PREFACE
1. Bernard DeVoto, “An Inference Regarding the Expedition of Lewis and Clark,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 99, no. 4 (August 1955): 186.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1. Jeanne M. Serra is the author's spouse.
2. John Danisi is an assistant professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Wagner College, Staten Island, New York. He received his PhD in philosophy at New York University. Professor Danisi is the author's brother.
3. W. Raymond Wood is a Missouri River historian and professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
4. Caesar A. Cirigliano is a practicing attorney in Tennessee. Mr. Cirigliano is the author's nephew.
CHAPTER 1: DEMANDING SATISFACTION: THE PERILOUS TRIAL OF ENSIGN MERIWETHER LEWIS
1. “General Anthony Wayne's General Orders,” Michigan Pioneer Collections 34 (1905): 635.
2. Ibid., p. 581.
3. Historian Richard Dillon, in his biography of Lewis, introduced the battalion colors stating that Lewis exchanged the red of the Second Sub-Legion for the green of the Fourth. He then launched into his exaggerated version that “Lewis, drunk, had burst into [Elliot's] room, uninvited and abruptly and in an ungentlemanly manner.” According to Dillon (whose book does not contain footnotes and has no references), Lewis insulted Elliot “without provocation and offered to duel to the death with him.” Richard Dillon, Meriwether Lewis: A Biography (Santa Cruz, CA: Western Tanager Press, 1965), p. 21. Colors of the four battalions were white, red, yellow, and green (“Wayne's General Orders,” 385), but there's more: “Soldiers of the first sub-legion were to wear white bindery and white plumes on their hats. The second sub-legion was to be identified by red binding and red plumes, the third by yellow, and the fourth by no binding and black plumes. Officers were to wear plain hats with the plumes of their respective legions.” Harry M. Ward, The Department of War, 1781–1795 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962), p. 149.
4. Lieutenant John Boyer, “Daily Journal of Wayne's Campaign,” Michigan Pioneer Collections 34 (1905): 651–52.
5. The term courts-martial, now called court-martial, is the military equivalent of a criminal court trial.
6. Eldon Chuinard, “The Court-Martial of Ensign Meriwether Lewis,” We Proceeded On 8, no. 4 (November 1982): 13–15.
7. Ibid., p. 14; Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 45; Dillon, A Biography, pp. 20–21.
8. Anthony Wayne Papers, General Orders of Court Martial, May 1793-October 1796, vol. 50, fol. 49–91, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
9. Ibid., transcribed page 35.
10. Meriwether Lewis to Lucy Marks, October 4, 1794, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
11. Landon Y. Jones, William Clark and the Shaping of the West (New York: Hill & Wang, 2004), p. 79. On April 6, 1795, Lewis wrote his mother and said he had been stricken with a serious illness that may have either been malaria or dysentery. Meriwether Lewis to Lucy Marks, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
12. Ibid., pp. 75, 84.
13. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, pp. 45–46. Historian William Foley stated that “immediately following the verdict…Wayne reassigned Lewis” to Clark's company. Other historians also agree on this scenario. William Foley, Wilderness Journey: The Life of William Clark (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), p. 40.
14. “Wayne's General Orders,”p. 480.
15. Wayne Papers, General Orders of Court Martial, transcribed p. 1.
16. Boyer, “Daily Journal of Wayne's Campaign,” p. 643. Lt. Joseph Elliot was an officer in the light artillery unit.
17. Bradley J. Nicholson, “Courts-Martial in the Legion Army: American Military Law in the Early Republic, 1792–1796,” Military Law Review 144 (Spring 1994): 103–104.
18. Wayne Papers, General Orders of Court Martial, transcribed pp. 24–25.
19. Nicholson, “Courts-Martial in the Legion Army,” p. 101.
20. Wayne Papers, General Orders of Court Martial, transcribed p. 1.
21. See Amos Stoddard Company Book, p. 210, Louisiana Territory, Military Command, Adjutant's Record, 1803–1805, Missouri History Museum, Saint Louis, MO; George B. Davis, A Treatise on the Military Law of the United States: Together with the Practice and Procedure of Courts-Martial and Other Military Tribunals (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1915); William C. Hart, Observations on Military Law and the Constitution and Practice of Courts-Martial (New York: Appleton, 1864), pp. 244–45. In addition to general courts-martial there were regimental, garrison, or company courts-martial that were composed of three commissioned officers and heard cases of a noncapital nature. They could inflict corporal punishment but could not fine a soldier more than one month's pay or imprison or “put to hard labor” a soldier for over one month.
22. Wayne Papers, General Orders of Court Martial, transcribed p. 3.
23. Ibid., transcribed p. 6.
24. Ibid., transcribed p. 7.
25. Ibid., transcribed pp. 12–13.
26. Ibid., transcribed p. 13.
27. Ibid., transcribed p. 9.
28. Ibid., Lewis's note ends abruptly at the bottom of the transcript. The following page begins with “from Capt. Marschalk.”
29. Ibid., transcribed p. 34.
30. Ibid., transcribed pp. 25–26.
31. Ibid., transcribed p. 32.
32. Ibid., transcribed p. 35.
33. Ibid., transcribed p. 35.
34. Ibid., transcribed pp. 19–21.
35. Ibid., transcribed pp. 35–36.
36. Ibid., transcribed p. 36.
37. See appendix B, note 5: locating the Meriwether Lewis courts-martial case.
| CHAPTER 2: | LEWIS AND CLARK'S ROUTE MAP: JAMES MACKAY'S MAP OF THE MISSOURI RIVER |
*Copyright 2004 by the Western History Association. Reprinted by permission. Thomas C. Danisi and W. Raymond Wood, “Lewis and Clark's Route Map: James MacKay's Map of the Missouri River, Western Historical Quarterly 35, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 53–72. The essay has been updated since its 2004 publication.
1. A. P. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark: Documents Illustrating the History of Missouri, 1785–1804, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Saint Louis Historical Documents Foundation, 1952), 1: 80–83. Many of the MacKay, Finiels, and Soulard papers are to be found in the Papeles de Cuba Collection of the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain. We thank Nancy Durbin of Lindenwood University and Anna Price for their French and Spanish translations of the MacKay, Soulard, Finiels, and Trudeau documents.
2. H. T. Beauregard, “Journal of Jean Baptiste Truteau among the Arikara Indians in 1795,” Missouri Historical Society Collections 4 (Saint Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1912): 22.
3. W. S. Wallace, ed., Documents Relating to the North West Company (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1934), p. 14.
4. Marilyn MacKay Ballard Rabakukk, The Mackays of Arichliney (Coral Springs, FL: Llumina Press, 2006), pp. 105–106. James MacKay had two brothers, John and William, who also traveled to the United States. John married Elizabeth Michau from Staten Island and remained in New York for the rest of his life. William went to Petersburgh, Virginia, and raised a family there.
5. “Narrative of Donald McKay,” transcribed by John C.Jackson, December 1995, E.223/1, Hudson's Bay Company Archives, Winnipeg, Manitoba; Manchester House Journal, April 17, 1786/87, B121/a/1, Hudson Bay Company Archives; Cumberland House Journal, May 30, 1786, B49/a/16, 34, Hudson Bay Company Archives.
6. Rabakukk stated in her book that James and John were in England in August 1788, possibly because the North West Company had an office there. Rabakukk, Mackays of Arichliney, p. 105.
7. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 1: 130–31.
8. Perrin Collection, 1737–1809, St. Clair County Circuit Court, Case File 114 (1792), Illinois Regional Archives Depository, Illinois State Archives, Archives Building, Springfield.
9. John B. C. Lucas, “Notes1 of J. B. C. Lucas on the Custom of Selling Slaves by Paper,” interviewing landowners: Charles Gratiot, Antoine Soulard, and James MacKay, John B. C. Lucas Papers, box 20–21, folder 1, p. 3, Missouri History Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri.
10. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 1: 181.
11. Charles Theodore Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati and Representative Citizens, 2 vols. (Chicago: Biographical Publishing, 1904), 1: 360–61.
12. W. Raymond Wood, Prologue to Lewis and Clark: The Mackay and Evans Expedition (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), pp. 190–93.
13. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 1: 97.
14. Gwyn A. Williams, Madoc: The Making of a Myth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 153.
15. Francois Vallé to Zenon Trudeau, March 6, 1794, Letter 22, AGI-PC 209: 598; microfilm copy in Missouri History Museum.
16. Pierre Charles Delassus de Luziéres to Francisco Louis Hector Carondelet, April 16, 1794, AGI-PC 208a: 480, Missouri History Museum.
17. Henry Peyroux to Francois Vallé, December 26, 1793, AGI-PC 208a: 490; Trudeau to Carondelet, January 28, 1794, AGI-PC 209: 634, AGI-PC 208a: 480, Missouri History Museum.
18. Saint Louis Recorded Archives, vol. 2, bk. 2, instrument 625, p. 388, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Library, National Park Service, Saint Louis, Missouri.
19. Manuscript ca. 1804, notes1 on Indian tribes in James MacKay's hand, note 4. Clark Family Collection, Missouri History Museum. We cannot help but be curious as to where Rhys had obtained his Mandan vocabulary.
20. Aubrey Diller, “Maps of the Missouri River before Lewis and Clark,” in Studies and Essays in the History of Science and Learning, ed. Ashley Montagu (New York: Schuman, 1946), p. 507.
21. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 1: 96, n. 61; A. P. Nasatir, “Anglo-Spanish Rivalry on the Upper Missouri,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 16, no. 4 (March 1930): 507.
22. Jacques Clamorgan to Jean Baptiste Truteau, June 30, 1794, box 2, folder 34, Louis Houck Collection, Document 66, Missouri History Museum.
23. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 1: 257, n. 6.
24. Zenon Trudeau to Francisco Louis Hector Carondelet, August 8, 1794, AGI-PC 197: 707; De Luziéres to Carondelet, September 17, 1794, AGI-PC 209: 663, October 17, PC 209: 666, Missouri History Museum.
25. Antoine Soulard to Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, December 15, 1797, AGI-PC 213: 833, Missouri History Museum; US Congress. Senate. Substance of an Argument, 21st Cong., 2nd sess., 1830. S. Doc. 12, Serial 203, p. 27.
26. Diller, “Maps of the Missouri River,” p. 508.
27. This map is illustrated in W. Raymond Wood, “Native American Tribes Inhabiting Villages on the Missouri River,” in Thomas C. Danisi and W. Raymond Wood, “Lewis and Clark's Route Map: James MacKay's Map of the Missouri River,” Western Historical Quarterly 35, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 55.
28. Diller, “Maps of the Missouri River,” pp. 507–8.
29. Antoine Soulard to Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, December 15, 1797, AGI-PC 213: 833–35, Missouri History Museum.
30. William Dunbar to Thomas Jefferson, March 18, 1806, document 27579, reel 35, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. In this letter, Dunbar speaks of “Mackay's treatise on longitude,” but this is not our James MacKay from Saint Louis. John Garnett, Tables Requisite to Be Used with the Nautical Ephemeris, for Finding the Latitude and Longitude at Sea (London: Commissioners of Longitude, 1806).
31. Ibid.
32. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 1: 97.
33. Ibid. 1: 86, 2: 452, 520; Deposition of James MacKay, March 7, 1817, Saint Charles Papers, Missouri History Museum; Francisco Louis Hector Carondelet to Jacques Clamorgan, October 26, 1796, Clamorgan Collection, Missouri History Museum.
34. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 2: 410–11.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid., 2: 416–17.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., 2: 410–14.
40. Bernard DeVoto, Course of Empire (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), p. 377.
41. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 2: 461–62, 500.
42. A. P. Nasatir, “Anglo-Spanish Rivalry in Iowa,” Iowa Journal of History and Politics 28 (July 1930): 359; Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 2: 520 (quote).
43. MacKay's Table of Distances, Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 2: 485–99.
44. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 2: 520, n. 6.
45. Ibid., p. 545.
46. Zenon Trudeau to Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, March 5, 1798, AGI-PC 49: 822, Missouri History Museum.
47. Ibid. A condensed version of the letter is in Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 2: 545,n. 3.
48. Frederick Teggart, “Notes1 Supplementary to any Edition of Lewis and Clark,” American Historical Association Annual Report 1 (1908): 186. Reuben Gold Thwaites edited and published the letter in the Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 8 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1904), 7: 291, but did not comment on it.
49. A. P. Nasatir, “John Evans, Explorer and Surveyor,” Missouri Historical Review 25 (July 1931): 591, n. 29.
50. Ibid., p. 608.
51. Ernest Staples Osgood, ed., The Field Notes1 of Captain William Clark, 1803–1805 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964), p. 25, n. 8.
52. William Wesley Woolen, Daniel Wait Howe, and Jacob Piatt Dunn, eds. Executive Journal of Indiana Territory 1800–1816 (Indianapolis: Bowen-Merrill, 1900), p. 95, n. 3. Jones had been appointed attorney general on January 29, 1801, and resigned on July 31, 1804. English Collection, M-98, box 31, folder 7, July 31, 1804, Vincennes, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana. Jones supported two residences in Kaskaskia and Vincennes during this time. On December 28, 1802, he wrote that he had to travel 160 miles from his home to the seat of the territorial government at Vincennes. On that same day he also sent a letter to Thomas Jefferson, asking if he could be appointed a judge of the territory, since he was not paid a salary or compensated for the position of attorney general. Logan Esarey, ed., Governor's Messages and Letters: Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison 18001811, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Commission, 1922), pp. 66–67.
53. Donald Jackson, Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 2: 689.
54. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 2: 718–19.
55. Jackson, Letters, 1: 163.
56. Nasatir, “Anglo-Spanish Rivalry in Iowa,” pp. 366, 369. De Finiels's wife, Marie Anne Riviere, gave birth to Marie Susann-Adele de Finiels on July 13, 1797, in Saint Louis (Oscar Collet, Index to Saint Louis Cathedral and Carondelet Church Baptisms, p. 66, Missouri History Museum).
57. Nicolas de Finiels, “Notice sur la Louisiane Supérieure,” p. 89, box 41, folder 20, John Francis McDermott Collection, Lovejoy Library, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville.
58. Reproduction de la carte du Mississippi de Nicolas de Finiels, Recueil, 69 carte 34, Marine Nationale, Service historique de la Marine, Château de Vincennes, B. P. n-2–00300 Armées, France; W. Raymond Wood, An Atlas of Early Maps of the American Midwest, Part II, Illinois State Museum, Scientific Papers 28 (2001): plate 13.
59. Finiels, “Notice sur la Louisiane Supérieure,” p. 62.
60. Map can be found in M-M 508, box 5, #516, MSS, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. The Spanish word apeadas or afseadas, is unknown.
61. Ibid.
62. MacKay was appointed commandant of Saint André, the Bon Homme settlement, in 1798. See Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 2: 587.
63. American State Papers, Public Lands, 2: 495.
64. Nicolas de Finiels, An Account of Upper Louisiana, ed. Carl J. Ekberg and William E. Foley (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989), p. 72, n. 118. MacKay produced a rough “plan” in October 1802 of Femme Osage, Daniel Boone's settlement. See James MacKay to Charles Dehault de Lassus, October 29, 1802, AGI-PC 219: 559, Missouri History Museum.
65. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 2: 605, 545, n. 3.
66. Manuel Gayoso de Lemos to Charles Dehault de Lassus, May 12, 1799, AGI-PC 134a: 387, Missouri History Museum.
67. Annie H. Abel, “Trudeau's Description of the Upper Missouri,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 8 (June—September 1921): 154.
68. Frederick Teggart, “Notes1 Supplementary to Any Edition of Lewis and Clark,” American Historical Association Annual Report 1 (1908): 188; Annie H. Abel-Henderson, “Mackay's Table of Distances,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 10 (March 1924): 428–46; Milo M. Quaife, “Extracts from McKay's Journal and Others,” Wisconsin Historical Society Proceedings 63 (1916): 186–210; Annie H. Abel, “A New Lewis and Clark Map,” Geographical Review 1 (May 1916): 329–45; De Voto, Course of Empire, 372–79; David Williams, “John Evans’ Strange Journey,” American Historical Review 54 (January 1949): 277–95 and (April 1949): 508–29; Aubrey Diller, “James Mackay's Journey in Nebraska in 1796,” Nebraska History 36 (June 1955): 123–28; John Logan Allen, Passage Through the Garden (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), pp. 141–42; Jackson, Letters, 1: 135–36.
69. Jackson, Letters, 1: 104–105, 142–43.
70. James Holmberg, ed., Dear Brother (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 61.
71. “Meriwether Lewis to Thomas Jefferson, December 28, 1803,” in Jackson, Letters, 1: 163, 148–55.
72. James MacKay to Charles Dehault de Lassus, July 10, 1800, AGI-PC 217b: 180, Missouri History Museum; Finiels, An Account of Upper Louisiana, pp. 72–73.
73. Jackson, Letters, 1: 131, 137.
74. Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001), 2: 134, 140–41.
75. Ibid., 2: 154. When Soulard surveyed MacKay's land on Bon Homme Creek on March 5, 1798, he stated that it was about thirty-one miles west of Saint Louis. See Pintado Papers, bk. IX and bk. P: 141, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. De Finiels gauged the distance at thirty miles. See Finiels, An Account of Upper Louisiana, pp. 70–71.
76. James MacKay to John Fowler, September 24, 1803, Box 24, Breckenridge Family Papers, Library of Congress.
77. Osgood, Field Notes, p. 16. Various historians have agreed on this date to suggest that MacKay's meeting on January 10 had been planned.
78. W. Raymond Wood, An Atlas of Early Maps of the American Midwest, plate 13.
79. Saint Louis Recorded Archives, vol. 4, bk. 1, instrument #1128 and 1132, pp. 5355, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Library, Saint Louis; RG 952, Series 5, US Surveyor General for Missouri, Outgoing Correspondence 1816–1863, box 32, bk. Q: 315, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.
80. Moulton, Journals, 2: 154.
81. Osgood, Field Notes, pp. 14, 19–23.
82. Ibid., p. 27; Donald Jackson, “A New Lewis and Clark Map,” Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 17 (January 1961): 119–26; Jackson, Letters, 1: 198–203; Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, July 12, 1804, document 24594, reel 30, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
CHAPTER 3: INTRIGUE, MAYHEM, DECEPTION
1. Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, January 7, 1804, p. 3.
2. Louis Pelzer, “The Spanish Land Grants of Upper Louisiana,” Iowa Journal of History and Politics 11 (1913): 20; Eugene Morrow Violette, “Spanish Land Claims in Missouri,” Washington University Studies 8, no. 2 (1921): 176–77; Paul Gates, History of Public Land Law Development (Washington, DC: Public Land Law Review Commission, 1968), p. 93; Gerald T. Dunne, The Missouri Supreme Court (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), p. 24; Dick Steward, Frontier Swashbuckler (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), pp. 3334; Walter A. Schroeder, Opening the Ozarks: A Historical Geography of Missouri's Ste. Genevieve District, 1760–1830 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002); William E. Foley, The Genesis of Missouri (University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1989), pp. 99–100, 143–44; William Thomas Farnan, “Land Claims Problems and the Federal Land System in the Louisiana-Missouri Territory,” (PhD diss., Saint Louis University, 1971): pp. 23–26; LeRoy Hafen, ed., The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1966), pp. 198–99, 204–205.
3. Kentucky Gazette, February 15, 1803.
4. Jerry W. Knudson, “Newspaper Reaction to the Louisiana Purchase,” Missouri Historical Review 63, no. 2 (January 1969): 188. Also known as the Pinckney Treaty of 1795.
5. Ibid., p. 97
6. “Memorial to Congress by Inhabitants of St. Clair and Randolph Counties, October 26, 1803,” Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 28 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1934–962), 7: 131.
7. War Department to John Rice Jones, August 12, 1802, RG107, M370, roll 1, p. 348, frame 0200, National Archives and Records Administration; Jones had been appointed attorney general on January 29, 1801, and resigned on July 31, 1804. English Collection, M-98, box 31, folder 7, July 31, 1804, Vincennes, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana.
8. Thomas Cushing to Amos Stoddard, December 25, 1802, RG 94, M565, roll 1, page 385, frame 0201, National Archives and Records Administration; Secretary of War to Amos Stoddard, February 19, 1803, Carter, Territorial Papers, 7: 85–86.
9. Everett S. Brown, Constitutional History of the Louisiana Purchase, 1803–1812 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1920), pp. 98, 136, 144; Everett S. Brown, ed., William Plumer's Memorandum of the United States Senate, 1803–1807 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), p. 110.
10. Thomas Jefferson to DeWitt Clinton, December 2, 1803, document 23594, reel 27, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
11. “Petition to Congress by Inhabitants of Knox, St. Clair and Randolph Counties, October 26, 1803,” in Carter, Territorial Papers 7: 140–43.
12. “Judge Thomas Davis to John Breckinridge, October 17, 1803,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 7: 124. Davis also wrote to James Madison, the secretary of state, the following day and communicated the same points. Carter, Territorial Papers, 7: 125.
13. “Extract of a letter from Kaskaskias, Indiana Territory, October 18, 1803,” in American State Papers, Public Lands, 1: 173. The original document was reproduced on microfilm: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwsp.html (accessed November 15, 2010).
14. “Issac Darneille to John Breckinridge, October 22, 1803,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 7: 131–32.
15. James Robertson, Louisiana under the Rule of Spain, France and the United States, 1785–1807, 2 vols. (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1911), 2: 54, n. 38.
16. Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, January 7, 1804, p. 3.
17. Thomas T. Davis to John Breckinridge, November 25, 1803, Breckinridge Family Papers, Box 25, p. 81, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
18. “John Rice Jones to Judge Davis, January 21, 1804,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 7: 169.
19. “Amos Stoddard to Thomas Jefferson, January 10, 1804,” in American State Papers, Public Lands, 1: 193.
20. “Frederick Bates to Josiah Meigs, November 20, 1816,” Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office in Relation to Lead Mines and Salt Springs, 18th Cong., 1st sess., 1824, H. Rep. 98, serial 98, p. 120; “Petition to Congress by Moses Austin and John Rice Jones, January 21, 1811,” Annals of Congress, Senate, 11th Congress, 3rd Session, pp. 99–100.
21. Carter, Territorial Papers, 13: 524.
22. Charles Dehault de Lassus, the lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana, had received correspondence from his superiors in New Orleans sooner than previously thought. New information from the Spanish Archives in Seville now gives a definitive timeline of those events. “Juan Manuel de Salcedo to Charles Dehault Delassus, May 3, 1803,” Papeles de Cuba Collection of the Archivo General de Indias 78, stamped pp. [Archivo de las Indias Numbers] 161, 162, 163; “Salcedo to Delassus, May 11, 1803,” pp. 121–24; “Salcedo to Delassus, May 20, 1803,” stamped pp. 344–45 [Archivo de las Indias Numbers]; “Delassus to Salcedo, August 1, 1803,” stamped pp. 352–54 [Archivo de las Indias Numbers]; “Salcedo to Delassus, September 3, 1803,” stamped pp. [Archivo de las Indias Numbers], copies at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Archives, Saint Louis, Missouri.
