Today, we celebrate the 222nd anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the moment when American pioneers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, together with their team of explorers, embarked on a daring expedition into the American West, testing the limits of human endurance and forever altering the very destiny of our Nation.   With the promise of expansion before our young Republic, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Corps of Discovery in 1803, a small but fierce military unit tasked with exploring the vast lands of the newly acquired Louisiana territory.  Their journey would assert American sovereignty over this new land and establish our Nation’s presence from the banks of the Mississippi River to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.…