[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Passive doesn't just sound better in the example, it's objectively correct.

Jefferson wasn't attempting to document anything. That wasn't the action he was taking at all. We only consider it documented after the fact; it's completely incidental to what he was trying to accomplish.

Therefor, only the passive voice describes what occurred. The only people actively documenting anything are those who deliberately set out to create documentation of events (and I think they might all be assholes, as a rule... so maybe he was actively documenting?).