23. American State Papers, Public Lands, 1: 206, 208.
24. Ibid., 8: 836.
25. Amos Stoddard, Sketches, Historical and Descriptive of Louisiana (Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1812), p. 252.
26. Henry Williams, a Saint Louis land trial lawyer, stated that Frederick Bates, Saint Louis recorder, reported eleven complete titles, which was found in First American Title # 32507 Saint Louis, pp. 3–5, Missouri History Museum. Austin's grant passed all the necessary qualifications to complete title and was recorded in 1802.
27. Louis Houck, History of Missouri, 3 vols. (Chicago: Donnelly & Sons, 1908), 3: 44; Robert R. Archibald, “Honor and Family: The Career of Lt. Gov. Carlos de Hault de Lassus,” Gateway Heritage 12, no. 4 (Spring 1992): 37; Floyd C. Shoemaker, Missouri andMissourians, 5 vols. (Chicago: Lewis Publishing, 1943), 1: 197; Lemont K. Richardson, “Private Land Claims in Missouri,” Missouri Historical Review 50, no. 2 (January 1956): 134–35, and no. 3 (April 1956): 280; Robert R. Archibald, “From La Louisiane to Luisiana, the Imposition-Spanish Administration in the Upper Mississippi Valley,” Gateway Heritage 11, no. 1 (Summer 1990): 28; Jeff Patridge, “The Legacies of Conflict in Missouri Land Grants,” Record 4, no. 4 (Spring 1994): 6–8.
28. Lewis, Stoddard, and Jones were Masons, which may have been the unifying link.
29. Thomas C. Danisi, “Land Fraud in Upper Louisiana: A Misconception,” Missouri Conference on History (April 2008), Columbia, MO; Thomas C. Danisi, “What Conspiracy?” We Proceeded On 35, no. 1 (February 2009), 30–31. This was a reply to a writer in a previous issue of We Proceeded On.
30. James Gardner, Lead King: Moses Austin (Saint Louis: Sunrise, 1980), p. 42; W. A. Burt Jones, “John Rice Jones—A Brief Sketch of the Life and Public Career of the First Practicing Lawyer in Illinois,” Chicago Historical Society's Collection 4 (1890): 236.
31. Gardner, Lead King, p. 42. Austin claimed that Jones, a Kaskaskia resident, had to disband their partnership. Supposedly, aliens could not own land in Upper Louisiana, but Jones had dual citizenship. He had taken an oath of allegiance in June 1794 at New Madrid (AGI-PC 2363: 300). The Spanish archives documented a land transaction whereby John Rice Jones sold a farm in Saint Louis to Manuel Lisa on September 29, 1799. Saint Louis Recorded Archives, vol. 2, bk. 3: 467–69, instrument # 783A, Missouri History Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri; “Minutes of the Board of Commissioners,” 7: 1, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City, Missouri.
32. John Rice Jones v. Moses Austin, Articles of Partnership, File # 18, Sainte Genevieve, September 11, 1812. The case file was transferred to the Chancery Court at Saint Louis: John Rice Jones v. Moses Austin, October 1813, Civil Court Archives, Saint Louis, Missouri. The articles of partnership were recorded in Deed Book Record A, 1804–1809, pp. 246–51, Sainte Genevieve County Courthouse, Sainte Genevieve, Missouri, and in Deed Book F, p. 392, Saint Louis Recorder of Deeds, City Hall, Saint Louis, Missouri.
33. James A. Gardner, “The Life of Moses Austin: 1761–1821,” (PhD diss., Washington University, 1963), p. 173.
34. Charles Dehault de Lassus succeeded Zenon Trudeau as the lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana on July 28, 1799.
35. Gardner, Lead King, p. 93.
36. Carter, Territorial Papers, 13: 524–25.
37. Ibid, 13: 524.
38. Ibid, 13: 525.
39. James Alexander Gardner, “Moses Austin in Missouri: 1789–1821” (master's thesis, Washington University, 1951), p. 51.
40. Eugene Barker, The Austin Papers, 2 vols. (Washington: Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1919), 1: 91.
41. John Rice Jones to Thomas Jefferson, February 11, 1804, document 23900, reel 29, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
42. American State Papers, Public Lands, 1: 206–209.
43. Barker, Austin Papers, 2: 97–98; Moses Austin to Rufus Easton, August 14, 1805, p. 3, Rufus Easton Papers, Missouri History Museum.
44. Jones sued Austin for failing to pay him a profit for the entire time they were partners. American State Papers, Miscellaneous, 1: 362; Jones v. Austin, October 1813, Civil Court Archives, Saint Louis, Missouri.
45. “List of Appointments and Removals, May 8, 1807,” in Thomas M. Marshall, ed., The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1926), 1: 320; “August 26, 1807,” 1: 325.
46. “Frederick Bates to Richard Bates, March 24, 1808,” in ibid., 1: 315.
47. “Frederick Bates to Moses Austin, September 12, 1807,” in ibid., 1: 186–87; “Frederick Bates to James Madison, September 25, 1807,” in ibid., 1: 194–95; and “Moses Austin to Frederick Bates, August 27, 1809,” in ibid., 2: 77–79.
48. “A Journal of the Proceedings of the Legislature of the Territory of Louisiana Commencing June 3, 1806, and ending October 9, 1811,” Special Collection M-61, Mercantile Library, University of Missouri-Saint Louis. Judges Lucas and Schrader first met with Lewis on Monday, June 13, 1808. Lewis also wrote that he wanted “to revise the laws of the Territory and will most probably originate others…”; Meriwether Lewis to William Clark, May 29, 1809, William Clark Collection, Missouri History Museum.
49. Laws of the Territory of Louisiana (Saint Louis: Joseph Charless, 1809).
50. “Meriwether Lewis to John Perry, October 10, 1808,” in Marshall, Frederick Bates, 2: 34–35; “Frederick Bates Appointment of John Perry, October 3, 1807,” 1: 329.
51. Ibid., 1: 320, n. 16.
52. “Meriwether Lewis to James Austin, November 10, 1808,” in ibid., 2: 38–39.
53. Ibid, 2: 39. It was no surprise when Bates reported to his brother that he abhorred Lewis's style of maintaining order: “How unfortunate for this man that he resigned his commission in the army: His habits are altogether military & he never can I think succeed in any other profession.” Ibid., 2: 69.
54. Bates was paid $2,700 a year: invoices 21407, 21409, 21410, RG217, M235, roll 65, frames 1191, 1195, 1201, National Archives and Records Administration. (Secretary of the territory, $1,000; Recorder of land titles, $500; Land commissioner, $1,200.) Governor Lewis was paid $2,000 annually. Bates rationalized that he was not interested in the governorship because his combined salaries and “my present Offices were nearly equal to the government and greatly superior in emolument.…” Ibid., 2: 69.
55. “Moses Austin to Frederick Bates, August 27, 1809,” in ibid., 2: 78.
56. “Albert Gallatin to Frederick Bates, April 18, 1812,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 546.
57. “Albert Gallatin to Clement Penrose, March 24 and 26, 1812,” American State Papers, Public Lands, 2: 378–79.
58. “Rufus Easton to Thomas Jefferson, January 17, 1805,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 13: 85; Anton Pregaldin, “Introduction,” in Missouri Land Claims (New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1976), p. v.
59. US Congress, Senate, Substance of an Argument, 21st Cong., 2nd sess., 1830. S. Doc. 12, serial 203, 24–25.
60. US Congress, Senate, Report from the Commissioner of the General Land Office, 24th Cong., 1st sess., 1835. S. Doc. 16, serial 280, 3–4.
61. Ibid.
62. Congress confirmed Austin's Spanish land grant in 1873, but in 1884 the present owners of the land grant were sued by claimants that Austin had swindled years earlier. US Congress, House, “An Act,” 42nd Cong., 3rd sess., 1873, Bills and Resolutions 3731, Report No. 489; Bryan v. Kennett (1884), 113 US 179; Bryan v. Kennett, RG 21, United States Circuit Courts, Eastern District of Missouri, Eastern Division, Saint Louis, Missouri: Law, Equity, Criminal (1838–1912), Case Number: 4746, Row 48, Unit 01, Shelf 13, Box 246, National Archives—Central Plains Region, Kansas City, Missouri.
| CHAPTER 4: | THE MISSING JOURNAL ENTRIES: FACT OR FICTION |
1. “Jefferson's Message to Congress, January 18, 1803,” in Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2nd ed. 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1: 12–13.
2. Thomas C. Danisi and W. Raymond Wood, “James MacKay: International Explorer,” Missouri Historical Review 102, no. 3 (April 2008): 154–55.
3. “Jefferson's Message,” p. 13.
4. Ibid.
5. Thomas Jefferson to Henry Dearborn, August 13, 1803, document 23157; and Henry Dearborn to Thomas Jefferson, August 28, 1803, document 23219, roll 28, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
6. Alexander Wilson, American Ornithology: or The Natural History of the Birds of the United States, 3 vols. (New York: Collins, 1828), 2: 46–47. The full quote is printed in appendix A, no. 38.
7. Jefferson's Instructions to Meriwether Lewis, June 20, 1803, document 22884–87, reel 28, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
8. A complete transcription of the instructions are printed in Jackson, Letters, 1: 61–66.
9. Ibid, 1: 64–65.
10. Ibid, 1: 16, 17, 21.
11. George Huxtable, an on-land navigation scholar who resides in England, inquired if there was any knowledge, in Saint Louis, of the town's geographical position, latitude, and longitude, particularly longitude in March 1804. “It might possibly have been established by a military surveyor attached to the expeditionary force when Saint Louis was founded thirty years earlier. After all, the French were the world experts, at that time, in such land-survey, with longitude based primarily on timed observations of satellites of Jupiter. I wonder if there might have been, in the town prior to 1804, a resident savant, amateur astronomer, surveyor, geographer, clockmaker, schoolteacher, who might have taken an interest in such observations (French or Spanish).” He was also interested in the person who gave Meriwether Lewis this information in 1803–1804. E-mail from Robyn Burnett, Missouri State Archives, to Michael Everman, October 5, 2010. Huxtable's Website contains much information concerning “Lewis and Clark on the Mississippi: Commentary on Their Celestial Navigation,”
http://www.hux.me.uk/lewis02.htm (accessed February 3, 2011).
12. New-England Palladium, December 30, 1803, Boston. Stoddard did not have the appropriate information to make correct calculations. George Huxtable, reporting on Lewis and Clark as navigators on the expedition, wrote: “We can tell, from his reference to the equivalence between 1,437,976 square miles and 920,304,640 acres, that he is referring to land-miles, as a square land-mile corresponds to 640 acres. One degree of latitude corresponds to 60 nautical miles or 69 land-miles. When he refers to the ‘Rio del Nord, or North River,’ this is the Rio Grande, rising in the Rockies to the southwest of modern Denver. In which case, we can go along with his width of the territory, 692 miles, as a reasonable guess. Then when he says that Upper Louisiana (from that southern boundary to the Shining Mountains, wherever they were, or to the sources of the Mississippi and Missouri) is 2,078 miles by 692 miles in width, and that this corresponds to 1,437,976 square miles, he is considering a plane rectangle of 2,078 by 692, which multiply together to give exactly that area. So we deduce that he must be referring to straight-line distances, as the crow flies, northing and westing, and not to distances measured along the course of a winding river. Indeed, such an area calculation, that can be made on a plane surface, is far from legitimate for such large tracts on a sphere. All this leads up to an attempt to understand his figure for the north-south extent of Upper Louisiana, of 2,078 land-miles, which seems crazy. At 69 land-miles per degree, it corresponds to a separation between its northern and southern boundaries of 2,078 / 69, or 30° of latitude. As we can accept his figure for the southern boundary to be 36°, that would put the northern boundary of Upper Louisiana to be at 66° north, within 30 miles of the Arctic Circle, and close to the northern limit of the Canadian mainland.”
13. Amos Stoddard to Adjutant General's Office, November 1, 1806, RG94, M566, roll 1, frame 0797, p. 48, National Archives and Records Administration.
14. Amos Stoddard, Sketches, Historical and Descriptive of Louisiana (Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1812).
15. Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1806, 8 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1904), 1: xxxv, n. 2, American Journeys Website:
http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/aj&CISOPTR=762 (accessed June 22, 2011).
16. Gary Moulton, “The Missing Journals of Meriwether Lewis,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 35, no. 3 (Summer 1985): 28–39; Paul Russell Cutright, “The Journal of Captain Meriwether Lewis (Some Observations Concerning the Journal Hiatuses of Captain Lewis),” We Proceeded On 10, no. 1 (February 1984): 8–9; and “Meriwether Lewis: Zoologist,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 69 (March 1968): 5.
17. Moulton, “Missing Journals,” p. 30.
18. Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 431.
19. Paul Russell Cutright, “The Journal of Captain Meriwether Lewis,” We Proceeded On 10, no. 1 (February 1984): 8; Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, p. 110.
20. Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001), 2: 18.
21. Paul Russell Cutright, “Meriwether Lewis: Botanist,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 69 (June 1968): 159.
22. See the online “Fort Mandan Miscellany,” in Moulton's Journals, for a daunting itemization of Lewis's work when shipping the diversity of specimens in April 1805. His work runs into hundreds of typed pages. When scrolling to the bottom of each page, click on “next.” See
http://lewisandClarkjournals.unl.edu/read/?_xmlsrc=1804–1805.winter.introduction.xml&_xslsrc=LCstyles.xsl (accessed October 6, 2011).
23. Moulton, Journals, 3: 450–72; Velva E. Rudd, “Botanical Contributions of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 44 (November 1954): 354.
24. Ibid., 3: pp. 472–78.
25. See online, Moulton, Journals. Lewis recorded astronomical data on November 1, 2, and 11, 1804,
http://lewisandClarkjournals.unl.edu/read/?_xmlsrc=1804–11-01.xml&_xslsrc=LCstyles.xsl (accessed October 6, 2011).
26. Velva Rudd gives an accounting of the botanical shipment. “The shipment included two bundles of dried plants, one with numbers 1–60, the other 1–67. It is not known whether the two bundles represent duplicates, or a total of 127 collections…. The material at Philadelphia is distributed on about fifty herbarium sheets and represents about thirty-six collections.” Rudd, “Botanical Contributions,” 354.
27. Henry Setzer, “Zoological Contributions of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 44 (November 1954): 356–57.
28. “Meriwether Lewis Astronomy Notebook, 1805,” microfilm C1074, Manuscripts Collection, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri.
29. “Meriwether Lewis, April 7, 1805,” in Moulton, Journals, 4: 7–10. See appendix A, no. 3.
30. “Meriwether Lewis, August 18, 1805,” in Moulton, Journals, 5: 117–18, or see appendix A no. 4. Lewis wrote many journal entries that are filled with succint descriptions of wonder, humility, grace, sudden joy, happiness, and sadness. The phraseology that he employed transcends any negative appraisal of his ability when simply conveying new scenes or ideas on the expedition. While historians have harshly judged his writing in some of these passages, it needs to be viewed in the spirit in which it was conceived and written—as an observation in the middle of awe and majestic grandeur. Lewis defended that position when he wrote on June 13, 1805, “I could not perhaps succeed better than pening the first impressions of the mind.” On April 7, 1805, he wrote that “the colouring to events, when the immagination is suffered to wander into futurity, the picture which now presented itself to me, was a most pleasing one.” Describing the Rocky Mountains on May 26, 1805, “in some measure counterballanced the joy I had felt in the first moments in which I gazed on them.” In his May 31 entry he wrote that “the hills and river Clifts which we passed today exhibit a most romantic appearance.” Lewis also traversed tiny emotions when conveying the sublime on June 1, 1806: “I met a singular plant today in blume of which I preserved a specemine.” See Moulton, Journals, 4: 200–202, 224–27, 283–87; 6: 151–52.
31. Ibid., 8: 262–66.
32. Ibid., 8: 333–35 and 335, n. 1.
33. Ibid., 3: 450–55, 6: 258–60, 362–65, 7: 42–46,191–94, 318–21, 8: 70–72,142–44.
CHAPTER 5: THE HOMEWARD BOUND JOURNEY
*This essay was originally published in the journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. Thomas C. Danisi and John C. Jackson, “Homeward Bound,” We Proceeded On 33, no. 2 (May 2007): 16–19. It has been updated and rewritten since its 2007 publication.
1. Connecticut Herald, November 4, 1806, p. 3.
2. “Rufus Easton to President Jefferson, October 19, 1806,” in Clarence E. Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 28 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1934–1962), 14: 45.
3. On April 18, 1796, Congress authorized the “factory system” to trade fairly and without profit with Native Americans using “factors” appointed by the president as official agents of the government. Factories were embedded in military forts on the edges of the frontier.
4. George Sibley to Samuel H. Sibley, October 25, 1806, Sibley Papers, Lindenwood Collection Transcripts, Missouri History Museum.
5. Pierre Chouteau said that he departed Saint Louis with the Osage on October 21, 1806, C194, M22, roll 3, p. 45, frame 0292, National Archives and Records Administration.
6. Pierre Chouteau to Henry Dearborn, October 14, 1806, Pierre Chouteau Letterbook, pp. 108–109, Missouri History Museum.
7. James Holmberg, Dear Brother (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 115.
8. Ibid., p. 122, n. 1.
9. Pierre Chouteau to Henry Dearborn, November 16, 1806, C203, M22, roll 3, p. 46, frame 0292, National Archives and Records Administration.
10. Pierre Chouteau to Henry Dearborn, December 7, 1806, C209, M22, roll 3, p. 46, National Archives and Records Administration.
11. “Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, November 3, 1806,” in Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Library ed., 20 vols. (Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, 1903), 18: 249.
12. Abraham Bradley Jr., Map of the United States: Exhibiting the Post-Roads, the Situations, Connexions & Distances of the Post-Offices, Stage Roads, Counties & Principal Rivers (Philadelphia: F. Shallus, 1804). The Wilderness Road equates to today's US-25. Bradley's map can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Bradley_Jr. (accessed January 26, 2011).
13. Kerry Oman, “Serendipity,” We ProceededOn 27, no. 4 (November 2001): 8. Ordway accompanied Lewis and the Mandan to the Cumberland Gap. Letter dated November 20 from Campbell explaining Ordway's presence with the group.
14. “Arthur Campbell to Governor Charles Scott, January 31, 1810,” in Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky: Begun and Held in the Town of Frankfort, on Monday the Fourth Day of December, 1815 (Frankfort, KY: Gerard & Berry, 1816), pp. 111–12.
15. See appendix G for George Huxtable's explanation on early survey techniques.
16. Ibid.
17. Lowell Hayes Harrison and James C. Klotter, A New History of Kentucky (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), p. 22.
18. Arthur Campbell to Christopher Greenup, November 24, 1806, Early American Imprints, second series, no. 37990, p. 107. See appendix G for Huxtable's elaboration of what Lewis called Ellicott's “much approved Zenith Sector.”
19. “Meriwether Lewis to Colonel Arthur Campbell, November 23, 1806,” in Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, pp. 89–92, 107–111; H. W. Flournoy, ed., Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts Preserved in the Capitol at Richmond, 1799–1807, 11 vols. (Richmond: R. F. Walker, 1875–1893), 9: 504–506. In Arthur Campbell's letter dated February 23, 1807, to Gov. William G. Cabell of Virginia, he showed Lewis's certificate to General Clark. Historian James Holmberg says this was most likely Jonathan Clark, who was on his way to Virginia in February 1807. The Diary of General Jonathan Clark (1750–1811), February 14–27, 1807, bk. 16 (January 1, 1806-June 30, 1809), microfilm, Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky.
20. Meriwether Lewis to Henry Dearborn, December 22, 1806, bill of exchange #121 to James Gilmer for $52.16, Reproductions, 1806-May 1808, box 2, folder 2, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
21. Samuel Latham Mitchill to Catherine Mitchill, December 21, 1806, folder 41.321.458, Samuel Latham Mitchill Collection, Museum of the City of New York, New York.
22. Thomas Jefferson to Wolf Indian Chief, December 30, 1806, document 28642–44, reel 37, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; President Jefferson to the Mandan Nation, December 30, 1806, RG75, M15, roll 2, pp. 269–70, frame 0124; Thomas Jefferson to Osage Chiefs, December 31, 1806, document 28645–46, reel 37; National Archives and Records Administration.
23. Samuel Latham Mitchill to Catherine Mitchill, January 1, 1807, folder 41.321.74, Samuel Latham Mitchill Collection, Museum of the City of New York.
24. New-York Gazette & General Advertiser, January 22, 1807, p. 2. The banquet was held at Stelle's Hotel. William Clark finally arrived in Washington on January 18. William E. Foley, Wilderness Journey: The Life of William Clark (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), p. 157.
25. The Sun (Washington, DC), February 7, 1807, p. 4.
26. Ibid. In February 1803, Meriwether Lewis was a member of the American Board of Agriculture and served on the committee of correspondence for the territory of Columbia. Republican Watch-Tower (Washington, DC), March 9, 1803, p. 2.
27. The Sun, February 7, 1807, p. 4.
28. “We proceeded on” was a favorite phrase often repeated by Lewis and Clark during the expedition.
29. US Congress, House Journal, 9th Cong., 2nd sess., December 2, 1806.
30. “Henry Dearborn to Willis Alston, January 14, 1807,” in Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2nd ed. 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1: 363.
31. US Congress, Annals of Congress of the United States, 1789–1824, 42 vols. (Washington, DC, 1834–1856), 9: 591–92.
32. “The Act Compensating Lewis and Clark, March 3, 1807,” and “Messrs. Lewis & Clarke's Donations Lands, March 6, 1807,” Jackson, Letters, 2: 377, 380.
33. US Congress, Senate Journal, 9th Cong., 2nd sess., March 3, 1807.
34. Carter, Territorial Papers, 13: 97–98, 383, 504; Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, May 4, 1806, document 27777–78, reel 35, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. See letters 179 and 190, Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe correspondence, Gawalt, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Smith, October 15, 1806, document 28352, and Albert Gallatin to Thomas Jefferson, October 25, 1806, document 28381, roll 36.
35. Thomas M. Marshall, The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1926), 1: 17–18. Frederick Bates (1777–1825) was a long-term public servant in Missouri who was elected the second governor of the state in 1824. Born in Goochland County, Virginia, Bates studied law in Virginia, then joined the army in 1797 and served as a paymaster in Detroit, where he may have met Meriwether Lewis. In 1800 Bates resigned from the army and became a merchant in Detroit, but a fire in 1805 destroyed most of his possessions. Holding a series of government positions such as postmaster, judge, and land commissioner in the Northwest Territory paved the way for Bates to be appointed by President Jefferson as secretary of the Louisiana Territory at the same time that Lewis was appointed governor. Awaiting Lewis's arrival, Bates was acting governor for nearly a year, from April 1, 1807, until March 8, 1808. During that time Bates organized the territorial militia and served as US Indian agent with the assistance of William Clark. After Lewis's death, Bates once more became acting governor in 1809, and served in the position for another year in 1812 and 1813. Bates did not want the territorial governorship for himself (it was offered to him) because his job as secretary, combined with the position of recorder of land titles, was more lucrative. Bates married Opie Ball in 1819, and they had four children. He died suddenly of pleurisy in 1825 while in office as governor of the State of Missouri.
