guidance. Over and over again again, the Corps of Discovery documented how they survived because people beyond the center of their formal power structure made survival possible.

This is not political revisionism. That is just the historical record.

Jefferson’s own instructions to Merriweather Lewis acknowledged how much the expedition depended on relationships with Indigenous nations. He directed Lewis to treat Native communities in “the most friendly & conciliatory manner,” to learn from them, trade with them, and build diplomatic relationships.

The Corps did not move through empty land. They moved through nations. Communities. Trade systems. Homelands. Knowledge networks. And for much of the expedition, they were received not with the threat of annihilation, but with caution, curiosity, diplomacy, and often generosity. That truth matters right now.

Especially as we approach America 250.

Because too often we flatten this story into either mythology or condemnation. But the real story is more demanding than either. The expedition revealed both the highest aspirations and deepest contradictions of the American experiment at the exact same time.

Jefferson spoke of knowledge, diplomacy, and discovery while also outlining strategies to expand American control over Indigenous lands. In his secret message to Congress, he openly discussed encouraging tribes toward agriculture and dependence on trade systems in ways that would eventually make land acquisition easier for the growing United States.

That tension is the story worth wrestling with.

A nation speaking the language of enlightenment while carrying the habits of conquest is worth reflection on. A nation imagining liberty while sustaining enslavement is worth meditiaing on. A nation capable of profound cooperation while still organized around racial hierarchy, gender exclusion, and property-based power is worth our undivided attention.

Even voting rights themselves tell that story.

At the founding of the nation, voting was largely restricted to white landowning men. Poor white men (many recently reclassified as such) did not fully gain voting access until the mid-1800s. Black men theoretically gained voting rights through the 15th Amendment in 1870, though many were violently denied those rights for generations afterward. Women gained voting rights nationally in 1920. Native Americans were not fully protected in voting access across all states until well into the 20th century.

And yet during the expedition itself, one of the most remarkable symbolic moments occurred when members of the Corps voted on where to establish winter camp near the Pacific Ocean. York voted. Sacagawea voted. Enlisted men voted alongside officers. Rough necks, pilots and frontier men, many of mixed Indigenous and European descent voted.

Think about how radical that moment really was inside the context of early America. A Black enslaved man. A Native woman. French/Indian guides and scouts, Common soldiers. Officers. Participating together in a meaningful decision within one of the most important missions in American history.

The journals recorded it almost casually. But history should not. Because that moment revealed something larger than procedure. It revealed possibility. The expedition accidentally exposed a truth America still struggles to accept: A society becomes stronger when it recognizes the dignity and contribution of all the people carrying it forward.

That is where I began to reflect deeply on the 30 years that I have carried York’s story across this nation and discovered that the dimensions of my evolving Hope Work were anchored, buried deep, almost hidden inside the lessons I carried of this mission. My leadership journey and experience as a Annie E. Casey Fellow introduced me to a grounding framework, Person, Role, System thinking. And my Neuro Spikey brain immediately realized there was a deeper connect I had to explore.

Dimension One, showing up in Person

At the person level, foundational Hope was crucial. the expeditions daily survival and advance were predicated of clarity of desire, decision, and direction. Every single person had to decide daily whether to keep moving through hunger, illness, exhaustion, uncertainty, fear, conflict, weather, and grief.

Dimension Two, Shifting Roles

In role level, Hope was operationalized through he four core pillars, humanity, optimism, perspective, and empathy. the expedition demanded relationship, trust and reframing daily. People had to rely on one another across enormous differences in status, culture, race, language, and experience.

Dimension Three, a container to hold it together

At the system level, conditions created an imperfect but aspirational environment for hope to sustain, the expedition temporarily created what I refer to as the Social Determinants of Hope. For the members of the expedition it might have looked like:

·     Purpose.

·     Belonging.

·     Shared responsibility.

·     Movement.

·     Recognition.

·     Contribution.

These three dimensions of Hope helped a beleaguered often imperiled group of misfits establish, nurture, and maintain inspirational and believable future orientation.

The mission created a container where hope could breathe because survival required interdependence. But once the expedition ended, the more prevalent operating system of America reasserted itself, rebuked the truth of collective accomplishment. York was expected to happily return to enslavement. Indigenous nations who made the journey possible were increasingly scapegoated, framed as barriers to expansion.

The nation continued learning from Native communities while simultaneously dispossessing them. The country continued celebrating discovery while systematically erasing the people already there.

And that may be the deepest tragedy of all. Not simply that America had contradictions. All nations do. The tragedy is that the expedition gave America irrefutable evidence of a better possibility, and as a nation we lacked the moral courage to scaffold our own idealism to build something better with the wisdom we had gleaned.

The Corps of Discovery proved that diverse people could move together toward shared purpose under impossible conditions. It proved that leadership is not confined to rank, all contribution matters, wisdom exists outside official power, and that survival itself often depends on listening to the people a society has marginalized.

But instead of expanding that lesson, America often expanded the opposite instinct. Elevating ownership over relationship, prioritizing hierarchy over shared dignity, embedding power over partnership and stoking fear over courageous action. But, even with all this the possibility never disappeared.

That is why York’s story matters now. Not because it allows us to shame America.  And not because it allows us to romanticize the past. But because it forces us to wrestle honestly with our unfinished work of becoming.

As we move into America 250, I believe we are being called into a more evolved patriotism. A Second Founding, as my friend Michael McAfee at Policy Link might frame it. One strong enough to tell our whole story. Not just highlighting the glorious parts. Not simply dwelling in the painful parts. The whole story.

A story where human beings crossed a continent together while carrying both greatness and contradiction inside themselves. A story where Indigenous communities demonstrated diplomacy, intelligence, generosity, and restraint. A story where an enslaved Black man and an Indigenous woman became essential to one of the most important expeditions in American history. A story where survival itself depended on people learning to move beyond narrow definitions of who mattered and justiications of why they mattered

Some might still call that weakness. I would call it… national maturity. Because our full story will never be our enemy. But it can certainly continue to be our teacher. And maybe that is the real invitation of the next 250 years. Not to become perfect. But finally courageous enough to learn from our own empirical data.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition showed us, however briefly, what becomes possible when human beings are valued not simply for their status, but for what they contribute. When systems are redesigned to create belonging instead of exclusion. When leadership learns to listen beyond its own self-interest.  When people align, then move together toward a future greater than any individual’s fear.

That possibility still lives here. The only questions that remains is whether we have enough of that revolutionary mindset left. And, If we can finally muster the courage to finish building it.

I think.

I believe.

I hope.

The answer is yes.