36. “Lewis's Estimate of Expenses, 1803,” and “Financials of the Expedition, August 5, 1807,” in Jackson, Letters, 1: 8–9 and 2: 419–28.
37. “Observations and Reflections on the Subject of Governing and Maintaining a State of Friendly Intercourse with the Indians of the Territory of Louisiana,” in Thomas C. Danisi and John C. Jackson, Meriwether Lewis (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009), pp. 349–73.
38. Thomas Jefferson to Charles Willson Peale, March 29, 1807, document 29235, reel 38, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. Jefferson reminded Peale that Lewis was bringing money to reimburse him for the inkholders.
39. Alexander Wilson, American Ornithology: or The Natural History of the Birds of the United States, 3 vols. (New York: Collins, 1828), 2: 46–47. The full quote is printed in appendix A, no. 38.
40. “Conrad's Estimate of Publishing Costs, April 1807,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 392–94.
41. “The Conrad Prospectus, April 1, 1807,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 394–97.
42. Philadelphia Aurora, June 16, 1807, p. 1.
43. “The Mahlon Dickerson Diary, June 16, 1807,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 682.
44. The original letter reads A-R-ph., November 3, 1807, MG31, box 2, folder 38, Statesman Collection, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark, New Jersey.
45. James R. Bentley, “Two Letters of Meriwether Lewis to Major William Preston,” The Filson Club History Quarterly 44, no. 2 (April 1970): 174, n. 8; “Meriwether Lewis to Mahlon Dickerson, November 3, 1807,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 720.
46. Grace Lewis Miller Collection, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Archives. John Pernier, a mulatto free man, had worked for Thomas Jefferson since the beginning of October 1804. Massachusetts Historical Society, Thomas Jefferson's Account Book, March 25 to May 1805, p. 18. Lewis hired him in July 1807.
47. National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser, February 22, 1808, p. 3.
48. Meriwether Lewis to Lucy Marks, February 15, 1808, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
| CHAPTER 6: | PRESERVING THE LEGACY OF MERIWETHER LEWIS: LETTERS OF SAMUEL LATHAM MITCHILL |
*This essay was originally published in the journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. Thomas C. Danisi, “Preserving the Legacy of Meriwether Lewis: The letters of Samuel Latham Mitchill,” We Proceeded On 36, no. 1 (February 2010): 8–11.
1. Frederick Bates had attended the banquet at Stelle's Hotel on January 14, 1807, and witnessed the plethora of toasts, as well as Barlow's oration. I thank Bates for his comments toward Lewis: they enriched my understanding of his wily character. It was no mistake that Clark described Bates as a “little animale.” James Holmberg, Dear Brother (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 248.
2. “Frederick Bates to Richard Bates,” in Thomas M. Marshall, The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1926), 2: 108.
3. Joel Barlow, “On the Discoveries of Lewis, January 14, 1807,” in Richard Dillon, Meriwether Lewis, A Biography (Santa Cruz, CA: Western Tanager Press, 1965), pp. 269–70.
4. In January 1804, James MacKay met with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark at Camp River Dubois and lent them his map of the first 1,500 miles of the Missouri River. Thomas C. Danisi and W. Raymond Wood, “Lewis and Clark's Route Map: James MacKay's Map of the Missouri River,” Western Historical Quarterly 35, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 53–72.
5. Samuel L. Mitchill, ed., Medical Repository, 12 vols. (New York: 1804–1812), 4: 2736; Mitchell, “Descriptive Observations on Certain Parts of the Country in Louisiana,” Medical Repository (1806), 3: 309. Mitchill, as chairman of the special committee established to investigate the possibility of exploring the Louisiana Territory, introduced the bill that authorized Lewis and Clark to explore the country to the Pacific Ocean. Alan David Aberbach, In Search of an Identity: Samuel Latham Mitchill, Jeffersonian Nationalist (New York: Peter Lang, 1988), pp. 69–70.
6. The Samuel Latham Mitchill letters are located at the Museum of the City of New York. In July 2004, the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation awarded me a small research grant, which helped fund this important trip. I also visited the New Jersey Historical Society during the same trip and was able to uncover several gems by Mahlon Dickerson for the biography Meriwether Lewis.
7. The first date was December 1806, then 1807, 1805, the rest of 1806, 1804, 1808, 1801, and 1802.
8. Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 409.
9. Samuel Latham Mitchill to Catherine Mitchill, December 30, 1806, folder 41.321.464, Samuel Latham Mitchill Collection, Museum of the City of New York. See appendix C, no. 66.
10. Aberbach, In Search of an Identity, p. 70.
11. The Congressional Journals of the US Senate: Thomas Jefferson Administration, 8 vols. (reprint, Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1977), 3: vii; Alan D. Aberbach, “Samuel Latham Mitchill: A Physician in the Early Days of the Republic,” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 40 (July 1964): 508. Mitchill was founder of the New York Academy of Sciences and served as its president from 1817–1823.
12. “Samuel Latham Mitchill to Catherine Mitchill, January 10, 1802,” quoted in “Dr. Mitchill's Letters from Washington: 1801–1813,” Harper's New Monthly Magazine 58, Issue 347 (April 1879): 743–44. Mitchill arrived in Washington on December 7, 1801. See appendix C, no. 6.
13. Ibid., 740. A digital reproduction is available through Cornell University Library: “The Making of America,”
http://dlxs2.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=harp;cc=harp;rgn=full%20text;idno=harp0058–5;didno=harp0058–5;view=image;seq=0750;node=harp0058–5%3A13 (accessed May 14, 2011).
14. Copied verbatim from an online exhibit at the Library of Congress titled, “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic: The State Becomes the Church, Jefferson and Madison, Part II.” Incident at Congressional Church Services, Catherine Akerly Mitchill to Margaret Miller, April 8, 1806, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (document 167), Washington, DC, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel06–2.html
and http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/f0609s.jpg (original letter) (accessed May 14, 2011).
15. Catherine Mitchill to Margaret Miller, August 17, 1807, Mitchill manuscript, Manuscript Collection, New York Historical Society, New York, New York. Carolyn Hoover Sung, “Catherine Mitchill's Letters from Washington 1806–1812,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 34, no. 3 (July 1977): 171–89.
16. “Dr. Mitchill's Letters,” p. 740.
17. Courtney Robert Hall, A Scientist in the Early Republic, Samuel Latham Mitchill 1764–1831 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1962), pp. 13–14.
18. “Samuel Latham Mitchill to Catherine Mitchill, January 10, 1802,” quoted in “Dr. Mitchill's Letters,” p. 744.
19. Samuel Latham Mitchill to Catherine Mitchill, April 29, 1802, folder 41.321.10, Museum of the City of New York.
20. Samuel L. Mitchill, “Lewis's Map of the Parts of North America,” Medical Repository, 3: 315–18; Samuel L. Mitchill, “Review: Message from the President of the United States Communicating Discoveries Made in Exploring the Missouri,” Medical Repository, 4: 165–74; Amos Stoddard, “The Greatest Lead Mines in Upper Louisiana,” Medical Repository, 3: 87–88.
21. US Congress, House Journal, 7th Congress, 2nd session, January 18, 1803; US Congress, Senate Journal, 7th Congress, 2nd session, January 18, 1803; “Jefferson's Message to Congress, January 18, 1803,” in Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2nd ed. 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1: 13; US Congress, House Journal, 7th Congress, 2nd session, February 26, 1803.
22. Samuel Latham Mitchill to Catherine Mitchill, January 31, 1803, folder 41.321.265, Museum of the City of New York.
23. Samuel L. Mitchill, Discourse on Thomas Jefferson, More Especially as a Promoter of Natural & Physical Science (New York: G & C Carvill, 1826), p. 28; Samuel Latham Mitchill to Catherine Mitchill, January 7, 1807, folder 41.321.75, Museum of the City of New York.
24. Samuel Latham Mitchill to Catherine Mitchill, January 16, 1807, folder 41.321.103, Museum of the City of New York. See appendix C, no. 70.
25. Samuel Latham Mitchill to Catherine Mitchill, February 18, 1807, folder 41.321.69, Museum of the City of New York. See appendix C, no. 74.
| CHAPTER 7: | OBSERVATIONS AND REMARKS FROM LEWIS TO DEARBORN IN 1807: AN UNKNOWN LETTER REVEALS AN IN ABSENTIA GOVERNOR IN CONTROL |
*This essay was originally published in the journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. Thomas C. Danisi, “Observations and Remarks from Lewis to Dearborn in 1807,” We Proceeded On 35, no. 3 (August 2009): 32–38.
1. Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 28 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1948). Microfilm Resources for Research, A Comprehensive Catalog (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2000). Today this guide is online and as helpful as the printed version.
2. Carter, Territorial Papers, pp. 13, 14; General Records of the Department of State, Denis Fitzhugh to James Madison, August 15, 1808, RG59, M179, roll 22, p. 88, National Archives and Records Administration.
3. I thank Susan Saxton of Saint Louis, Missouri, for suggesting and implementing this novel idea.
4. Records of the Office of the Secretary of War, Meriwether Lewis to the Secretary of War, RG107, M222, 1807, S1807, roll 2, frames 0952–54, National Archives and Records Administration.
5. Letters Received by the Secretary of War, Unregistered Series, 1789–1861, Microcopy M222, (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service, 1963), pp. 2–3.
6. Roll 2 piqued my interest more than roll 1 because of the dates, 1805–1807. Roll 1 includes the dates 1789–1804 and contains letters from Captain Amos Stoddard describing some of Lewis's requests.
7. RG107, M222, L1806, roll 2, frames 0657–81, National Archives and Records Administration.
8. General Dearborn arrived in New York on July 11 and returned to Washington by August 7. Henry Dearborn to Thomas Jefferson, July 12, 1807, document 29710, roll 38, and August 7, 1807, document 28318, reel 39, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/ (accessed May 20, 2011).
9. William Clark to Secretary of War, May 18, 1807, C280, and June 1, 1807, C282, RG107, M221, roll 5, frames 1326–36; Frederick Bates to Secretary of War, May 15, 1807, B245, M221, roll 4, National Archives and Records Administration.
10. Lewis was appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory by Congress on March 3, 1807, and returned to Saint Louis to assume the role of full-time governor almost one year later, on March 8, 1808.
11. Meriwether Lewis Account Book, 1807–1809, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum; “William Simmons to Meriwether Lewis, July 31, 1807,” Jackson, Letters, 2: 419.
12. Samuel Latham Mitchill visited Philadelphia in 1802 and attended a few lectures at the American Philosophical Society. He wrote to his wife when he departed Washington and again when he arrived in Philadelphia. The time lapse was two days. Samuel Mitchill to Catherine Mitchill, December 6, 1802, folder 41.321.26 and December 8, 1802, folder 41.321.8, Samuel Mitchill Collection, Museum of the City of New York. The time varied by coach or horseback. Henry Adams, The History of the United States of America during the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, 9 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891), 1: 11–14; Abigail Adams to her sister, November 21, 1800, Stewart Mitchell, ed., New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788–1801 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1947); Cliff Sloan and David McKean, The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court (New York: Public Affairs, 2009), p. 6.
13. Meriwether Lewis Account Book, 1807–1809, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum; Henry Phillips Jr., “Early Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society…from the Manuscript Minutes of Its Meetings from 1774 to 1838,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 22 (1884): 396–98; John Vaughan to Thomas Jefferson, November 21, 1803, document 23559, roll 29, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
14. Jackson, Letters, 2: 696, n. (a); Thomas C. Danisi and John C. Jackson, Meriwether Lewis (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009), 349–73.
15. For a transcription of the two letters, see “William Clark to Secretary of War, May 18, 1807,” and “William Clark to Secretary of War, June 1, 1807,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 122–25 and 126–27;
http://digital.library.umsystem.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?sid=ebad2bc2458828beb40539b706811b94;g=;c=umlib;idno=umlc000005 (accessed May 20, 2011).
16. Danisi and Jackson, Meriwether Lewis, pp. 117, n. 13, 119, n. 53, and 128, n. 17.
17. Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 122.
18. Ibid. The Mandan chief Sheheke-shote was invited by Lewis and Clark near the conclusion of their 1804–1806 expedition to leave his home in present-day North Dakota and travel back with them to meet the president in Washington. Because of a hostile outbreak among the Arikara, who blocked passage to all on the upper Missouri River, a military expedition to return Sheheke-shote failed in 1807 and was forced to return to Saint Louis. This was the topic of Clark's letter. Following this failed expedition, the Mandan chief and his family languished in Saint Louis. Lewis and Clark had promised the chief and his people that he would return within a year of his departure and had failed to keep this pledge, which prompted the efforts of many to find a solution for his safe return in 1808 or 1809.
19. Since Clark mentioned that this incident took place “last fall,” and Lewis mentioned Lts. Pike and Wilkinson, it is certain that the dispute arose from preparations for Zebulon Pike's Southwestern Expedition in 1806. On August 27 of that year, when Pike and his command were staying with the Osage in southwest Missouri, he recorded in his journal that they procured six horses from the Indians. Lt. James B. Wilkinson was Pike's second in command and may have been in charge of procuring the horses; he later led a detachment to explore the lower Arkansas River. Wilkinson split off from Pike's main party on October 28, 1806, and returned to Saint Louis later that year. See Donald Jackson, The Journals of Zebulon Montgomery Pike (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962).
20. Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 124.
21. Dorion wrote several letters pleading to be paid, but his requests went unanswered. Pierre Dorion to Secretary of War, November 19, 1807, D208, RG107, M221, roll 6, frame 1903. Lewis finally paid Dorion. Meriwether Lewis to Secretary of War, April 15, 1808, L67 and L68, M22, National Archives and Records Administration.
22. For a transcription of the letter see Thomas M. Marshall, The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1926) 1: 119–22.
23. Danisi and Jackson, Meriwether Lewis, p. 195; “Frederick Bates to Secretary of War, September 28, 1809,” Marshall, Frederick Bates, 2: 87.
24. Secretary of War to William Clark and Frederick Bates, August 17, 1807, RG107, M15, roll 2, frame 0147, p. 328, National Archives and Records Administration.
| CHAPTER 8: | MERIWETHER LEWIS'S LAND WARRANT: AN UNTIMELY REWARD |
*This essay was originally published in the journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. Thomas C. Danisi, “Meriwether Lewis's Land Warrant: An Untimely Reward,” We Proceeded On 35, no. 4 (November 2009): 26–28.
1. Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1: 361.
2. Ibid., 1: 363.
3. Ibid., 1: 363–64; US Congress, House Journal, 9th Congress, 2nd session, January 2, 1807, p. 104.
4. Annals of Congress, 9th Congress, 2nd session, February 20, 1807, p. 591; US Congress, Senate Journal, 9th Congress, 2nd session, March 3, 1807, Vol. 4, p. 172.
5. Jackson, Letters, 2: 377.
6. Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 28 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1948), 13: 536 and 15: 109.
7. Land Warrants, November 15, 1808, Record Deed Book B, pp. 152–157, City of Saint Louis, Recorder of Deeds, City Hall, Saint Louis, Missouri; Missouri Gazette, March 29, 1809, vol. 1, issue 43; William Carr to Charles Carr, August 25, 1809, William Carr Papers, Missouri History Museum.
8. Lillian Ruth Colter-Frick, Courageous Colter and Companions (Washington, MO: Colter-Frick, 1997), pp. 339–41; Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 85–86 and 289–93; James J. Holmberg, ed., Dear Brother (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 201, 209–10, and 215.
9. Thomas M. Marshall, The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1926) 2: 86; Meriwether Lewis Account Book, September 17, 1809, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
10. Gilbert Russell to Thomas Jefferson, January 4, 1810, document 33616–17, roll 45, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. No mention is made of Clark's warrant, and when Lewis's trunks arrived in Washington, Clark portioned the contents to Jefferson, the War Department, Lewis's family, and himself. I can only speculate that Clark's warrant was returned by an unknown means—when James McFarlane arrived in New Orleans in November 1809, he could have picked it up or it was among Lewis's papers. In either case, Clark never raised concern about it. James McFarlane, microfilm F523, vol. 4, instrument 2990, French and Spanish Archives, City of St. Louis, City Hall, St. Louis, Missouri.
11. General Land Office to Scott Leavitt, House of Representatives, January 5, 1926, Grace Lewis Miller Collection, box 8, folder 15, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Archives.
12. Richard Searcy to George Graham, Commissioner of the General Land Office, December 31, 1826, Arkansas Territory, Miller Collection, box 8, folder 15, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Archives. In Danisi and Jackson's biography of Meriwether Lewis, the name Searcy was mistaken for Gearey. The Searcy document is nearly unreadable in the Grace Lewis Miller collection but a second letter (Richard Searcy to Major Reuben Lewis, April 3, 1820, box 1, folder 14) corroborates the spelling in the Meriwether Lewis Collection at the Missouri History Museum.
13. Bills and Resolutions, House of Representatives, 20th Cong., 1st sess., A Bill for the relief of the legal representatives of Meriwether Lewis, House Resolution 282, Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, 1789–1873, vol. 17, appendix, p. 506.
| CHAPTER 9: | WAS GOVERNOR LEWIS'S CORRESPONDENCE INTENTIONALLY DELAYED? |
1. RG107, M22, Registers of Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of War, Main Series, 1800–1870, and M221, Letters Received by the Secretary of War, Main Series, 1800–1870, National Archives and Records Administration.
2. Each letter of the alphabet ran its own course for number designations. For instance, the letter L, for the year 1806 extended to April 1, 1808, and totaled 247 letters before beginning again on April 14, 1808, and ending October 26, 1809, and totaling 347 letters (M22, roll 3, frames 0357–63 and roll 4, frames 0503–0510). The letter M, in 1808 began April 1 and ended December 1, 1809, and contained 635 letters (M22, roll 4, frames 051025).
3. Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 28 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1948), 13: p. 74.
4. James Wilkinson to War Department, W14–20, RG107, M22, roll 3, National Archives and Records Administration.
5. William Clark to Secretary of War, June 8, 1807, C338, M22, roll 3, National Archives and Records Administration.
6. On his way to Julia's home, Clark stopped outside of Cincinnati at Big Bone Lick and performed an errand for President Thomas Jefferson by digging up mammoth bones. William Clark to Secretary of War, September 12, 1807, C321, M22, roll 3, p. 52, frame 0295; Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 2: 442.
7. Meriwether Lewis to Secretary of War, August 20, 1808, Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 212.
8. Pierre Chouteau to Secretary of War, February 12, 1808, C458, M22, roll 3, National Archives and Records Administration.
9. Meriwether Lewis to Secretary of War, April 15, 1808, L67, Pierre Dorion for $313.70; L68, Pierre Dorion for $168.73; L69, Baptiste Dorion for $45; L70, John Reffle $50, M22, roll 4, p. 238, frame 0504, National Archives and Records Administration.
10. Meriwether Lewis to Secretary of War, April 25, 1808, L97, M22, roll 4, p. 240, frame 0505, National Archives and Records Administration.
11. William Clark to Secretary of War, August 13,1808, C411, Falconer and Comegys, $350, M221, roll 20, frame 6093, National Archives and Records Administration.
12. William Clark to Secretary of War, November 10, 1808, Entry 493, Box 3; Letters received by the Accountant for the War Department, College Park II, Maryland, National Archives and Records Administration. This letter bypassed the secretary of war because it related to expenditures. The November 18, 1808, letter on the list is not this one.
13. Meriwether Lewis, November 20, 1808, draft no. 12 in favor of Sydall Manley, Meriwether Lewis Account Book, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
14. The July 8, 1809 letter is printed in appendix A, no. 13.
15. William Clark to Henry Dearborn, July 20, 1810, C193, RG107, M221, roll 35, frame 2577, National Archives and Records Administration.
16. “Frederick Bates to Richard Bates, March 24, 1808,” in Thomas M. Marshall, TheLife and Papers of Frederick Bates, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1926) 1: 315.
17. Meriwether Lewis to William Clark, May 29, 1808, Clark Family Collection, Missouri History Museum.
18. “Frederick Bates to Richard Bates, November 9, 1809,” in Marshall, Frederick Bates, 2: 109–10.
19. “Frederick Bates to Gabriel Duvall, August 13, 1808,” and “Frederick Bates to Albert Gallatin, August 28, 1808,” in Marshall, Frederick Bates, 2: 11, 19. Before Bates departed on the circuit, he wrote a letter on May 26 to John Breck Treat, the Arkansas Indian agent, and said that he arrived on May 29 at Cape Girardeau. Marshall, Frederick Bates, 1: 344 and Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 190.)
20. “Judge Lucas to the Secretary of the Treasury, January 4, 1806,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 13: 374; “Judge Lucas to the Secretary of the Treasury, January 4, 1807,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 60.
21. This is a simplified story of Tillier's removal from office. For the deeper conflict, see Thomas C. Danisi, “George Champlain Sibley: Shady Dealings on the Early Frontier,” Confluence 2, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 2010): 39–49.
22. George Mason to Rodophe Tillier, May 20, 1808, RG75, M16, roll 1, pp. 154–55; George Mason to George Sibley, May 24, 1808, M16, roll 1, frame 0069, p. 147; George Mason to Rodophe Tillier, May 27, 1808, M16, roll 1, p. 158; Rodophe Tillier to George Mason, June 30, 1808, T1808, RG107, M222, roll 3, frames 1404–1405; George Mason to Rodophe Tillier, May 19, 1809, M16, roll 1, p. 381; Rodophe Tillier to George Mason, May 27, 1809, T1809, M222, roll 4, frame 1628; George Mason to Rodophe Tillier, June 21, 1809, M16, roll 2, p. 13; Danisi, “George Champlain Sibley,” pp. 46–48.
23. Ernest Staples Osgood, ed., The Field Notes1 of Captain William Clark, 1803–1805 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964), p. 25, n. 8.
24. Andrew Todd of Montreal, Canada, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 427–514, Saint Louis Recorded Archives, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Library, National Park Service, Saint Louis, Missouri; Abraham P. Nasatir, ed., Before Lewis and Clark: Documents Illustrating the History of the Missouri, 1785–1804, 2 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 2:443
25. Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 2: 437.
26. Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001), 2: 126; Will of Andrew Todd, Saint Louis Recorded Archives, vol. 5, no. 2, 427–514; Power of Attorney at Saint Louis, June 2, 1798, and May 4, 1799, Saint Louis Recorded Archives, WPA Subject Matter Index; Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 2: 571–73, 578.
27. There has been extensive discussion over the identity of John Hay, Cahokia postmaster, and John Hays, Cahokia sheriff, who both lived in Cahokia at the same time. To verify their identities, one can look at the petitions to the US Congress and compare their signatures against other documents of the time. Postmaster Hay wrote to the US postmaster general on many occasions and always signed his letters. He also wrote extensively to Auguste Chouteau, and his letters can be viewed at the Missouri History Museum. As Sheriff, John Hays signed numerous documents that would easily differentiate the two men. Lastly, we have Lewis's word about the two men and how he was able to tell them apart. See James and Andrew McGill & Co. to Auguste Chouteau, Saint Louis, October 8, 1802, in care of Mr. John Hay, Postmaster, Cahokia, Indiana Territory, microfilm reel 3, frame 0603, Chouteau Collection, Missouri History Museum; Account with Todd, Chouteau, reel 1, Chouteau Collections, Missouri History Museum.
28. Kevin C. Witte, “In the Footsteps of the Third Spanish Expedition: James Mackay and John T. Evans's Impact on the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” Great Plains Quarterly 26, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 93–94.
29. “Meriwether Lewis to an Unknown Correspondent, October 14, 1806,” in Jackson, Letters, 1: 335, n. 43. The only other copy of this letter is in David Thompson's hand in the Vancouver, British Columbia, Public Library.
| CHAPTER 10: | GOVERNOR MERIWETHER LEWIS'S FISCAL HOUSE OF CARDS: A CLOSER LOOK |
1. Donald R. Kennon and Rebecca M. Rogers, The Committee on Ways and Means: A Bicentennial History, 1789–1989 (Washington, DC: US House of Representatives, 1989), pp. 38–39; Alexander Balinky, Albert Gallatin: Fiscal Theories andPolicies (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1958), p. 104.
2. US Statutes at Large 1 (1792): 279–80, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=001/llsl001.db&recNum=403 (accessed February 10, 2011); Ezekial Bacon to William Simmons, April 18, 1814, p. 2, Series 1: General Correspondence, reel 16, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress.
3. Harry M. Ward, The Department of War, 1781–1795 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962), p. 144.
4. George Washington to the Senate, June 12, 1795, Nominations, Letterbook 27, Series 2 Letterbooks, Library of Congress; Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury, RG217, M235, roll 67, frame 1202, National Archives and Records Administration.
5. US Statutes at Large 1 (1798): 563–64.
6. William Clark to War Department, October 30, 1808, C284, M221, roll 20, frame 5964, National Archives and Records Administration.
7. Peter Hagner's Statement: Confrontation between Captain Samuel Vance and William Simmons, February 20, 1799, p. 41, Papers of the War Department, 1784–1800, Alexander Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress. Hagner was the principal clerk in Simmons's office; http://wardepartmentpapers.org/docimage.php?id=30526&docColID=33485 (accessed February 11, 2011).
8. William Simmons paid Meriwether Lewis on December 19, 1797, March 10 and March 22, 1798, and June 19, 1799.
9. Thomas and Cuthbert Bullitt of Louisville, Kentucky.
10. Gabriel Duvall to C. & T. Bullitt, November 10, 1810, D81, RG107, M221, roll 36, frame 3109, National Archives and Records Administration. Duvall, the Comptroller of the Treasury, was also a lawyer—a requisite demanded by President Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson to Gabriel Duvall, November 5, 1802, document 21939, roll 27, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
11. The Latin legal term “ex parte,” means from or by one side only, and with the other side absent or unrepresented.
12. “William Simmons to Meriwether Lewis, July 31, 1807,” and “Financial Records of the Expedition, August 5, 1807,” in Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 2: 419–31. Jackson simplified this part of the accounting, which gives the appearance that Lewis had little work to accomplish when meeting with Simmons. On the contrary, Simmons recorded the expedition expenses in more than thirty ledgers (partially filled with expedition information). The ledgers measured about 24 x 30 inches. If Lewis was required to produce paper in support of Simmons's line items, the expedition would have failed to return any scientific discoveries.
13. “William Simmons to Meriwether Lewis, June 17, 1807,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 416–17.
14. “William Simmons to Meriwether Lewis, July 31, 1807,” Jackson, Letters, 2: 419.
15. “Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, July 4, 1803,” Jackson, Letters, 1: 105106; Early American Imprints, second series, no. 21675, pp. 4 and 14, and no. 24153, p. 6.
16. James Wilkinson to Albert Gallatin, September 5, 1807, document 77, Albert Gallatin Papers, 1807, reel 14, New York Historical Society, New York.
17. Opinion of the Honorable C. A. Rodney on the claim of Genl. Wilkinson for extra rations and quarters, December 1809, R275, M221, roll 29, frame 9791–92, National Archives and Records Administration.
18. Extra Allowances to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, American State Papers, Finance 2: 339.
19. Ibid., 2: 340–41.
20. “Public Plunder: Letters from William Simmons, Accountant of the War Department to Brigadier General Wilkinson regarding Unauthorized Expenditures,” An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera, Library of Congress,
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/rbpe:@field(D0CID+@lit(rbpe22702700)) (accessed March 11, 2011).
21. In 1803, Gilbert C. Russell was a captain in the Tennessee militia. Annals of the Congress of the United States, 1789–1824, 42 vols. (Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1834–1836), 15: 183, 197, 210, 224–25,
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=015/llac015.db&recNum=0 (accessed February 15, 2011).
22. Gilbert Russell to Secretary of War, March 15, 1808, R133, RG107, M221, roll 12, frame 3623, National Archives and Records Administration. William Anderson and Joseph P. Anderson were brothers.
23. Ibid.
24. “Gabriel Duvall to William Simmons, January 9, 1809,” in American State Papers, Finance 2: 339.
25. Statutes at Large 2 (1807): 451–52. On June 22, 1807, a British warship fired upon an American naval vessel off the American coast and impressed several seamen. The Embargo Act was passed in an act of protest and retaliation at the end of 1807.
26. “Secretary of War to William Clark, March 9, 1807,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 108–109.
27. Ibid, p. 109.
28. John B. C. Lucas to James Mountain, March 3, 1808, Lucas Collection, Box 3, Missouri History Museum. Lucas was also a commissioner on the land board and wrote to Gallatin on a regular basis. They were also friends from former times in Congress and having been on the same committee in the Pennsylvania legislature in the 1790s. Hugh G. Cleland, “John B. C. Lucas, Physiocrat on the Frontier,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 36, no. 2 (June 1953): 92–100.
29. “William Clark to Secretary of War, June 1, 1807,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 126; “William Clark to Secretary of War, May 18, 1807,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 122. Clark's June 1 letter was more comprehensive than the one on May 18 as to the total number of persons on the voyage.
30. William Clark to Henry Dearborn, December 3, 1807, C378, RG107, “Kimball's Report,” M221, roll 5, frame 1563, National Archives and Records Administration; Thomas C. Danisi and John C. Jackson, Meriwether Lewis (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009), pp. 191–92.
31. “Nathaniel Pryor to William Clark, October 16, 1807,” and “William Clark to Henry Clay, September 11, 1816,” Jackson, Letters, 2: 432–38, 619–21. René Jesseaume said that 700 Arikara warriors were armed. Stan Hoig, The Chouteaus: First Family of the Fur Trade (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), pp. 39–41. The attack was in response to an Arikara chief who had been part of an Indian delegation to Washington and had suddenly died on the return trip. The death had not been properly explained to the Arikaras, and traders who had come up the river before the party presented a view that maddened the Arikaras, who felt deceived by the Americans.
32. Thomas Hunt to Secretary of War, November 20, 1807, H327, RG107, M221, roll 8, frame 2601; Marie Philipe Leduc to Secretary of War, May 5, 1810, L62, M221, roll 38, frame 4860, National Archives and Records Administration. Ensign Nathaniel Pryor headed the party and George Shannon and Robert Frazer went as hunters; all three were members of the Lewis and Clark expedition. René Jesseaume, the Mandan interpreter, accompanied the expedition for part of 1804.
33. The total cost included medical expenses for six of the wounded. “Frederick Bates to Denis Fitzhugh, December 16, 1807,” and “Frederick Bates to William Clark, December 1807,” in Thomas M. Marshall, The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1926), 1: 237, 247–48; William Simmons, Accountants Office, entry 353, set no. 1, ledger D, vol. 4, p. 1966: July 8 for $2000, July 20 for $589.66, and July 24 for $300. Other expenses were accounted for in February 1808, entry 366, vol. 13, letterbook O, January 29, 1808-November 30, 1808, pp. 7208–7209, nos. 10–22 and 2427. For more information, see appendix E.
34. Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 125. Wilkinson had advanced $200 to Dorion when he was appointed.
35. Pierre Dorion to Secretary of War, November 19, 1807, D208, RG107, M221, roll 6, frame 1903, National Archives and Records Administration.
36. In his letter to the secretary of war, Clark stated that Dorion's services had not been approved through official channels: “Two of his accounts (which you will find enclosed) for articles which he was not positively ordered to expend in his instructions, I have refused to pay, altho’ I think that it might be necessary to give such things.” “William Clark to Secretary of War, May 18, 1807,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 125.
37. “Frederick Bates to Meriwether Lewis, January 16, 1808,” in Marshall, Frederick Bates, 1: 265.
38. “Frederick Bates to Timothy Kibby, March 22, 1808,” in Marshall, Frederick Bates, 2: 314.
39. On April 13, Lewis paid Dorion $568.60 and two days later handed over two more drafts that completed the obligation. Accountant's books, January 29, 1808, to November 30, 1808, entry 366, vol. 13, letterbook O, p. 7453, National Archives, College Park, Maryland; Lewis's Account Book, 1808–1809, drafts nos. 3 and 4, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
40. Laws of the Territory of Louisiana (St. Louis: Joseph Charless, 1809).
41. “William Clark to Henry Dearborn, April 29, 1809,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 266.
42. Ibid., 2: 41.
43. James R. Bentley, “Two Letters of Meriwether Lewis to Major William Preston,” Filson Club History Quarterly 44, no. 2 (April 1970): 173. In this letter, Lewis said that he had purchased 7,440 arpents of land, or 6,300 acres, which converts at .85 to an acre, but in a later letter to his mother, he claimed to have bought 5,700 acres. Meriwether Lewis to Lucy Marks, December 1, 1808. See appendix A, no. 11.
44. Meriwether Lewis to William Clark, May 29, 1808, appendix A, no. 9. Lewis obtained $95 in banknotes1 from other citizens and added a bill of exchange for $100 drawn upon the War Department. He authorized Denis Fitzhugh to add an additional $30 of his funds, amounting to $225. Having a newspaper in Saint Louis was crucial for attracting new citizens to the territory.
45. When examining Jackson's records in Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Colter-Frick's records in L. Ruth Colter-Frick, “Meriwether Lewis's Personal Finances,” We Proceeded On 28, no. 1 (February 2002): 16–20, their documentation is lacking. For a more comprehensive account of Lewis's lost income, see appendixes D-F.
46. Printing territorial and national laws was a federal requirement for a new territory. US Statutes at Large 1 (1804): 283–84. Peter Provenchere was also known in Saint Louis as Pierre Provenchere.
47. Meriwether Lewis Account Book, July 22, 1808, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum; Early American Imprints, second series, no. 15451, The Laws of the Territory of Louisiana (Saint Louis: Joseph Charless, 1808).
48. US Statutes at Large 1 (1804): 302.
49. Secretary of War to Meriwether Lewis, March 28, 1808, RG107, M370, roll 3, frame 0118, item 647, p. 209.
50. Robert Brent, the army paymaster, was not immune to Simmons's practices. In September 1808 he received complaints from officers in the field because Simmons hadn't paid their accounts. Robert Brent, Paymaster General, September 22, 1808, Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of Treasury, Letters Received by the Accountant of the War Department, Unbound Records, entry 493, box 1, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland. See appendix E, p. 313.
51. Kate L. Gregg, ed., Westward with Dragoons: The Journal of William Clark on His Expedition to Establish Fort Osage, August 25 to September 22, 1808 (Fulton, MO: Ovid Bell Press, 1937).
52. William E. Foley, Wilderness Journey: The Life of William Clark (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), p. 173.
53. William Clark to Henry Dearborn, August 20, 1808, C197, RG107, M221, roll 19, frame 5842–43, National Archives and Records Administration.
54. “Secretary of War to William Clark, April 29, 1809,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 264. This is the last letter that Dearborn wrote to Clark, which he received on November 17, 1808.
55. James J. Holmberg, ed., Dear Brother (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 154; Landon Y. Jones, William Clark and the Shaping of the West (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), pp. 168–69. Expenses related to the treaty included presents to the Osage totaling $4,968.78.
56. William Clark to War Department, February 20, 1810, C48, M221, roll 35, frames 2307–2311, National Archives and Records Administration. “Louisiana” in this case referenced the Louisiana Territory, the land given up being specifically within the bounds of modern-day western Missouri.
57. Meriwether Lewis to Lucy Marks, December 1, 1808, appendix A, no. 11.
58. American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1: 767.
59. Clark wrote that the Saint Louis lodge opened on November 8, but Bates reported November 9, 1808. Holmberg, Dear Brother, p. 161. Western Star Lodge, No. 107, was established in Kaskaskia in December 1805; Louisiana Lodge No. 109 was established in Sainte Genevieve in 1806. Everett R. Turnbull, The Rise and Progress of Freemasonry in Illinois, 1783–1952 (Illinois: Pantagraph Printing, 1952), pp. 8–24 and insert on p. 24; James W. Skelley, “Some Early History of Freemasonry in Missouri,” paper read before the Missouri Historical Society, November 26, 1943, Missouri History Collection, Missouri History Museum, Saint Louis; Ray V. Denslow, Territorial Masonry: The Story of Freemasonry and the Louisiana Purchase, 1804–1821 (Washington, DC: Masonic Service Association of the United States, 1925). The first worshipful master of Saint Louis No. 111 was Meriwether Lewis. Thomas F. Riddick (Thomas Fiveash Riddick) was senior warden, Rufus Easton (Saint Louis postmaster) was junior warden. Signers for the petition were Meriwether Lewis, Thomas F. Riddick, J. V. Garnier, Joseph Kimball, Rufus Easton, Benjamin Wilkinson, Major James Bruff, John Coons, John Hay, John Hays, and Michael E. Immell. Others who belonged to the lodge were Frederick Bates, Silas Bent, William C. Carr, Joseph Charless, Major William Christy, William Clark, Dr. Bernard G. Farrar, Alexander McNair, Risdon Price, Alexander Stuart, and a number of US Army officers stationed at Bellefontaine. Skelley, “Early History of Freemasonry,” pp. 8–10. Frederick Bates delivered the oration at the lodge's opening. Early American Imprints, no. 16954: Frederick Bates, Oration delivered before Saint Louis Lodge No. 111.
60. See chapter 13 on Dr. Saugrain's treatment of Meriwether Lewis.
61. Copy of a letter from “Governor M. Lewis to the President of the United States, Relative to the Treaty Concluded with the Osage Indians, December 15, 1808,” in American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1: 766–67. Donald Jackson claims that Lewis did not write to Jefferson after June 27, 1807, but as a matter of efficiency his letters to the secretary of war were shared by the two and noted by Jefferson. The letter takes into account Lewis's arrival from March 8, 1808, to December 15 and includes treaties and letters from Clark, Bates, and other officials. RG107, M222, roll 3, L1808, frames 1260–88. Lewis wrote another letter dated August 27, 1809, that was forty-six pages long and described events beginning in late 1808. RG107, M221, roll 38, L101, frames 4907–31.
62. Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 430.
63. There are two separate copies of this long letter, as well as some treaty information. The manuscript copy, which is eleven pages, was printed in the American State Papers while the draft copy, which is seven pages, was included in a William Clark document. The etiology of the two documents originated with Lewis, and it appears that Lewis sent the manuscript copy in December 1808. However, Chouteau's letter dated October 3, 1808, was missing by the time it reached Washington. The draft copy, among Lewis's papers after his death, was given to Clark when he arrived in Washington in December 1809. The manuscript copy is detailed and can be found in its entirety in RG107, M222, roll 3, L1808, frames 1260–88, while the draft copy is part of William Clark to War Department, February 20, 1810, C48, M221, roll 35, frames 2307–2317, National Archives and Records Administration. Much of the content of this William Clark letter can be found in American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1: 763–66. Included in this file is the draft copy of the letter that Lewis wrote to Pierre Chouteau dated October 3, 1808. The preservation of this information bodes well for other primary documentation presumed to be lost or missing, specifically Lewis and Clark's Indian vocabularies, printed in American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1: pp. 705–721. There is hope that Lewis and Clark recorded more Indian vocabularies than what was printed in American State Papers and that these may still be preserved in a National Archives file; http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsp&fileName=007/llsp007.db&recNum=764 (accessed May 20, 2011).
64. Albert Gallatin to the Committee of Ways and Means, December 10, 1808, RG233, M1268, roll 7, frame 0081, p.180, National Archives and Records Administration.
65. US Statutes at Large 2 (1809): 528–33. Dearborn believed that the Embargo Act would start a war; since he felt inadequate to head the War Department during hostilities, he tendered his resignation, but Jefferson persuaded him to not resign. Henry Dearborn to Thomas Jefferson, December 29, 1807, document 30676, reel 40, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
66. Albert Gallatin to the Committee of Ways and Means, December 10, 1808, RG233, M1268, roll 7, frame 0084, p.185, National Archives and Records Administration.
67. House Representative John Rhea of Tennessee wrote Gen. James Robertson of Nashville and announced Madison's election on January 25, 1809. Madison took office on March 3, 1809. James Robertson, 1742–1814, microfilm Mf. 801, box 3, folder 9, frame 0944, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee.
68. Henry Dearborn to Thomas Jefferson, February 16, 1809, reel 10, document 5985 Mi, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress. Or see http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mjm&fileName=10/mjm10.db&recNum=1047&itemLink=r?ammem/mjm:@FIELD(DOCID+@BAND(@lit(mjm015257))) (accessed August 10, 2011).
69. “John Fanning to the Public,” in Early American Imprints, second series, no. 11805, p. 2.
70. Albert Gallatin to Thomas Jefferson, December 18, 1812, document 35020, reel 46, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. “It is to be hoped that Mr. Eustis's resignation will open brighter prospects…yet his incapacity and the total want of confidence in him were felt through every ramification of the public service.”
71. RG94, M565, roll 2, p. 51, frame 0276, National Archives and Records Administration.
72. The point on the trail ended at Cahokia, and mail for Saint Louis and Fort Bellefontaine had to be ferried across the Mississippi River.
73. “Postmaster General to Governor Lewis, March 29, 1809,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 256–57.
74. Ibid., p. 257.
75. Jackson, Letters, 2: 436; Accountant's Office, entry 366, vol. 14, letterbook P, December 1, 1808-February 24, 1810, p. 8051, entry 1902; René Jussome (Jesseaume), April 25, 1808, Meriwether Lewis's Account Book, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
76. “Meriwether Lewis to Henry Dearborn, March 7, 1809,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 450–51.
77. William Clark to Secretary of War, 1810, C221, M221, roll 35, National Archives and Records Administration. Document contains sketch of building.
78. William Clark to War Department, January 26, 1809, C456, RG107, M221, roll 20, frame 6133; William Simmons to William Clark, May 11, 1809, RG75, M15, roll 2, p. 436, frame 0190, National Archives and Records Administration.
79. Ibid. Clark, unafraid of Simmons, responded that he had been instructed by the secretary of war to pay the accounts as necessary. “I do not recolect to have exceeded what appeared to be necessary.” William Clark to William Simmons, July 1, 1809, C581, M221, roll 20, frame 6275, National Archives and Records Administration.
80. Tillier fired Sibley because Sibley had caught Tillier stealing from the factory. Thomas C. Danisi, “George Champlain Sibley: Shady Dealings on the Early Frontier,” Confluence 2, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 2010): 39–49.
81. Carter, Territorial Papers, 13: 239.
82. Rodolphe Tillier to John Mason, April 20, 1809, T266, RG107, M221, roll 32, frame 0270; Rodolphe Tillier to John Mason, April 27, 1809, T1809, RG107, M222, roll 4, frames 1628–29; Rodolphe Tillier to John Mason, May 12, 1809, T273, M221, roll 32, frame 0719, National Archives and Records Administration. An abridged version of the April 27 letter is printed in, Robert A. Rutland et al. ed., The Papers of James Madison: Presidential Series, 5 vols. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1984), 1: 141–42.
83. Rodolphe Tillier to John Mason, April 27, 1809, T1809, RG107, M222, roll 4, frames 1628–29, National Archives and Records Administration.
84. Rodolphe Tillier to John Mason, May 12, 1809, T273, M221, roll 32, frame 0719, National Archives and Records Administration.
85. John Mason to James Madison, June 9, 1809, M1809, M222, roll 4, frames 1582–84.
86. “Secretary of War to Governor Lewis, July 15, 1809,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 285–86.
87. Chouteau received $940 from Lewis to distribute presents on May 15, 1809: 400 lbs. of gunpowder for $600; 100 guns for $100; 1250 lbs. lead for $100; 20 lbs. vermillion for $50; and 600 lbs. of tobacco for $90.
88. Lewis sent a draft of $18 on December 28, which was refused and returned on March 14, 1809. The refusal letter explained that funds of this kind were to be paid by Territorial Secretary Bates. When Lewis submitted the bill to Bates, he refused to pay, stating that there was not enough money in the account. Marshall, Frederick Bates, 2: 73–74.
89. Lewis's delayed payments are discussed in chapter 9 of this book.
90. William Clark to William Simmons, July 1, 1809, C581, M221, roll 20, frame 6275, National Archives and Records Administration.
91. “William Clark with Estimate of the Expenditures in the Indian Department under His Superintendence in Louisiana for the Quarter Ending 31st Dec. 1809.” When Clark departed St. Louis in September 1809 and arrived at the War Department in December, he spoke for Lewis and himself on the complexities of the Louisiana Territory. The department reimbursed him for those salaries, “for the amount of pay due them…from their last settlement entitled dismissed from the service of the U.States.” William Clark to War Department, December 31, 1809, C8, M221, roll 35, frames 2247–49, National Archives and Records Administration.
92. “William Simmons to William Clark, August 7, 1809,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 289.
93. Meriwether Lewis to William Simmons, July 8, 1809, appendix A, no. 13. Lewis, Anderson, and Marks Families Papers, 1771–1908, microfilm M668, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia.
94. Pierre Chouteau to War Department, June 14, 1809, C562, M221, roll 20, frame 6255, National Archives and Records Administration. See appendix A, no. 12. Bates wrote other letters for Chouteau's son, August 12, 1809, C612, M221, roll 20, frame 6310; September 1, 1809, C625, from Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 312–19. Chouteau's son wrote in French on October 2 to the War Department, and upon receipt his letter was translated there: “I am continually apprehensive that the reports of ill-intentioned persons may have given you some prejudices against my Father….” Auguste Chouteau to War Department, October 2, 1809, C650, M221, roll 20, frame 6364, National Archives and Records Administration.
95. July 15, 1809, appendix A, no. 14. “William Simmons to Meriwether Lewis, July 15, 1809,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: pp. 285–86 or Jackson, Letters, 2: pp. 456–57.
96. August 18, 1809, appendix A, no. 15.
97. William Thomas L340: $220; Pierre Chouteau L341: $440, L295: $500, L303: $1, and L302: $81. Dearborn had made provisions for Indian presents. L340 had not been included in the original recommendation.
98. August 18, 1809, appendix A, no. 15.
99. Meriwether Lewis to William Simmons, August 18, 1809, L328, RG107, M221, roll 23, frame 8501, National Archives and Records Administration.
100. Appendix A, no. 15. Donald Jackson omitted this paragraph in his transcription of the letter.
101. Correspondence that did not arrive or arrived too late added to Lewis's frustration.
102. Frederick Bates had refused to withdraw funds from a contingent account to help pay for the printing. “Frederick Bates to Albert Gallatin, July 16, 1809,” in Marshall, Frederick Bates, 2: 73–74.
103. A Journal of the Proceedings of the Legislature of the Territory of Louisiana Commencing June 3, 1806 and Ending October 9, 1811, Special Collection M-61, Mercantile Library, University of Missouri-Saint Louis. In the July 7, 1807, entry, the legislature approved that the “Governor be hereby authorized to enter into a contract with an Printer for printing two hundred copies of the Militia Law and three hundred of the Laws of a public nature…to employ some fit person to translate such Laws of the Territory as he shall think proper into the French language: provided that the expences for printing and translating shall not exceed…Five Hundred Dollars….”
104. Peter Provenchere to his father, July 29, 1809, Provenchere Family Papers, Missouri History Museum. Historian Grace Lewis Miller contended that Lewis was never paid, but this figure does not come up in his account book or in his estate settlements. What is clear is that he paid out the money from his own pocket and was not reimbursed for the duration of his governorship.
105. Peter Provenchere to his father, December 21, 1809, Provenchere Family Papers, Missouri History Museum. Lewis recognized Provenchere's talents and he appointed him judge of the probate court and notary public on July 8, 1808, box 2, folder 4, Reproductions, July 1808–0ctober 1809, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
106. John Moncure Daniel to Secretary of War, July 12, 1809, RG107, M6, roll 4, p. 170, and December 26, 1809, D345, M221, roll 21, National Archives and Records Administration.
107. James Wilkinson to Secretary of War, December 18, 1809, RG233, M1268, roll 12, p. 281, frame 0399, National Archives and Records Administration.
108. Correspondence between Thomas Van Dyke and William Simmons, V87, February 3 1809; V-97, July 27, 1809; V-104, October 17, 1809, RG107, M221, roll 32, National Archives and Records Administration.
109. Appendix A, no. 10. See also appendixes D—F for a detailed description of those expenses.
110. Meriwether Lewis, November 20, 1808, draft no. 12 in favor of Sydall Manley, Meriwether Lewis Account Book, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum. Taken out of Lewis's payment for the quarter ending December 1808.
111. This $440 was absolutely necessary to the success of returning the Mandan chief. The presents were used to placate the other tribes along the Upper Missouri. Chouteau stated that he “distributed…Sixty pounds of powder…one hundred & Twenty pounds of the Ball…ten pounds of Vermillion, and one hundred and fifty Pounds of tobacco, which seemed to restore harmony amongst them.” Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 346.
112. Ibid. This payment totaled $940.
113. See appendix E, Lewis's Drafts and Warrants, entry 366, vol. 14, letterbook P, and vol. 15, letterbook Q in back of this book.
114. John Armstrong to James Madison, June 29, 1814, Series 1: General Correspondence, reel 16, p. 1, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress.
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid., pp. 1 and 2.
117. Ezekiel Bacon to William Simmons, April 18, 1814, Series 1: General Correspondence, reel 16, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mjm.16_0187_0191 (accessed March 11, 2011).
118. Ibid., p. 2.
119. William Simmons, “A Letter to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, Shewing the Profligacy and Corruption of General John Armstrong in His Administration of the War Department” (Georgetown: Robert Alleson, 1814) in Early American Imprints, second series, no. 32773, p. 11.
120. John Armstrong to James Madison, June 29, 1814, Series 1: General Correspondence, reel 16, p. 3, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress.
121. Simmons, Early American Imprints, p. 13.
122. Ibid, pp. 3, 5.
123. Ibid, p. 5.
124. James Madison to John Armstrong, July 6, 1814, “Notes1 on the Return of Papers Accompanied by a Letter from the Secy. of War of June 29, 1814,” Series 3: Madison-Armstrong Correspondence, reel 27, p. 4, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mjm.27_0151_0156 (accessed August 10, 2011).
125. James Madison to William Simmons, July 6, 1814, Early American Imprints, second series, no. 32773, p. 6.
126. Simmons's written statements of refusal and settlement pervade thousands of documents in the National Archives. William F. Sherman and Craig R. Scott, Records of the Accounting Officers of the Treasury Department, inventory 14, rev. (Lovettsville, VA: Willow Bend Books, 1997). See record groups RG217 and RG107 for further details.
127. William Simmons has been described as patriotic because he served in the War of 1812, but this does not absolve him for his insufferable treatment toward War Department personnel. Walter Lord, The Dawn's Early Light (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), pp. 116, 152–53; Robert B. Lechter, “William Simmons, Accountant: Unsung Hero at the Battle of Bladensburg, MD, War of 1812,” MACPA Statement 36, no. 9 (May/June 2001): 16.
| CHAPTER 11: | FROM FORT PICKERING TO NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE: THE FINAL CHAPTER |
1. Robert Grinder's name has also been thrown into doubt, some claiming that the last name was Griner. A Williamson County Court document spelled the name Grinder, which was also corroborated by a Franklin, Tennessee, merchant's store. Glen O. Hardeman Collection C3655, Account Books, Franklin, Tennessee, box 3, folder 85, Journal, p. 63, and folder 86, Ledger with Index, p. 17, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri.
2. Secretary of War to James Neelly, July 7, 1809, M15, roll 3, p. 112, and Secretary of War to James Neelly, June 4, 1812, M15, roll 3, p. 134. The secretary of war wrote the letter to Neelly on June 4 and Neelly tendered his account to Gen. James Robertson July 31, 1812. M22, N48, roll 6, p. 349, frame 0915, National Archives and Records Administration.
3. Brad Meltzer's Decoded, December 9, 2010, “Secret Presidential Codes,” History Channel,
http://www.history.com/shows/brad-meltzers-decoded/episodes/episodes-guide (accessed January 28, 2011).
4. Robert S. Cotterill, “The Natchez Trace,” Tennessee Historical Magazine 7, no. 4 (April 1921): 27.
5. Ilene J. Cornwell and Deborah K. Henderson, Travel Guide to the Natchez Trace Parkway (Nashville, TN: Southern Resources Unlimited, 1984), p. 1.
6. Arrell Morgan Gibson, The Chickasaws (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), p. 97.
7. Cornwell and Henderson, Travel Guide, p. 2.
8. Dawson A. Phelps, “The Natchez Trace, Indian Trail to Parkway,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 21, no. 3 (September 1962): 216.
9. Cotterill, “The Natchez Trace,” pp. 30–31; Dawson A. Phelps, “The Chickasaw Agency,” Journal of Mississippi History 14, no. 2 (April 1952): 120.
10. Henry Dearborn to Silas Dinsmoor to the Choctaw, May 8, 1802, RG75, M15, roll 1, pp. 207–208, frame 0094, National Archives and Records Administration. This letter was also addressed in the margin to Samuel Mitchell, the Chickasaw agent. Phelps, “The Chickasaw Agency,” p. 132. The Phelps article printed the Dearborn letter but did not provide a citation.
11. Cornwell and Henderson, Travel Guide, p. 49.
12. Phelps, “The Chickasaw Agency,” p. 125. Thomas McCoy was the weaver and instructor for the Chickasaws. Malcolm McGee to Secretary of War, December 16, 1808, M363, M221, roll 26, frame 8904, National Archives and Records Administration.
13. Samuel Mitchell, William Hill, Thomas Wright, James Neelly, James A. Robertson, and William Cocke. Dearborn to Robertson, February 27, 1806, box 4, folder 10, frame 1143, and Thomas Wright, April 17, 1807, box 4, folder 21, frame 1274, James Robertson, 1742–1814, microfilm Mf. 801, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee. In 1816, William Cocke affirmed Neelly's reputation “for candor, probity, and good morals.” American State Papers, Indian Affairs 2: 106.
14. Malcolm McGee to Secretary of War, September 27, 1808, M234, M221, roll 26, frame 8765, National Archives and Records Administration.
15. Dawson A. Phelps, “Colbert Ferry and Selected Documents,” Alabama Historical Quarterly 25, nos. 3–4 (Fall and Winter 1963): 205; Malcolm McGee to Secretary of War, September 27, 1808, M234, RG107, M221, roll 26, frame 8765; George Colbert to Secretary of War, C469, February 18, 1809, roll 20, frame 6146, National Archives and Records Administration.
16. Phelps, “The Chickasaw Agency,” p. 125; Robert S. Cotterill, “Federal Indian Management in the South 1789–1825,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 20, no. 3 (December 1933): 342–43, n. 23.
17. Guy B. Braden, “The Colberts and the Chickasaw Nation,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 17, no. 3 (September 1958): 227.
18. Cotterill, “The Natchez Trace,” p. 31. A resident of Florence, Alabama, recalled George Colbert as “tall, slender, and handsome with straight black hair that he wore long…down to his shoulders. His features were that of an Indian but his skin was lighter than that of his tribe.” Braden, “The Colberts and the Chickasaw Nation,” p. 229. Cherokee Indian Agent Return Meigs described George Colbert's business acumen: “[T]ho, not highest in rank in the Chickasaw Nation, yet from his ambition & interest, very much influences the affairs of that Nation. He is extremely mercenary…when not awed by the presence of the Officers of Government takes upon himself great airs.” Return J. Meigs to Secretary of War, March 1, 1809, M448, M221, roll 27, frame 8964, National Archives and Records Administration.
19. The Chickasaw king's name, usually referred as the Mingo chief, was pronounced differently, and his name was spelled in various ways. Two of the most common spellings were: Chenubbee Mingo (Chinubbee Mingo) or Chinumba Mingo. M221, August 12, 1809, roll 27, frame 9074, and RG75, T58, roll 1, frame 0102, National Archives and Records Administration; US Statutes at Large 7 (1805): 89–90; John Sugden, “Early Pan-Indianism: Tecumseh's Tour of the Indian Country, 1811–1812,” American Indian Quarterly 10, no. 4 (Autumn 1986): 291.
20. Chinumba Mingo to Secretary of War, June 27, 1809, M535, M221, roll 27, frames 9052–53, National Archives and Records Administration. This letter was composed and written by Malcolm McGee, the Chickasaw Indian interpreter in the presence of George Colbert and Chief O'Koy (Tishumastabbe).
21. Return J. Meigs to Secretary of War, June 12, 1809, M510, RG107, M221, roll 27, frames 9021–23, National Archives and Records Administration.
22. Return J. Meigs to Secretary of War, October 26, 1809, M595, M221, roll 27, frame 9010, National Archives and Records Administration.
23. Secretary of War to James Neelly, July 8, 1809, RG75, M15, roll 3, p. 1, frame 0019, National Archives and Records Administration.
24. Secretary of War to James Neelly, July 7, 1809, M15, roll 2, p. 442, frame 0192; James Neelly to Secretary of War, August 9, 1809, N91, M221, roll 27, frame 9211, National Archives and Records Administration.
25. Williamson County Record, County Courthouse Minutes microfilm, roll 45, vol. 1, 1800–1815, pp. 1, 86, 200, and 207, Tennessee State Archives and Library, Nashville, Tennessee.
26. Secretary of War to James Neelly, July 7, 1809, M15, roll 3, p. 1, frame 0019. “Having no Agent with the Chickasaws at the time orders were given to forward their Annuities for the present year, they were directed to be sent to Mr. David Hogg U.S. Factor at Chickasaw Bluff, on whom you will call with the enclosed order, receive them from him & duly distribute them to the Nation….”
27. Secretary of War to David Hogg, July 7, 1809, M15, roll 3, p. 1, frame 0019, National Archives and Records Administration. “Please to deliver to Jas. Neeley, U.S. Agent to the Chickasaws, such goods as you may or have received on Acct. of the Annuity due that Nation for the present year, taking duplicate receipts therefor, one of which is to be transmitted to the superintendent of Military Stores at Philadelphia.”
28. Secretary of War to Chinumba Mingo, George Colbert, and O'Koy, July 21, 1809, M15, roll 3, p. 3, frame 0019, National Archives and Records Administration.
29. Secretary of War to James Neelly, July 21, 1809, M15, roll 3, p. 3, frame 0019, National Archives and Records Administration. Henry Knox to the Chickasaws, “Supply for the Chickasaws,” April 27, 1793, box 4, folder 11, frame 1174, James Robertson, 17421814, microfilm Mf. 801, Tennessee State Library and Archives. The Chickasaw annuity in 1795, agreed by treaty, was perpetual and included the following: 500 stands of arms, 2,000 lbs. powder, 4,000 flint, 4,000 lbs. lead, 500 bushels of corn, 50 lbs. vermillion, and 100 gallons of whiskey. See RG75, T58, roll 1, frame 0102, National Archives and Records Administration. The 1795 treaty amounted to $3,000 in specie, but the 1805 treaty soared to $20,000 and gave additional payments to certain chiefs, granted free schooling for select Chickasaw children, and presented other gifts and concessions. See US Statutes at Large 7 (1805): 89–90 for details.
30. The Chickasaw Agency was located at milepost 241.4 and Duck River was located at milepost 430. F. Lynne Bachleda, Guide to the Natchez Trace Parkway, 2nd ed. (Birmingham, AL: Menasha Ridge Press, 2011), pp. x-xi; Cornwell and Henderson, Travel Guide, p. 75.
31. James Neelly to Secretary of War, August 27, 1809, N94, M221, roll 27, National Archives and Records Administration. The frame numbers on the microfilm are unreadable after frame 9204.
32. James Neelly to Secretary of War, August 30, 1809, N97, M22, roll 4, frame 0528, National Archives and Records Administration.
33. Samuel Cole Williams, Beginnings of West Tennessee: In the Land of the Chickasaws 1541–1841 (Johnson City, TN: Watuga Press, 1930), p. 68.
34. James Neelly to Thomas Jefferson, October 18, 1809, document 33522–23, roll 44, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; John Brahan to Thomas Jefferson, October 18, 1809, document 33520–21, roll 44, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; John Brahan to Secretary of War, October 18, 1809, B589, RG107, M221, roll 18, frame 5632, National Archives and Records Administration. See appendix A, nos. 16, 17, 18.
35. Meriwether Lewis to James Madison, September 15, 1809. See appendix A, no. 12.
36. Gilbert Russell to Secretary of War, May 19, 1809, R219, M221, roll 29, frame 9736, National Archives and Records Administration. Simmons had protested another account from Russell in the amount of $2,276 and Russell had sent a request in May 1809 to travel to Washington to explain the protested bill. Russell was not reimbursed until 1811.
37. The War Department wrote to Russell on September 25 about the repair of the buildings at the fort and being paid for those repairs by the military agent at Pittsburgh. There was no mention of his correspondence with William Simmons, the accountant, because Simmons handled all of those matters separately. War Department to Gilbert Russell, September 25, 1809, RG107, M6, roll 4, p. 209, frame 0118, National Archives and Records Administration.
38. Captain Gilbert Russell mentioned that there were some Indians who accompanied the entourage. It is uncertain whether they were present at Fort Pickering on September 29 or the group met them along the way. Statement of Gilbert Russell, appendix A, no. 37.
39. We already know that it took Major Neelly about eighteen days to travel from the Chickasaw Indian village, Big Town, to Fort Pickering, which shows that Dawson Phelps assumed too much in his article. Phelps claimed that the distance from the fort to the Chickasaw Agency was “not much more than one hundred miles—a two-and-one-half or three days’ journey.” James Neelly to Secretary of War, August 27 and August 30, 1809, N94 and N97, M221, roll 27 and M22, roll 4, frame 0528; Dawson A. Phelps, “The Tragic Death of Meriwether Lewis,” William and Mary Quarterly, Series 3 13 (July 1956): 314.
40. Rhea's Tennessee map of 1834 shows the road from Memphis intersecting the Natchez Trace near Waynesboro. Bachleda, Natchez Trace Parkway, p. xi.
41. Capt. Gilbert Russell had lent Lewis two horses and Neelly, as the Indian agent, was required by law to recover them. Russell describes the transaction in an 1813 letter. “From the tenor of a letter written to me in 1810 by Genl. Wm. Clark on the subject of the affairs of the decd. Gov. Lewis, I felt myself authorized to draw on him for the amount the Estate owed me for two horses & about one hundred dollars which I let the Govr. have to enable him to prosecute his journey to Washington. Under the impression that Genl. Clark would pay it I did draw on him for the amount of $379.58 with interest and bound myself in double the sum, if the Bill should be refund. Genl. C. refused to pay it, and my Agent at Sainte Genevieve instituted a suit against the administrator which has only had the tendency of incurring additional expense to me.…” Gilbert Russell to William D. Meriwether, April 18, 1813, New Orleans, Lewis, Anderson, and Marks Families Papers, 1771–1908, microfilm M668, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. Russell also loaned Lewis a saddle, and Lewis promised to pay him by January 1, 1810. Gary E. Moulton, “New Documents of Meriwether Lewis,” We Proceeded On 13, no. 4 (November 1987): 6.
42. Dawson A. Phelps, “Stands and Travel Accommodations on the Natchez Trace,” Journal of Mississippi History 11, no. 1 (January 1949): 40. Phelps believes that Grinder's Stand opened sometime between January 18, 1808 and October 11, 1808. He may be right, but the minutes of the Williamson County Court prove that new roads were opened on Grinder's property between 1805 and 1809. Williamson County Record, County Courthouse Minutes microfilm, roll 45, vol. 1–2, 1800–1815, July 11, 1809, p. 412, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee. In 1805, the Williamson County court ordered a landowner near Neelly's and Grinder's property to oversee and clear a new road: “Ordered that Elijah Hunter oversee the clearing out and keeping in repair the Public road from where the Natchez road leaves Maj. Neelly's road to where it intersects the road cut by the Federal troops at or near the Big Bridge and that all those hands resident in the following bounds to wit: Beginning at the forks of said road, then to William Hicks then to Robert Grinders, then to Mrs. Thompsons, then to Henry Inmans, then to Joel Hobbs, then to John Hunters from thence to the beginning.” Williamson County Record, County Courthouse Minutes microfilm, roll 45, vol. 1–2, 1800–1815, July 9, 1805, p. 139, Franklin, Tennessee.
43. James Neelly to Thomas Jefferson, October 18, 1809, document 33522–23, roll 44, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
44. Brad Meltzer's Decoded, December 9, 2010, “Secret Presidential Codes,” History Channel,
http://www.history.com/shows/brad-meltzers-decoded/episodes/episodes-guide (accessed January 28, 2011).
45. Tony Turnbow claims that the distance from the town of Franklin, Tennessee, to Grinder's Inn was about fifty-five miles, which made it impossible for Neelly to be there on October 11, 1809.
46. Williamson County Record, County Courthouse Minutes microfilm, roll 45, vol. 1, 1800–1815, p. 421, Tennessee State Archives and Library, Nashville, Tennessee.
47. Today this practice is still alive and well in both the Supreme Court of Tennessee and the Appeals Court of Tennessee; it is the normal mode of operation for many cases. Also, the waiver of appearance is common practice in debts court, chancery court, arraignments in criminal court, and motion dates.
48. Williamson County Record, County Courthouse Minutes microfilm, roll 45, vol. 1–2, 1800–1815, pp. 136 and 173, Tennessee State Archives and Library, Nashville, Tennessee.
49. Thomas C. Danisi and W. Raymond Wood, “Lewis and Clark's Route Map: James MacKay's Map of the Missouri River,” Western Historical Quarterly 35, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 54.
50. There were other Neelly account holders, too: Maj. William Neelly, William Neelly, William Neelly Jr., Robert Neelly, George Neelly, George Neelly Sr., George Neelly Jr, Jean Neelly, John Neelly Sr., and Samuel Neelly. Glen O. Hardeman Collection, C3655, Account Books, Franklin, Tennessee: box 2, folder 80, pp. 35, 53, 65, 122; box 2, folder 81, p. 201; box 3, folder 84; box 3, folder 85, Journal, pp. 44, 49, 82, 84, 169, 174, 407, 412, 417; box 3, folder 86, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri.
51. Williamson County Record, County Courthouse Minutes microfilm, roll 45, vol. 1, 1800–1815, pp. 243 and 245, Tennessee State Archives and Library.
52. I thank Caesar Cirigliano for initially raising the idea that there might have been more than one James Neelly living near Franklin, Tennessee. I also have to thank Tony Turnbow for informing me that Major James Neelly was from Duck River. Mr. Cirigliano had pointed out that because there were no identifiers within the James Neelly court document, the person named in the suit was ambiguous, which cast reasonable doubt upon the identity of the James Neelly involved in the suit.
53. Cotterill, “The Natchez Trace,” p. 32.
54. In 1810 Alexander Wilson, the ornithologist, remarked on the width of the Harpeth River. Clark Hunter, ed., The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983), p. 360; Cotterill, “The Natchez Trace,” p. 32.
55. Nashville had been established as a trading post in 1716 and was the capital of the state. Historical Information Relating to Military Posts and Other Installations, 1700–1900, RG94, M661, roll 5, frame 0398, p. 10, and see also successive installations in Nashville on roll 5, frame 0401–0402, pp. 13–14, National Archives and Records Administration; Albert C. Holt, “The Economic and Social Beginnings of Tennessee,” Tennessee Historical Magazine 7, no. 4 (January 1922): 268. On May 4, 1810, Alexander Wilson departed Nashville and arrived at Grinder's Stand the following Sunday, May 10. This timeline coincides with Major Neelly's account. Hunter, Alexander Wilson, p. 360.
56. James Wilkinson to Secretary of War, June 28, 1809, W616, RG107, M221, roll 33, frame 1497, National Archives and Records Administration. Brahan was interested in continuing as the receiver of public monies but did not want to lose his captaincy commission in the army. At the end of September, he wrote to the secretary of war and explained his position. John Brahan to Secretary of War, September 30, 1809, B595, M221, roll 18, frame 5638, National Archives and Records Administration.
57. James Neelly to Thomas Jefferson, October 18, 1809, document 33522–23, roll 44, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; John Brahan to Thomas Jefferson, October 18, 1809, document 33520–21, roll 44, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; John Brahan to William Eustis, October 18, 1809, B589, RG107, M221, roll 18, frame 5632, National Archives and Records Administration. The two letters that Brahan wrote to Thomas Jefferson and the secretary of war have different content. See appendix A, nos. 23 and 24.
58. Neelly did not write the letter on October 18, but signed it after he returned from Nashville. At the top of the page of this letter, the year is misdated. Instead of 1809 it is written 1089, and whoever wrote it intentionally held the letter until Major Neelly returned so that he could sign it. James Neelly to War Department, October 18, 1089 [1809], N105, RG107, M221, roll 27, frame 9226, National Archives and Records Administration. The frame numbers on the microfilm are partially cut off after 9204. Major Neelly sent two other letters to the War Department on October 20 and October 28, and both arrived in Washington on November 16, 1809. The letter from the Chickasaw Agency dated October 18, 1809, arrived in Washington on November 24, eight days after the others. James Neelly to War Department, October 20 and October 28, 1809, N102 and N103, M221, roll 27, National Archives and Records Administration. There are also discrepancies with Neelly's letters dated September 24, 1809 (N99), and October 3, 1809 (N110), written from the Chickasaw Agency. On both dates Neelly was nowhere near the agency. Rather, he was at Fort Pickering (N99) and traveling to Nashville (N110) with Meriwether Lewis.
CHAPTER 12: THE GILBERT RUSSELL STATEMENT
1. Statement of Gilbert Russell, November 26, 1811, appendix A, no. 37.
2. Jonathan Williams Manuscript, box 6, Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
3. John D.W. Guice, ed., By His Own Hand? The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 2006), p. 33.
4. David Leon Chandler, The Jefferson Conspiracies: A President's Role in the Assassination of Meriwether Lewis (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1994), p. 322; Jonathan Daniels, The Devil's Backbone: The Story of the Natchez Trace (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), p. 69; J. Frederick Fausz and Michael A. Gavin, “The Death of Meriwether Lewis: An Unsolved Mystery,” Gateway Heritage 24 (Fall 2003-Winter 2004), p. 70; Larry E. Morris, The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers after the Expedition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 73; James E. Starrs and Kira Gale, The Death of Meriwether Lewis: A Historic Crime Scene Investigation (Omaha, NE: River Junction Press, 2009), p. 229.
5. Gilbert Russell to Thomas Jefferson, January 4, 1810, document 33616–18, and Gilbert Russell to Thomas Jefferson, January 31, 1810, document 33657–59, reel 44, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
6. Some writers have claimed that Wilkinson wrote the Russell Statement. To view samples of his handwriting, see the Library of Congress Website for correspondence of the Thomas Jefferson and James Madison Papers. James Wilkinson to Thomas Jefferson, September 15, 1807, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mtj1&fileName=mtj1page039.db&recNum=424&itemLink=/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjser1.html&linkText=7&tempFile=./temp/~ammem_HkGq&filecode=mtj&itemnum=1&ndocs=1 (accessed November 8, 2011).
7. Gilbert Russell to Secretary of War, June 24, 1809, R235, RG107, M221, roll 29, National Archives and Records Administration. The secretary of War promoted Russell to captain in April 1808, to major in April 1810, and appointed lt. colonel on December 31, 1811.
8. In November 1809, Russell placed the surgeon, Dr. William C. Smith, under house arrest because he refused to give out medicines and hospital stores and kept a mistress in quarters. Gilbert Russell to Secretary of War, January 2, 1810, RG107, R14, M221, roll 39, frame 6095, National Archives and Records Administration. Smith disagreed with Russell: W. C. Smith to Secretary of War, November 5, 1809, S743, M221, roll 31, frame 0463, National Archives and Records Administration.
9. Gilbert Russell to Secretary of War, August 26, 1809, RG107, R244, M221, roll 29, frame 9756, National Archives and Records Administration.
10. Thomas C. Danisi, “The ‘Ague’ Made Him Do It,” We Proceeded On 28, no. 1 (February 2002): 12–13.
11. Secretary of War to James Neelly, July 7, 1809, RG75, M15, roll 2, p. 442 and roll 3, p. 2, National Archives and Records Administration. Neelly received the commission on August 8. James Neelly to Secretary of War, August 9, 1809, RG107, N91, M221, roll 27, National Archives and Records Administration; “James Neelly to Thomas Jefferson, October 18, 1809,” in Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 2: 467.
12. Gilbert Russell to Thomas Jefferson, January 4, 1810, document 33616, reel 44, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; see appendix A, no. 33. Russell had asked permission to leave his post for Washington before Lewis had arrived and was expecting a reply. Russell had an ongoing dispute with the accountant of the War Department for expenses related to moving his company to Fort Pickering.
13. Gen. Henry Dearborn resigned from the Jefferson administration on February 16, 1809, and Madison took office on March 3. Henry Dearborn to Thomas Jefferson, February 16, 1809, document 33040, reel 42, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
14. RG107, M221, R244, roll 29; RG217, M235, roll 67, document 22209, frame 0636; Gilbert Russell to Secretary of War, March 15, 1808, RG107, M221, R133, roll 12, frame 3623; RG94, M566, roll 2, frame 0322, National Archives and Records Administration.
15. Letters typically took four weeks to reach New Orleans. Russell would not have received any communication from Gen. Wilkinson in so short a time.
16. Gilbert Russell to War Department, November 23, 1810, R79, RG107, M22, roll 5, p. 337, National Archives and Records Administration. Simmons had protested another account from Russell in May 1809 for the amount of $2,276, and creditors had appeared at the fort at the end of August ready to confiscate Russell's property. In 1811 he finally had closure on the account. Gilbert Russell to Secretary of War, May 19, 1809, R219, M221, roll 29, frame 9736; Gilbert Russell to Secretary of War, August 26, 1809, R244, M221, roll 29, frame 9756; Gilbert Russell to Secretary of War, May 16, 1811, R144, M221, roll 39, frame 6199, National Archives and Records Administration.
17. James Howe to Frederick Bates, September 28, 1809, Frederick Bates Papers, Missouri History Museum.
18. Wilkinson did not receive those orders until June 14. Wilkinson commanded about 2,300 soldiers. James Wilkinson to Secretary of War, August 19, 1809, RG107, W658, M221, roll 33, frame 1564, National Archives and Records Administration; James Ripley Jacobs, The Beginning of the US Army (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947), p. 352.
19. Secretary of War to James Wilkinson, April 30, 1809, RG94, M1094, roll 1, p. 176, National Archives and Records Administration.
20. Mary C. Gillett, The Army Medical Department, 1775–1818, 3 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1981), 1:142; RG 94, M1136, National Archives and Records Administration. Records of 1811 and 1815 Courts-Martial of Gen. James Wilkinson are on rolls 1 and 2 respectively. The first roll contains hundreds of pages of testimony and evidence, a staggering amount of information related to Wilkinson's duties during the time period from April to November 1809.
21. Testimony of Dr. Robert Dow interrogated by General Wilkinson, August 5, 1811, RG94, M1136, roll 1, frame 0840, p. 49, National Archives and Records Administration.
22. Testimony of 2nd Lt. Samuel McCormick interrogated by General Wilkinson, August 23, 1811, RG94, M1136, roll 1, frame 0870, p. 83, National Archives and Records Administration.
23. Testimony of Dr. Robert Dow, frame 0837, p. 45.
24. Testimony of Dr. William Hood interrogated by General Wilkinson, RG94, M1136, roll 1, frame 0841, p. 49, National Archives and Records Administration. Hood, a veteran of the New Orleans climate, first arrived in the city on November 29, 1799.
25. The Louisiana and Orleans territories experienced a malarial epidemic in the summer and autumn of 1809 that could not have been foreseen. Malaria was incurable until 1826, when quinine was chemically extracted from the Peruvian bark, cinchona. Wilkinson oversaw the building and repair of boats from July to the end of August 1809 and then was confined to his bed with malaria until the end of September. Conspiracy theorists claim that it was during this time that he was plotting to murder Lewis. Gillett, Army Medical Department, 1: 140–42.
26. United States Military Philosophical Society, Original Minutes and Records, Membership Lists, Correspondence and Papers, 1802–1813, 4 vols., microfilm, New York Historical Society, New York, New York.
27. Records relating to the 1811 and 1815 Courts-Martial of Maj. General James Wilkinson, Gilbert Russell's testimony on the 49th Day, 56th Day, and 58th Day, RG94, M1136, roll 1, pp. 70–72, frames 0226–27, National Archives and Records Administration. Russell remained in the Washington area until February 1812, RG107, M221, roll 48, R22, frame 2741, National Archives and Records Administration.
28. The Wilkinson pretrial and court-martial trial papers number into thousands of pages. The scriveners, with thick and thin quills, wrote fast, slow, and sometimes with patient handwriting that varied from page to page. The scrivener who wrote the Russell letter also had varied handwriting based on what was daily expected.
29. The murder theorists have portrayed Wilkinson as disliking Meriwether Lewis for unknown reasons, but actually the two were friends. Both were in the US Army, members of the prestigious American Philosophical Society, and members of the United States Military Philosophical Society. Lewis knew Wilkinson from his very earliest days in the army, during the Ohio campaign of the 1790s, and had sided with Wilkinson and against Anthony Wayne in the squabbles between those two generals during that period. Lewis met Wilkinson at the Burr Trial in 1807 and discussed the Louisiana Territory, where Wilkinson had been the governor and Lewis was going to be the governor. Henry Phillips Jr., “Early Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society…from the Manuscript Minutes of Its Meetings from 1774 to 1838,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 22 (1884): 266, 342–43; John Vaughan to Thomas Jefferson, November 21, 1803, document 23559, roll 29, and James Wilkinson to Thomas Jefferson, September 15, 1807, document 30145, roll 39, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
30. Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker, American Bibliography: A Preliminary Checklist for 1806 (New York: Scarecrow Press, 1961), United States Military Philosophical Society files 11747, 14109, 16607, and 30385. President Jefferson appointed Jonathan Williams the first superintendent of the United States Military Academy in December 1801—Williams was also chief of engineers of the Army Corps of Engineers. Williams was always trying to promote the academy at West Point, and upon learning that Madison would succeed Jefferson as president, he wrote an impassioned letter hoping to further the aims of the academy: “I have been labouring to produce a national establishment, upon a scale worthy of the Government & honourable to our Country; but owing to the confined limits of the Law, it is yet no more than an obscure mathematical School.…It is in my mind a settled principle, that a military academy can only flourish at the Seat of Government, and if this want is not to take place, it cannot be an object for my ambition to have any concern in it; my Duties as chief Engineer are equally arduous & pleasing those of Superintendent of the military academy are not less so; but it is really tedious to labour like Sissyphus in rolling a Stone up Hill.” Jonathan Williams to James Madison, February 23, 1809, document 24.147–49, reel 10, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress.
31. Arthur P. Wade, “A Military Offspring of the American Philosophical Society,” Military Affairs 38 (October 1974): 104.
32. Sidney Forman, “The United States Military Philosophical Society, 1802–1813: Scientia in Bello Pax,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, vol. 2 (July 1945): 278–82. Jonathan Williams cited the phrase “Scientia in Bello Pax,” as the society's motif.
33. Samuel Lathan Mitchill to Jonathan Williams, December 31, 1806, United States Military Philosophical Society, vol. 2, p. 40, New York Historical Society, New York, New York.
34. Col. Jonathan Williams was stationed at West Point.
35. Jonathan Williams, “Notes1 Taken in the General Court Martial on the Trial of Brigadier General James Wilkinson Commencing September 2, 1811,” Jonathan Williams Manuscripts, box 6, Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
36. “Thomas Jefferson to Gilbert Russell, April 18, 1810,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: p. 728. See appendix A, no. 35.
37. “Rough Minutes of My Draft and of Major Amos Stoddard's for the Letter to the President of the United States Which Was Afterwards Composed by Me from These Notes1,” December 2, 1811, Jonathan Williams Manuscripts, box 7, Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Indiana University.
CHAPTER 13: DR. ANTOINE SAUGRAIN'S
TREATMENT OF GOVERNOR MERIWETHER LEWIS
1. Meriwether Lewis to Lucy Marks, April 6, 1795, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
2. John H. Buell, “Fighting the Indians in the Northwest,” American History Illustrated 3, no. 9 (January 1969): 35. The Battle of Fallen Timbers occurred on Wednesday, August 20, 1794. The name Fallen Timbers was derived from the location where a tornado had blown down hundreds of large hardwood trees. Ronald C. Hood, “The Battle of Fallen Timbers,” American History Illustrated 3, no. 10 (February 1969): 9.
3. Fort Defiance, September 2, 3, 4, 1794, John Boyer, “General Wayne's Orderly Book,” Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections 34 (1904): 551–52. Joseph Gardner Andrews, the surgeon's mate at Fort Defiance, reported in September 1795 that a large number of people at the fort had come down with the ague. On October 1, he reported that fifty-three soldiers were ill at Fort Defiance while “500 [were] sick at Greenville,” with intermittent and remittent fevers. Andrews eventually fell ill and, short-handed, had to tend to the sick. Joseph Gardner Andrews, “A Surgeon's Mate at Fort Defiance; the Journal of Joseph Gardner Andrews for the year 1795,” Ohio Historical Quarterly 66 (July 1957): 241, 247, 254. Other forts in the Ohio country were Fort Jefferson, Fort Washington, Hobson's Choice, Grand Glaize, Fort Wayne, and Fort Saint Mary's. The Ohio Historical Quarterly is online and is a valuable resource of documented information, http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/portal/historyjournal-p.shtml (accessed June 7, 2011).
4. Forts Greenville and Defiance reported cases of the ague in the summer and autumn of 1795. In September 1796, malaria struck again and Reverend David Jones, a chaplain in Wayne's army at Fort Greenville, “found the garrison very sickly…out of 350, 300 were sick.” See “Extracts from the Original Manuscript Journal of the Reverend David Jones…Chaplain of the United States Legion, under Major-General Wayne, during the Indian Wars of 1794–5-6,” Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections 8 (1885): 393, 395, http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?seq=9&view=image&size=100&id=mdp.39015071219458&u=1&num=393 (accessed January 24, 2011).
5. Peter Kendall, “History Unearthed in Greenville, Ohio,” Cube 30, no. 1 (April 2009): 10; International Guild of Miniature Artisans, http://www.igma.org (accessed May 21, 2011).
6. “Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, August 9, 1795,” in Richard C. Knopf, ed., Anthony Wayne: A Name in Arms (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1960), pp. 442–45.
7. “Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, September 2, 1795,” Knopf, Anthony Wayne, pp. 447–51.
8. Ibid., p. 451.
9. Ibid.
10. “Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, October 5, 1795,” in Knopf, Anthony Wayne, pp. 465–65.
11. Eugene L. Huddleston, “James Elliot and ‘The Garden of North America’: A New Englander's Impressions of the Old Northwest,” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 42, no. 3 (Summer 1970): 66.
12. “Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, November 9 and 18, 1795,” in Knopf, Anthony Wayne, pp. 470, 472.
13. Leonard J. Bruce-Chwatt, “Ague as Malaria,” Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 79 (1976): 168.
14. Walther H. Wernsdorfer and Ian McGregor, Malaria: Principles and Practice of Malariologa, 2 vols. (New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1988), 1: 4–6.
15. Margaret Humphreys, Malaria, Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 8.
16. Allan Saul, “The Role of Variant Surface Antigens on Malaria-Infected Red Blood Cells,” Parasitology Today 15 (November 1999): 455.
17. Humphreys, Malaria, p. 8.
18. John Ball, The Modern Practice of Physic (London: A. Millar, 1762), p. 35.
19. Jean S. Alibert, A Treatise on Malignant Intermittents (Philadelphia: Fry and Kammerer, 1807), p. 30.
20. Proceedings of the Celebration of the Three Hundredth Anniversary of the First Recognized Use of Cinchona (Saint Louis: Missouri Botanical Garden, 1931), p. 149.
21. William Cullen Brown, The Institutions of the Practice of Medicine, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1801), 3: 354.
22. Since the 2002 publication of “The ‘Ague’ Made Him Do It,” in We Proceeded On, the question has been asked many times, if both Lewis and Clark suffered from malaria, why did Lewis appear to be more sick than Clark? Reading about Clark's own bouts with the disease reveals that it was equally debilitating for him. Clark's journey up the Osage River to establish Fort Osage at Fire Prairie in August and September 1808 is a tacit reminder that malaria causes dysentery, which relentlessly afflicted him. See Kate L. Gregg, ed., Westward with the Dragoons: The Journal of William Clark on His Expedition to Establish Fort Osage, August 25 to September 22, 1808 (Fulton, MO: Ovid Bell Press, 1937), pp. 28–32, 37, 39, 41, 42, and 45. For the first three days in September, Clark mistakenly wrote October, which is indicative that something was troubling him. On Sept. 13, 1808, Clark wrote, “I am verry unwell with a Desentary, which I have had for Some time and now become very Serios. No Sleep this Night.”
23. See http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/relapse (accessed January 24, 2011).
24. Testimony of Dr. William Hood, RG94, M1136, roll 1, frame 0841, p. 49, National Archives and Records Administration.
25. Pierre Charles Delassus de Luziéres to Zenon Trudeau, September 28, 1793, AGI-PC 208a: 446 and 453; Zenon Trudeau to Francisco Louis Hector Carondelet, August 8 and September 8, 1794, AGI-PC 197: 707.
26. Once the bark is brewed into a tea, it is an extremely bitter substance, which usually induces vomiting. Adding brandy or wine dilutes the bitterness. “Meriwether Lewis, November 13, 1803,” in The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 13 vols., ed. Gary E. Moulton (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001), 2: p. 86, http://lewisand-clarkjournals.unl.edu/ (accessed January 14, 2011).
27. New-England Palladium, December 30, 1803, p. 3.
28. Amos Stoddard to Colonel Thomas Cushing, November 8, 1806, RG94, M566, roll 1, frame 0800, National Archives and Records Administration.
29. John Breck Treat to Secretary of War, September 18, 1808, RG75, M271, Roll 1, frame 0488, National Archives and Records Administration.
30. Robert T. Boyd, “Another Look at the Fever and Ague of Western Oregon,” Ethnohistory 22, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 135.
31. Center for Columbia River History, Exploring the Columbia Slough, Documents Archive, section II: “Berries, Catfish, and Carp: Survival on the Slough, Descriptions of the Effects of Fever and Ague,” http://www.ccrh.org/comm/slough/primary/descript.htm (accessed January 15, 2010).
32. Boyd, “Another Look at the Fever,” p. 148.
33. Center for Columbia River History, “Berries, Catfish, and Carp.”
34. Ibid.
35. Wikipedia, “Jesuit's Bark,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuit%27s_bark (accessed January 19, 2011); Catholic Encyclopedia, “Jesuit's Bark,” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08372b.htm; Mark Honigsbaum, The Fever Trail: In Search of the Cure for Malaria (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001), p. 89.
36. John Oldmixon, British Empire in America, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: 1741), 1: 429; “Rush's Observations on Yellow fever,” Medical Repository 1, no. 1 (1798): 78; Benjamin Rush, Medical Inquiries and Observations, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: J. Conrad, 1805) 3: 417.
37. Francisco Guerra, “The Introduction of Cinchona in the Treatment of Malaria,” part 2, Journal of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene 80, no. 3 (1977): 136.
38. John Redman Coxe, “Cinchona-Peruvian Bark,” in The American Dispensatory, 5th ed., (Philadelphia: 1822), p. 193.
39. Dale C. Smith, “Quinine and Fever: The Development of the Effective Dosage,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 31, no. 3 (July 1976): 349. Quinine is a protoplasmic poison.
40. Ido Leden, “Antimalarial Drugs-350 Years,” Scandanavian Journal of Rheumatology 10 (1981): 10; Coxe, “Cinchona-Peruvian Bark,” p. 193; Guerra, “Introduction of Cinchona” part 1, Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 80, no. 6 (June 1977): 112–18; Friedrich A. Flückiger, The Cinchona Barks (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co., 1884), p. 195; Jackson, Letters, 1: 80. “Pulv. Cort. Peru” is Pulvis Cortici Peruviana, which meant powdered Peruvian bark.
41. William J. Fitzgerald, “Evolution of the Use of Quinine in the Treatment of Malaria,” New York State Journal of Medicine 68 (March 1968): 801.
42. Brown, The Institutions of the Practice of Medicine, 3: 285; Coxe, “Cinchona-Peruvian Bark,” p. 193.
43. J. Worth Estes, Dictionary of Protopharmacology, Therapeutic Practices, 1700–1850 (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1990), p. 48; Flückiger, Cinchona Barks, p. 215.
44. Robert Desowitz, The Malaria Capers (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), p. 202.
45. Drake W. Will, “The Medical and Surgical Practice of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 14 (July 1959): 282–83. Jefferson was a sufferer of diarrhea for most of his life and consulted with Benjamin Rush on May 5, 1803, when he also introduced Meriwether Lewis to the physician. Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, document 22673–74, reel 28, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
46. “Benjamin Rush to Thomas Jefferson, June 11, 1803,” and “Benjamin Rush's Rules of Health, June 11, 1803,” in Jackson, Letters, 1: 54; Will, “Medical and Surgical Practice,” p. 278. Jefferson transcribed Rush's rules and shortened the title to “Dr. Rush to Capt. Lewis for Preserving His Health, June 11, 1803.” Historians have emphasized that the instructions were for Lewis's men instead of Lewis, but this oversight minimizes Lewis's physical illness.
47. Jackson, Letters, 1: 55, 80.
48. Meriwether Lewis Account Book 1807–1809, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum. See appendix F for details.
49. Capt. James House, Capt. E. B. Clemson, and Lieut. Alpha Kingsley to Secretary of War, January 12, 1808, C1808, RG107, M222, Roll 3, frames 1145–47. Capt. Russell Bissell, the commander of Fort Bellefontaine, succumbed to a malarial fever, and suffered for five days until he died on December 16, 1807.
50. John Boyer, “Daily Journal of Wayne's Campaign: General Wayne's Orderly Book,” Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections 34 (1904): 643; “Lt. William Clark's Report, November 12, 1795,” Knopf, Anthony Wayne, p. 471.
51. Richard Allison was the senior surgeon in Wayne's Legion, along with Charles Brown, surgeon, and four surgeon's mates: John Gorham Coffin, John R. Lynch, Francis G. Brewster, and Richard Griffith. Dwight L. Smith, ed. “From Greene Ville to Fallen Timbers: A Journal of the Wayne Campaign” Indiana Historical Society Publications 16 (1952): 278; Boyer, “Daily Journal of Wayne's Campaign,” p. 602; Virginius C. Hall, “Richard Allison, Surgeon to the Legion,” Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio 9 (October 1951); James Holmberg, ed., Dear Brother (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 275, n. 6.
52. “William Clark to Meriwether Lewis, July 24, 1803,” in Jackson, Letters, 1: 112–13.
53. Eldon G. Chuinard, Only One Man Died: The Medical Aspects of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Glendale, CA: Arthur Clark, 1980), pp. 27, 264–65; Ronald V. Loge, “Illness at Three Forks,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 50, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 15; Ronald V. Loge, “Two Dozes of Barks and Opium: Lewis and Clark as Physicians,” We Proceeded On 23, no. 1 (February 1997): 30; David J. Peck, Or Perish in the Attempt: Wilderness Medicine in the Lewis & Clark Expedition (Helena, MT: Farcountry Press, 2001), pp. 81, 103, 161; Drake W. Will, “Lewis and Clark: Westering Physicians,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 21, no. 4 (Autumn 1971): 14, 17.
54. Thomas C. Danisi and John C. Jackson, Meriwether Lewis (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009), p. 309.
55. “Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, March 6, 1807,” in Edwin Morris Betts and James Adam Bear Jr., eds., The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson (Columbia: University of Missouri Press), pp. 298–99.
56. Frank Hawking, Michael J. Worms, and Kenneth Gammage, “Host Temperature and Control of 24-Hour and 48-Hour Cycles in Malaria Parasites,” Lancet 7541 (March 1968): 506; Robert Thomas, The Modern Practice of Physic (New York: Collins, 1820), p. 5.
57. “Meriwether Lewis to William Clark, March 11, 1807,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 385.
58. “Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, March 16, 1807,” in Betts and Bear, Family Letters, p. 302.
59. Humphreys, Malaria, p. 9; Abraham Rees, “Hemicrania,” in Volumn 19 of The Cyclopaedia, 45 vols. (London: Longman, Rees, Orme & Browne, 1819).
60. “The symptoms which they exhibited were various. In some cases they assumed the character of periodical headache or sun-pain.” Daniel Drake, “Report on the Diseases of Cincinnati in the spring of 1828…for Ague and Fever,” Western Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences 2 (1828–1829): 217. Daniel Drake, The Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America, 2nd ed., (Reprint. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854).
61. Thomas Jefferson, Recipe for the Head-Ach, document 41873, reel 16, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. Historians have debated Jefferson's headaches for a long time, but since 1984 they have come to the conclusion that it was a type of cluster headache brought on by tension. John Holmes came the closest to implying that it was malaria, noting that Jefferson had used the Peruvian bark “to treat fevers.” Modern medical physicians, Battle, Cohen, and Rolak dismissed the malarial headaches in favor of ones caused by extreme tension. Kukla, another historian, also disagreed with Battle, Cohen, and Rolak, but did not herald the cause. By the fact that Jefferson had used the Peruvian bark when he experienced a periodical headache is enough proof to serve as an indication that Jefferson was a victim of malaria. For many years and under many circumstances Jefferson employed the use of the bark. On several occasions in 1790 and 1807 he wrote that the bark had failed to cure him. John H. Holmes, Thomas Jefferson Treats Himself: Herbs, Physicke, & Nutrition in Early America (Fort Valley, VA: The Loft Press, 1997), p. 62; John D. Battle Jr., “The ‘periodical head-achs’ of Thomas Jefferson,” Cleveland Clinic Quarterly 51 (1984): 531–33; Gary L. Cohen and Loren A. Rolak, “Thomas Jefferson's Headaches: Were They Migraines?” Headache: The Journal of HeadandFace Pain 46, no. 3 (March 2006): 492; Jon Kukla, Mr. Jefferson's Women (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), p. 227, n. 60.
62. Humphreys, Malaria, p. 29. President Jefferson wrote all of his letters, sometimes five or six in a day, but during this period in 1807 it was especially difficult to write when official letters demanded great concentration:
March 6—to Martha Jefferson Randolph, his daughter: I have had a very bad cold, which laid me up with a fever one day. This indisposition will occasion me to be here some days longer than I expected.
March 16—to Martha Jefferson Randolph: I am poorly myself, not at all fit for a journey at this time. The remains of a bad cold hang on me, and for a day or two past some symptoms of periodical headache. Mr. Coles and Capt. Lewis are also indisposed, so that we are but a collection of invalids.
March 20—to Albert Gallatin, secretary of the Treasury: I have but a little moment in the morning in which I can either read write or think; being obliged to be shut up in a dark room from early in the forenoon till night with a periodical head-ach.
March 20—to Martha Jefferson Randolph: I am now in the 7th day of a periodical head-ache, and I write this in the morning before the Fit has come on. The fits are by no means as severe as I have felt in former times, but they hold me very long from 9. or 10. in the morning till dark. Neither Calomel nor bark have as yet made the least impression on them. Indeed we have quite a hospital, one half below and above stairs being sick.
March 21—to John Wayles Eppes: I am in the 8th day of periodical head-ach which threatens to be obstinate.…I write this under a fit of head-ach….
March 21—to James Monroe, Ambassador to the United Kingdom: I am writing under a severe indisposition of periodical headache, with scarcely command enough of mind to know what I write.
March 23—to Martha Jefferson Randolph: My fits of head-ach have shortened from 9 hours to 5. but they have stuck some days at 5. hours, and when they will give further way cannot be divined. In our present situation it is impossible to fix a day of departure. It has always seemed to be about a week off; but, like our shadows, it walks before us, and still keeps at the same distance. I do believe however that Mr. Randolph will be able to travel within one week from the time of his getting on horseback. I write while a fit is coming on and therefore must conclude with my kisses to you all.
March 25—to Lt. Gov. of Massachussetts Levi Lincoln: I expected to have paid a short visit to Monticello before this, but have been detained by the illness of my son-in-law, Mr. Randolph, and now by an attack of periodical headache on myself. This leaves me but an hour & a half each morning capable of any business at all.
March 27—to Martha Jefferson Randolph: My fit of yesterday was so mild that I have some hope of missing it to-day.
March 30—to Martha Jefferson Randolph: I have no actual head-ach, yet about 9. oclock every morning I have a very quickened pulse come on, a disturbed head and tender eyes, not amounting to absolute pain. It goes off about noon, and is doubtless an obstinate remnant of the head-ach, keeping up the possibility of return. I am not very confident of it's passing off.
April 2—Martha Jefferson Randolph: Mr. Randolph is quite strong enough to begin his journey even now. I think that to-day for the first time I have had no sensation of any remain of my head-ach.
April 5—Martha Jefferson Randolph: We are all well here, My ever dear Martha, but I shall not be able probably to set out tomorrow, but shall on Tuesday. We shall be five days on the road.
March 6 and 16: Betts and Bear, Family Letters, pp. 298–99, 302; March 20 to Gallatin: document 29187, reel 38, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; March 20 to daughter: Betts and Bear, Family Letters, p. 304; March 21: document 29193 and 29195–6, reel 38, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, March 23: Betts and Bear, Family Letters, p. 304; March 25 to Levi Lincoln, the former attorney general of the United States: document 29214, reel 38, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; March 27 and 30: Betts and Bear, Family Letters, p. 305.
63. “Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, April 5 to June 1, 1807,” Betts and Bear, Family Letters, pp. 306–307. In 1808 he succumbed again to the same illness beginning March 25 and ending April 12, 1808. He described his condition when writing to Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge (March 29), Cornelia Jefferson Randolph (April 3), and James Monroe (April 11).
64. Dr. Antoine Saugrain's Medical Ledgers, 1801–1817, 2 vols., Pettis County Historical Society and Museum, Sedalia, Missouri.
65. Jackson, Letters, 1: 192. See Wikipedia, “Antoine Saugrain,”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Saugrain;
“Dr. Antoine Saugrain,” National Park Service,
http://www.nps.gov/archive/jeff/lewisclark2/circa1804/StLouis/BlockInfo/Block50DrAntoineSaugrain.htm; and Rootsweb, “Antoine Saugrain,”
http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~earlystlouis/antoinesaugrain.html (accessed April 7, 2011).
66. Meriwether Lewis to Lucy Marks, April 6, 1795, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
67. Antoine Saugrain, April 6, 1808, Medical Ledgers, vol. 1, p. 410, Pettis County Historical Society and Museum, Sedalia, Missouri.
68. S. Blumgarten, Textbook of Materia Medica, Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 7th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1939), p. 228; John W. Fisher, Medical Appendices of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Juliaetta, ID: John W. Fisher, 2006), p. 27. The Lewis and Clark Expedition carried six pounds of the salt and Lewis relied upon it often as a laxative to ease stomach and intestinal problems.
69. Antoine Saugrain, June 15 and 18, 1808, Medical Ledgers, vol. 1, p. 410, Pettis County Historical Society and Museum; Blumgarten, Textbook of Materia Medica, p. 189.
70. Antoine Saugrain, August 30, 1808, vol. 1, p. 410, Pettis County Historical Society and Museum.
71. Ira M. Rutkow, Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of Medicine (New York: Random House, 2005), p. 48.
72. Saugrain abbreviated “cream of tartar.” Blumgarten, Textbook of Materia Medica, p. 229.
73. See sppendix F. On November 9, Lewis paid Dr. Farrar (another physician in Saint Louis) $49 to take care of Pernia, Lewis's valet, who was also suffering from the ague. See Meriwether Lewis's account book, p. 16; Doctor Farrar's Ledger, Missouri History Museum.
74. Meriwether Lewis Account Book, 1808–1809, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
75. Meriwether Lewis to Lucy Marks, December 1, 1808, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
76. “Meriwether Lewis to Thomas Jefferson, December 15, 1808,” in American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1: 763–67. The original letter and its contents totaled fifty-one pages.
77. Edward Kremers and George Urdang, History of Pharmacy: A Guide and Survey (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1940), p. 401; Blumgarten, Textbook of Materia Medica, p. 232. Jalap produces results within an hour.
78. Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 28 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1948), 13: 279.
79. Ibid.
80. Daniel Bissell to Secretary of War, September 28, 1809, B580, RG107, M221, roll 18, frame 5618, National Archives and Records Administration.
81. Meriwether Lewis to William Simmons, July 8, 1809, appendix A, no. 13. Lewis, Marks, Anderson Family: M668, University of Virginia, Alderman Library, Charlottesville, Virginia.
82. Thomas M. Marshall, The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1926), 2: 24.
83. Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 285–86.
84. Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 290–93. The transcription does not identify the handwriting of the writer. Meriwether Lewis to War Department, August 18, 1809, L328, RG107, M221, roll 23, frame 8501, National Archives and Records Administration. This letter was not in Lewis's hand but was written by Jeremiah Connor, sheriff of Saint Louis, RG233, M1708, roll 6, frames 0497–99, National Archives and Records Administration.
85. Meriwether Lewis paid Dr. Saugrain to assemble a medicine chest for him, which amounted to $30.75. This was a costly expenditure due to the fact that there was a shortage of medicinal supplies in Saint Louis. William Clark's Account Book, June-September 1809, Clark Family Collection, Missouri History Museum.
86. Danisi and Jackson, Meriwether Lewis, p. 316.
87. Antoine Saugrain, Medical Ledgers, vol. 1, p. 410, Pettis County Historical Society and Museum. Saugrain's identification of “Porney” was Lewis's free mulatto valet, John Pernia or Pernier. Danisi and Jackson, Meriwether Lewis, pp. 190, 207, n. 2.
88. We should look at the expedition journals to verify when Lewis took Glauber's salts, which might indicate when he suffered from a malarial bout. Meriwether Lewis, August 1, 1805: “[T]o add to my fatiegue in this walk of about 11 miles I had taken a doze of glauber salts in the morning in consequence of a slight desentary with which I had been afflicted for several days; being weakened by the disorder and the opperation of the medecine I found myself almost exhausted before we reached the river. I felt my sperits much revived on our…approach to the river at the sight of a herd of Elk of which Drewyer and myself killed two. we then hurried to the river and allayed our thirst. I ordered two of the men to skin the Elk…while myself and the other prepared a fire and cooked some of the meat…. [After dinner we resumed our march and encamped about 6 m. above on the Stard side of the river.” Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, et al., August 1, 1805, entry in The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, ed. Gary Moulton (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press/University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries Electronic Text Center, 2005), http://lewisandClarkjournals.unl.edu/read/?_xmlsrc=1805–08-01&_xslsrc=LCstyles.xsl (accessed January 19, 2011).
89. The crew had reported that Lewis had made two attempts to kill himself while aboard the boat from Saint Louis. Chronic malarial patients have typically exhibited wild and erratic behavior, and persons unfamiliar with this pattern of the disease continually assign incorrect observations and judgments to those patients. While it may look suicidal, patients are attempting to alleviate long-standing pain of the head or simply to cool off in the river.
90. Gilbert Russell to Secretary of War, August 26, 1809, R244, RG107, roll 29, frame 9756, p. 1, National Archives and Records Administration. Capt. William Swan had been the commander of Fort Pickering until Russell's arrival.
91. Ibid., p. 2. It's somewhat of a mystery why six of his soldiers drowned, but the boats were in poor shape and laden with merchandise and tools. The drownings were likely the result of the soldiers’ inadequacy at swimming.
92. William C. Smith, Surgeon's Mate of Fort Pickering, to William Eustis, November 5, 1809, S743, RG107, M221, roll 31, frame 0463, p. 1, National Archives and Records Administration. Capt. Russell wrote to the secretary of war on January 2, 1810, and referred to Smith as surgeon of the garrison: M221, R14, roll 39, frames 6095–6102, National Archives and Records Administration. Russell had charged Smith with conduct unbecoming an officer, and the secretary of war dismissed Smith on June 27, 1810. Francis Bernard Heitman, ed., Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army from Its Organization, September 29, 1789, to March 2, 1903, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1903), 1: 904.
93. RG107, M221, S743, roll 31, frame 0463, p. 1, National Archives and Records Administration.
94. Gilbert Russell to Secretary of War, August 26, 1809, RG107, R244, roll 29, frame 9756, p. 3, National Archives and Records Administration.
CHAPTER 14: REVISITING MERIWETHER LEWIS'S
DEATH: A NEW PERSPECTIVE
*We have had lively discussions concerning the peculiar nature of Lewis's death for more than ten years. To understand its nature, we needed to do three things: (1) unravel Jefferson's remarks about Lewis's hypochondria; (2) provide an argument connecting Jefferson's remarks with Lewis's struggles as a malarial sufferer; and (3) establish that Lewis's death amounted to the alleviation of unbearable pain, and not to suicide, as traditional historians of Lewis maintain. The argument that we offer rests upon both an empirical and a nineteenth-century historical foundation; a foundation, moreover, that is radically different from that of the tradition, with its emphasis upon a more contemporary scientific, and thus speculative, foundation. We thus embarked on a journey centered upon the nature of hypochondria, malaria, depression, mind, death, and suicide, and upon their relation to Lewis—a journey that has its roots in our scholarship: “The ‘Ague’ Made Him Do It,” “The Vanishing Consciousness,” and Meriwether Lewis. In our view, Lewis did not commit suicide, and he should be restored to his rightful place among the great leaders of our nation.
1. Most physicians have taken the position that correlating a disease as it was understood and diagnosed in the past with a present-day equivalent is pointless because it cannot be medically confirmed that the diseases are one and the same using today's tests. Dr. Fischer-Homberger, a historian of psychiatry, sums up the conundrum: “Medical history is qualified to further a historical understanding of medicine, but only on certain occasions is it capable of furthering a medical understanding of history.” Esther Fischer-Homberger, “Hypochondriasis of the Eighteenth Century—Neurosis of the Present Century,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 46, no. 4 (July-August 1972): 401.
2. “Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, February 23, 1801”; “Thomas Jefferson's Message to Congress, January 18, 1803”; “Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Smith Barton, February 27, 1803”; and “Thomas Jefferson to the Senate, February 28, 1807,” in Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1: 2–3, 10–13, 16–17, 376.
3. “Henry Dearborn to William Clark, March 9, 1807,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 382.
4. Gilbert Russell to Thomas Jefferson, January 4, 1810, document 33616–18, reel 45, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. See appendix A, no. 27.
5. Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001); Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996); William E. Foley, Wilderness Journey: The Life of William Clark (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004); John D. W. Guice, ed., By His Own Hand? The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 2006); Jackson, Letters; Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999); Clay Straus Jenkinson, The Character of Meriwether Lewis: “Completely Metamorphosed” in the American West (Reno, NV: Marmarth Press, 2000); Landon Y. Jones, William Clark and the Shaping of the West (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004); Larry E. Morris, The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers after the Expedition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); David J. Peck, Or Perish in the Attempt: Wilderness Medicine in the Lewis & Clark Expedition (Helena, MT: Farcountry Press, 2002); Paul Russell Cutright, “Rest, Rest Perturbed Spirit,” We Proceeded On 12, no. 1 (March 1986); Howard I. Kushner, “The Suicide of Meriwether Lewis: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 38, no. 3 (1981); Ronald V. Loge, “Meriwether Lewis and Malaria,” We Proceeded On 28, no. 2 (May 2002); Dawson A. Phelps, “The Tragic Death of Meriwether Lewis,” William and Mary Quarterly 13 (July 1956).
6. “Thomas Jefferson to Paul Allen, August 18, 1813,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 591–92.
7. “Thomas Jefferson to Gilbert Russell, April 18, 1810,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 728.
8. “Frederick Bates to Secretary of War, September 28, 1809,” in Thomas M. Marshall, The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1926), 2: 86.
9. September 11, 1809, New Madrid Courthouse, Lewis, Marks, Anderson Family, M668, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. We know some of Meriwether Lewis's circumstances at the time of his death: his brother Reuben had joined the expedition to return the Mandan chief Sheheke-shote to his family and then to accompany Manuel Lisa to trap furs on the Upper Missouri; Lewis was concerned regarding government reimbursements; Lewis was taking the original journals from his western expedition with him, expecting to edit them while staying in Philadelphia; he was afraid that the British might confiscate the journals if he took a boat up the east coast of the United States, and was further disturbed by the news that an outbreak of malaria had seized New Orleans; as a consequence he decided to ride horseback from Tennessee to Washington; his malarial paroxysms were intensifying. Yet, despite what we know, we do not exactly know which of these circumstances, if any, may have precipitated the rewriting of his will. His life is shrouded in considerably more mystery than is commonly thought. Those historians who suggest definitive circumstances of Lewis's death are, in my opinion, speculating.
10. Jackson, Letters, 2: 573.
11. “James Neelly to Thomas Jefferson, October 18, 1809,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 467–68.
12. Alexander Wilson, “Particulars of the Death of Captain Lewis,” Port Folio 7 (January 1812): 37.
13. “James Neelly to Thomas Jefferson,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 468.
14. Ibid., 2: 467.
15. James Holmberg, ed., Dear Brother (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), p. 218.
16. John D. W. Guice, ed., By His Own Hand? The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 2006). Guice claims that Thomas Danisi is a “suicide advocate.” He is mistaken; Danisi clearly wrote in 2002 that he rejected “the notion that [Lewis's] death was a suicide.” Thomas C. Danisi, “The ‘Ague’ Made Him Do It,” We Proceeded On 28, no. 1 (February 2002): 10.
17. Moulton, Journals, p. 378.
18. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, pp. 63,431.
19. David J. Peck, “The Death of Meriwether Lewis,” We Proceeded On 35, no. 4 (November 2009): 22.
20. Dawson A. Phelps, “The Tragic Death of Meriwether Lewis,” William and Mary Quarterly 13 (July 1956): 317.
21. Paul Russell Cutright, “Rest, Rest Perturbed Spirit,” We Proceeded On 12, no. 1 (March 1986): 9.
22. Jackson, Letters, 2: 575.
23. Ibid., p. 748.
24. Ibid., p. 728.
25. Ibid., p. 728, note below letter 452.
26. Jenkinson, The Character of Meriwether Lewis, pp. 97–98.
27. Ronald V. Loge, “Meriwether Lewis and Malaria,” We Proceeded On 28, no. 2 (May 2002): 33.
28. Reimert T. Ravenholt, “Triumph Then Despair: The Tragic Death of Meriwether Lewis,” Epidemiology 5, no. 3 (May 1994): 377.
29. “Meriwether Lewis, March 19 and January 27, 1806,” in Moulton, Journals, 6: 239–40, 436.
30. John D. W. Guice, “Moonlight and Meriwether Lewis,” We Proceeded On 28, no. 1 (February 2002): 21–23.
31. Wikipedia, “Photometry (Optics),”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photometry_(optics) (accessed May 26, 2011).
32. Howard I. Kushner, “The Suicide of Meriwether Lewis: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 38, no. 3 (1981): 473.
33. Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), p. 229.
34. Ann Rogers, “Hypocondriac Affections: Letters Help Define Jefferson's Phrase,” We Proceeded On 36, no. 1 (February 2010): 33, left column.
35. Ibid., p. 36
36. Thomas C. Danisi, “Keepers and Stewards Code Calls for Historical Facts,” We Proceeded On 36, no. 2 (May 2010): 4–5, 7.
37. “Captain Lewis who had then been near two years with me as private secretary, immediately renewed his sollicitations to have the direction of the party. I had now had opportunities of knowing him intimately.” Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness & perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from it's direction, careful as a father of those committed to his charge, yet steady in the maintenance of order & discipline, intimate with the Indian character, customs & principles, habituated to the hunting life, guarded by exact observation of the vegetables & animals of his own country, against losing time in the description of objects already possessed, honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves, with all these qualifications as if selected and implanted by nature in one body, for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprize to him. “Thomas Jefferson to Paul Allen, August 18, 1813,” in Jackson, Letters, 2: 589–90.”
38. Ibid., pp. 591–92.
39. Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, April 8, 1816, document 36796–97, reel 48, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; Rogers, “Hypocondriac Affections,” p. 33. Jefferson's letter to Adams can be read at http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/P?mtj:1:./temp/~ammem_UjfM (accessed May 26, 2011).
40. Thomas Jefferson, “Thoughts on English Prosody,” in Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Library ed., 20 vols. (Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, 1903), 18: 417–51.
41. Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestly, January 27, 1800, document 18153–54, reel 22; and Thomas Jefferson to John Brazer, August 24, 1819, document 38550–51, reel 51, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; Stephen Fineberg, “The Music of Thomas Jefferson's Greek,” Classical Journal 88, no. 4 (April-May 1993): 362–63, 368. Jefferson and John Adams held contests on who could implant more Greek quotes into their letters. Adams, who preferred Latin, finally lost.
42. Danisi and Jackson, Meriwether Lewis, p. 309.
43. Ibid., p. 308.
44. Robert Hooper and Samuel Akerly, Lexicon Medicum, 13th ed. (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1841), p. 443.
45. Stanley W. Jackson, Melancholia and Depression (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 274; Fischer-Homberger, “Hypochondriasis,” pp. 391, 394, and 399; Daniel Drake, The Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854), p. 66.
46. Anthony Wayne Papers, General Orders of Court Martial, May 1793-October 1796, vol. 50, folio 49–91, transcribed page 25, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
47. “Essays on Postures,” North American Review 5, no. 14 (July 1817): 170; “Miscellaneous Notes1: Westminster Review,” North American Review 18, no. 43 (April 1824): 424; “Lord Byron's Character and Writings,” North American Review 21, no. 49 (October 1825): 302; William Hazlitt, “Lectures on the English Poets,” North American Review 8, no. 23 (March 1819): 295. Capt. James House wrote an alternate form of the phrase in 1807 when describing Rodolphe Tillier's attitude toward George Sibley: “…he is extremely subject to gusts of passions and splenetic humours which renders it morally impossible for any young man to be connected with him….” (Marshall, Frederick Bates, 1: 225.)
48. Bruce L. J. Chwatt, “Ague as Malaria,” Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 79, no.8 (August 1976): 168–76; Walther H. Wernsdorfer and Ian McGregor, Malaria: Principles and Practice of Malariologa, 2 vols. (New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1988): 1: 4–25.
49. Chwatt, “Ague as Malaria,” p. 168.
50. There are hundreds of documents within the National Archives where soldiers have succumbed to the ague and fever, which was also called the ague.
51. Ronald Loge refutes this remark. “Scrutiny of the Lewis and Clark journals fails to uncover any such pattern of illness in any member of the expedition.” The Rutmans (see below) argued this point: “How many physicians have seen an absolutely untreated case of malaria through its full course?” Disease was viewed in the past as “indistinct,” yet the Rut-mans believe that the historian can build an “inferential case for its prevalence,” and combine “the available literary evidence with a contemporary understanding of the disease so that the two are consonant with each other.” Basic medical observation in 1804 possessed its own reliable set of “demographic attributes” and must be considered as a factor in Lewis's time. Loge, “Meriwether Lewis and Malaria,” p. 35; Darret B. Rutman and Anita H. Rutman, “Of Agues and Fevers: Malaria in the Early Chesapeake,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series 33, no. 1 (January 1976): 32–33.
52. Mark F. Boyd, An Introduction to Malariology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), pp. 21–24; Frank Hawking, Michael J. Worms, and Kenneth Gammage, “24-and 48-Hour Cycles of Malarial Parasites in the Blood; Their Purpose, Production, and Control,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 62, no. 6 (June 1968): 731; Herbert S. Heineman, “The Clinical Syndrome of Malaria in the United States,” Archives of Internal Medicine 129 (April 1972): 609.
53. Margaret Humphreys, Malaria, Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 8.
54. Barry S. Zingman and Brant L. Viner, “Splenic Complications in Malaria: Case Report and Review,” Clinical Infectious Diseases 16 (February 1993): 227.
55. William Osler, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, 2nd ed. (New York: D. Appleton, 1895), p. 162; U. V. Gopala Rao and Henry N. Wagner, “Normal Weights of Human Organs,” Radiology 102 (February 1972): 337; Julius P. Kreier, ed., Malaria, 3 vols. (New York: Academic Press, 1980), 1: 112.
56. Jean-Louis Alibert, A Treatise on Malignant Intermittents (Philadelphia: Fry and Kammerer, 1807), pp. 40, 44.
57. John Pringle, Observations on the Disease of the Army (Philadelphia: Fry and Kammerer, 1810), p. 157, in Early American Imprints, Second Series, no. 21145.
58. Ibid.
59. Jeffrey Goldberg, “Microbes on the Move,” New York Times Magazine (October 10, 1999), p. 21. In November 1995, Mr. Goldberg, who initially visited Zanzibar, was “bit repeatedly by mosquitioes.” In early December he traveled to Uganda and while hiking in the Bwindi forest succumbed to a malarial fever with accompanying “severe shakes.” He writes that “a short while later, atop a mountain, I fell unconscious.” He said that the paroxysm of fever had subsided for the moment and he “had to crawl down the mountain with the help of a very kind park official, who told me he would lose his job if I died on him.” He was driven to a remote hospital and at one point in the night “a friend had to throw himself across my body to keep me from shaking myself off the bed.” It took almost a week to recuperate, and Goldberg was “able to walk only on the fifth day.”
60. John Macculloch, Essay on the Remittent and Intermittent Diseases, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1828), 1: 250–51. Loge refuted this type of self-treatment by stricken malarial patients without taking into consideration that the patients observed by Dr. Macculloch were suffering from long-standing, untreated, end-stage malaria rarely, if ever, seen today. Loge asserts, “A survey of modern medical and infectious disease texts and an on-line search of the world's medical literature do not come up with any descriptions of such self-destructive idiosyncrasies in modern-day patients with proven malaria” (Loge, “Meriwether Lewis and Malaria,” p. 35). Today, individuals diagnosed with malaria are cured within six months or less. Macculloch's patients were chronic, having had the disease for more than five years with no effective treatment to alleviate pain. They therefore presented with extreme, and what we would consider alarming, measures. Today, it would be surprising to find any journal articles reporting malarial patients with self-destructive tendencies given the fact that there is an effective treatment, and no cases progress to such a point.
61. Macculloch, Remittent and Intermittent Diseases, pp. 252–53.
62. Thomas C. Danisi, “Lewis's Death,” We Proceeded On 28, no. 3 (August 2002): 2.
63. See the previous chapter, “Dr. Saugrain's Treatment,” for details on Lewis's malaria.
64. “Benjamin Rush's Rules of Health, June 11, 1809,” in Jackson, Letters, 1: 54–55.
65. “Meriwether Lewis, September 14, 1803,” in Moulton, Journals, 2: 81.
66. “Meriwether Lewis, November 13, 1803,” in Moulton, Journals, 2: 86.
67. Meriwether Lewis, November 13 and 14, 1803, Eastern Journal, August 30—December 12, 1803, film 214, reel 2, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
68. “Meriwether Lewis, November 14, 1803,” in Moulton, Journals, 2: 87.
69. Historians should not rely solely upon Moulton's transcriptions of the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. To completely understand the gravity of Lewis's illness from November 10 through November 27, one must examine the original journals, which have been microfilmed by the American Philosophical Society. In this seventeen-day period, the dates are crossed out, repeatedly, and Lewis's writing, while confusing, also continues to show crossed out words and large blank spaces. The transcriptions condensed all the blank spaces by simply omitting them, and the dates themselves do not show any distress.
70. Loge, “Meriwether Lewis and Malaria,” p. 34.
71. William Allan Neilson, Thomas A. Knott, and Paul W. Carhart, eds., Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd ed. (Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Company Publishers, 1960), p. 52 s. v. “ague.”
72. Robert Hooper, Lexicon Medicum, 4th ed. (London: Samuel Wood and Sons, 1822), p. 351; Robert Hooper, A Compendious Medical Dictionary (Newburyport, MA: Wm. Sawyer & Co., 1809), p. 106; Robert Hooper and Samuel Akerly, Lexicon Medicum, 13th ed., 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1846), 1: 353.
73. John Elliotson, The Principles and Practice of Medicine (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1844), p. 235.
74. Loge, “Meriwether Lewis and Malaria,” p. 34.
75. Robert Desowitz, Ova and Parasites (Hagerstown, MD: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 188; George Miller Sternberg, Malaria and Malarial Diseases (New York: William Wood & Company, 1884), p. 25.
76. Danisi, “The ‘Ague’ Made Him Do It,” p. 11.
77. Meriwether Lewis to James Madison, September 16, 2009, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
78. James Wilkinson to William Eustis, August 19, 1809, W658, RG107, M221, roll 33, frame 1564–65, National Archives and Records Administration; Mary C. Gillett, The Army Medical Department, 1775–1818 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History United States Army, 1981), pp. 140–43; RG233, M1136, roll 1, frames 0837–40, pp. 45–49, National Archives and Records Administration.
79. Wilson, “Death of Captain Lewis,” p. 37.
80. Macculloch, “Remittent and Intermittent Diseases,” p. 253.
APPENDIX A: DOCUMENTS FROM, TO, AND ABOUT
MERIWETHER LEWIS, 1803–1813
1. November 13, 1803, Eastern Journal, August 30-December 12, 1803, film 214, reel 2, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Transcribed directly from the Eastern Journal.
2. Ibid., November 14, 1803.
3. Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001), 4: 7–10.
4. Ibid., 5: 117–18.
5. Ibid., 6: 151–52.
6. Meriwether Lewis to Auguste Chouteau, February 11, 1807, City of Washington, Frederic Billon Papers, Missouri History Museum.
7. James Wilkinson to Thomas Jefferson, September 15, 1807, Richmond, document 30145, reel 39, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
8. Meriwether Lewis to Mahlon Dickerson, November 3, 1807, Statesman Collection, MG31, box 2, folder 38, New Jersey Historical Society. The file for this letter is labeled Lewis Meriwether. Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 2: 720. Jackson had miscopied the letter, and the original reads “A—n R—ph.”
9. James R. Bentley, “Two Letters of Meriwether Lewis to Major William Preston,” Filson Club History Quarterly 44, no. 2 (April 1970): 171–74.
10. Letitia Breckinridge, married June 2, 1808. Lewis admired her.
11. This letter is considered to be the last one that he wrote to his mother, but because of the delay of mail, and sometimes loss of letters, Lewis may have written others.
12. This is one of the oddest letters because it was written right before Chouteau departed for the Mandan village. It is doubtful that Chouteau completely understood what Bates had written. It was composed by Frederick Bates and signed by Pierre Chouteau. Pierre Chouteau to Secretary of War, June 14, 1809, C562, M221, roll 20, frame 6255, National Archives and Records Administration. Grace Lewis Miller is the only historian who speaks about it.
13. Draft of the letter. Lewis, Anderson, and Marks Families Papers, 1771–1908, microfilm M668, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia.
14. Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 285–86.
15. Lewis was addressing Simmons in response to Simmons's letter of July 15 talking exclusively about expenses. Simmons's letter can be found in RG107, M6, roll 4, p. 177, frame 0104, National Archives and Records Administration. For reference, see Carter, Territorial Papers, 14: 290–93 or the original in RG107, M221, L328, roll 23, frame 8501, National Archives and Records Administration.
16. William Carr Papers, Missouri History Museum.
17. Deed Record Book B, p. 378, City of Saint Louis, Recorder of Deeds, Saint Louis, Missouri.
18. Francois Trenchard (F. S. Trinchard) was the clerk at the New Madrid Courthouse in 1809. Louis Houck, A History of Missouri from the Earliest Exploration and Settlements until the Admission of the state into the Union, 3 vols. (Chicago: R. R. Donnelly & Sons, 1908), 2: 161, n. 81.
19. The first part of this letter, “Extract of a letter from Governor M. Lewis,” was printed in the New-York Commercial Advertiser on November 30, 1809, p. 2.
20. James Howe to Frederick Bates, September 28, 1809, Frederick Bates Papers, Missouri History Museum. Kira Gale wrote that the writer to Bates was James House. Capt. James House was the interim commanding officer at Fort Bellefontaine until Lt. Col. Daniel Bissell arrived on June 26, 1809. House remained at the fort until October 1809. He was granted a furlough in August, but could not leave until a minimum of troops arrived at the fort. RG94, M565, roll 2, pp. 64, 85, 86, 120, 131, 145–46, and 154, National Archives and Records Administration; James E. Starrs and Kira Gale, The Death of Meriwether Lewis (Omaha, NE: River Junction Press, 2009), p. 233.
21. James Neelly to Thomas Jefferson, October 18, 1809, document 33522–23, roll 44, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
22. John Brahan to Thomas Jefferson, October 18, 1809, document 33520–21, roll 44, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
23. John Brahan to William Eustis, October 18, 1809, B589, RG107, M221, roll 18, frame 5632, National Archives and Records Administration. Postmarked October 20, Nashville to Washington City, Received November 3, 1809.
24. “Daniel Bissell, October 19, 1809,” Missouri Gazette, p. 3, col. 1, vol. 2, no. 65.
25. Democratic Clarion, Friday, October 20, 1809, vol. 11, no. 111, p. 3, cols. 1 and 2, published by Thomas G. Bradford, Nashville, Tennessee.
26. Amos Stoddard was a Masonic orator and he may have written the poetry.
27. Robert A. Rutland et al., The Papers of James Madison, 5 vols. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1984), 2: 48–49. Madison read this embellished account from a newspaper. For original document see website, James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, October 30, 1809, Series 2, roll 25, document 1701, p. 2, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/master/mss/mjm/25/2100/2100.jpg
28. “John Breck Treat to Frederick Bates, October 31, 1809,” in Thomas M. Marshall, The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1926), 2: 103. Marshall states that Treat's middle name was Burke, but the Arkansas Indian agent signed documents as John Breck Treat.
29. Argus of Western America, November 4, 1809, Frankfort, Kentucky, vol. 2, no. 89.
30. Marshall, Frederick Bates, 2: 108–12.
31. Gilbert Russell to Thomas Jefferson with memorandum, January 4, 1810, document 33616–18, roll 44, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
32. Lewis's personal effects were opened and catalogued on November 23, 1809, by two army officers at Hiwassee Garrison, Tennessee. For an accounting of Lewis's personal effects, see Jackson, Letters, 2: 470–74.
33. Thomas Jefferson to Gilbert Russell, April 18, 1810, document 33748, reel 44, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
34. Clark Hunter, ed., The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983), pp. 360–62. The account of Lewis's death can also be found in Alexander Wilson, “Particulars of the Death of Capt. Lewis,” Port Folio 7 (January 1812): 3447. The Port Folio misprinted the date of the letter (May 28, 1811,instead of May 18, 1810). Wilson wrote a eulogy to Meriwether Lewis in the form of a poem, comprised of nineteen stanzas, four lines of verse per stanza, which was included in the Port Folio article. Some of those verses were printed in the front of each appAter of Thomas C. Danisi and John C. Jackson, Meriwether Lewis (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009). On May 4, Wilson departed Nashville and encountered the Great Harpeth, a stream, fifty yards wide, and eleven miles from his place of departure. He arrived at Grinder's Stand on Sunday, May 10. Wilson, “Death of Capt. Lewis,” pp. 35–36.
35. Alexander Wilson, American Ornithology: or The Natural History of the Birds of the United States, 3 vols. (New York: Collins & Co., 1828), 2: 46–47. Alexander Wilson (17661813), known as the father of American ornithology, was a friend of Meriwether Lewis. He was working on his eighth volume of American Ornithology when he became ill and died. He had worked for the printer Bradford and Innskeep, who had published his series on birds and also went bankrupt because of it. Laura Rigal, “Empire of Birds: Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology,” Huntington Library Quarterly 59, no. 2/3 (1996): 241.
36. The last sentence may have been written between May 10 and May 18, 1810, when Wilson travelled to Grinder's Stand and conversed with Priscilla Grinder about Lewis's death. Alexander Wilson, American Ornithology, 2: 46–47.
37. Species 9, Picus Torquatus, Lewis's Woodpecker (Plate XX—Fig. 3), Peale's Museum, no. 2020: Wilson, American Ornithology, 2: 46; Species 3, Tanagra Ludoviciana, Louisiana Tanager (Plate XX—Fig. 1), Peale's Museum, No. 6236, Wilson, American Ornithology, 2: 219. “This bird, and the two others that occupy the same plate, were discovered, in the remote regions of Louisiana, by an exploring party under the command of Captain…Merriwether Lewis, and Lieutenant, now General, William Clark, in their memorable expedition across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. They are entitled to a distinguished place in the pages of American Ornithology, both as being, till now, altogether unknown to naturalists, and as natives of what is, or at least will be, and that at no distant period, part of the western territory of the United States.” Wilson, 2: 219; Species 61, Corvus Columbianus, Clark's Crow (Plate XX—fig. 2): Alexander Wilson and Charles Lucien Bonaparte, American Ornithology: or The Natural History of the Birds of the United States, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: Constable and Co., 1831), 1: 249. “In conversation with different individuals of the party,* I understood that this bird inhabits the shores of the Columbia, and the adjacent country, in great numbers, frequenting the rivers and sea-shore, probably feeding on fish; and that it has all the gregarious and noisy habits of the European species, several of the party supposing it to be the same.…” * “The exploring party, under Captains Clark and Lewis, mentioned at p. 168, by which this bird was discovered.” [Same verbiage as Wilson, American Ornithology, 2: 219]
38. Thomas Jefferson to Paul Allen, August 18, 1813, document 35390–95, reel 46, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress; Jackson, Letters, 2: 590–93.
39. Lewis arrived in Washington on December 28, 1806, and Clark arrived on January 18, 1807.
APPENDIX B: MERIWETHER LEWIS'S COURT
MARTIAL PROCEEDINGS, NOVEMBER 6–11, 1795
1. The archivist at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) reported that the court-martial case was fifty-two handwritten pages but upon examination, there had been a day's recess and another court-martial was heard and embedded within the Lewis case. The entire page count for the Lewis trial was about forty handwritten pages. This is not a strict transcription—where words were crossed out and then corrected in the manuscript, the crossed out ones were omitted. The sentences were short—typically seven words a line and thus I chose to lengthen the line. Words in the transcript were hyphenated at the end of a sentence and I deleted the hyphen when necessary. Where a word was unreadable, I marked it as illegible.
2. Ensign Meriwether Lewis was arrested on or about September 24. It is not apparent if he remained under house arrest or put in jail. The maximum amount of time soldiers remained in jail was typically eight days.
3. Hobson's Choice was the name of an Ohio fort.
4. Bradley J. Nicholson, “Courts-Martial in the Legion Army: American Military Law in the Early Republic, 1792–1796,” Military Law Review 144 (Spring 1994): 103–104.
5. Finding the 1795 Meriwether Lewis courts-martial case proved to be especially protracted and difficult. It was my belief that it was buried in some forgotten place, and in April 2008 after sending the Lewis biography manuscript to Prometheus Books, I decided to embark on an extravagant hunt, which was to attempt to locate the court-martial case. It was reasonable to assume that the case had been stored in an undisclosed location of the National Archives, but the person who found the court-martial summary for Eldon Chuinard, Charles A. Shaughnessy of the Navy and Old Army Branch, Military Archives Division, had probably opened every drawer looking for it. In 2005, I spent a week at the National Archives, College Park campus, examining many of the documents that Donald Jackson had chosen for Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and I did not come across a hint of the court-martial files.
Shaughnessy sourced the citation for the summary to Record Group 94 and the Guide to the National Archives of the United States contained a detailed description of the “Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780s-1917…. There are 38,107 cubic feet of records dated ca. 1783 and 1917 in this record group.” Details of those records followed in terse descriptions: returns, muster rolls, military posts, etc. etc., but nothing that indicated courts-martial from 1795. I chose to ditch that trail and began acclimating myself with the time period by reading hundreds of publications.
A year later my research had narrowed the field to General Anthony Wayne, commander of the Legion of the United States, whose career spread over Lewis's court-martial. There were several US repositories with massive collections of Wayne documents as well as numerous Ohio historical societies with enough information to make a paper river that extends the length of the state.
During 2009 it occurred to me why no one had found the case—the search was absolutely overwhelming. In the process I became quite familiar with Wayne, Wayne's army (officers and enlisted men), Wayne's forts, Wayne's personal family, and with the power of the Internet, the many online descriptions of Wayne collections. Some of them were pages long, but in the summer of 2009, when scrolling an untapped Website for information, my eye caught a glimpse of a description that mirrored the right combination of words: Courts-Martial 1792–1799. It was embedded in an obscure paragraph detailing a facet of a specific Wayne collection in Pennsylvania. I bought the Guide to the Manuscript Collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and upon receiving it, feverishly went to the index and looked up Anthony Wayne. While his name circulated in eight collections, number 699 stated on the fifth line: “…men active in colonial affairs, 1765–79, 47 vols.; records of court-martial, 1776–96, 3 vols….”
In the fifteen months since I had begun looking, this was the first citing that confirmed my search, and I excitedly began to compose a letter of inquiry. But I had also encountered a serious challenge, which revolved around this question: How much to tip my hand? A few years earlier, I had discovered some new Meriwether Lewis material and, without thinking, requested photocopies. Within the year, that material had been published and all of my hard work had not only disappeared, but was credited to others. Keeping that experience in mind, on September 11, I asked for information on the General Anthony Wayne Papers, specifically the part dealing with “records of courts-martial, 1776–96, 3 vols.” There was an eight-week wait, and I promptly forgot about the e-mail due to the upcoming Lewis bicentennial.
On January 4, 2010, I sent another e-mail requesting an update and quickly received a response that what I was looking for appeared to be in large, bulky volumes. I responded with more exacting information, hoping it was the long lost file.
On February 3, I received an e-mail stating that the “Court-Martial Record of Meriwether Lewis,” was indeed at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The archivist wrote that the handwritten documents had been pasted into large, folio-size ledgers and could not be reproduced by traditional photocopying without ruining the ledger. He suggested a visit to Philadelphia, which I was able to undertake on April 27, 2010.
APPENDIX C: EXCERPTS FROM THE LETTERS OF
SAMUEL LATHAM MITCHILL, 1801–1808
1. “Dr. Mitchill's Letters From Washington: 1801–1813,” Harper's New Monthly Magazine 58 (April 1879): 740–55.
APPENDIX D: MERIWETHER LEWIS'S REAL ESTATE
TRANSACTIONS AND PERSONAL DEBTS
1. “Meriwether Lewis to William Preston, July 25, 1808,” in James R. Bentley, “Two Letters of Meriwether Lewis to Major William Preston,” Filson Club History Quarterly 44, no. 2 (April 1970): 173.
2. Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 28 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1934–1962), 2: 41.
3. Bentley, “Two Letters,” p. 173. Lewis purchased 7,440 arpents of land for $5530. The ratio for the surface measurement of a French arpent was .85 of an acre of land, which equated to 6,324 acres at $1.14 an acre.
4. Ibid.
5. L. Ruth Colter-Frick, “Meriwether Lewis's Personal Finances,” We Proceeded On 28, no. 1 (February 2002): 16–20.
APPENDIX E: WARRANTS, DRAFTS, AND BILLS OF
EXCHANGE ISSUED FROM THE ACCOUNTANT'S
OFFICE
1. William F. Sherman and Craig R. Scott, Records of the Accounting Officers of the Treasury Department, Inventory 14 (Lovettsville, VA: Willow Bend Books, 1997), pp. 19, 95–96, 98, 124, 129. There is a minimum of document duplication from Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978).
2. RG 217, Records of the General Accounting Office, reel 14, #85, Missouri History Museum.
3. Ibid., not copied verbatim: Jackson, Letters, 2: p. 576.
APPENDIX H: THE ETIOLOGY OF THUNDER-
BOLTS/THUNDERCLAPPERS
1. Paul Russell Cutright, Pioneering Naturalists (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1969), p. 175. Lewis had written his own formula for Rush's pills, which was composed of six grains of calomel and fifteen of jalap. Meriwether Lewis Account Book, Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri History Museum.
2. Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 89; Stephen E. Ambrose, Lewis & Clark: Voyage of Discovery (Washington: National Geographic Society, 1998), p. 37.
3. James Holmberg, Dear Brother (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 65, n. 4; David Lavender, The Way to the Western Sea: Lewis and Clark across the Continent (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), p. 234.
4. David J. Peck, Or Perish in the Attempt, Wilderness Medicine in the Lewis & Clark Expedition (Helena, MT: Farcountry Press, 2002), p. 51; Ronald V. Loge, “Meriwether Lewis and Malaria,” We Proceeded On 28, no. 2 (May 2002): 34; Ronald V. Loge, “Illness at Three Forks,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 50, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 5, 9.
5. Morris Fishbein, Frontiers of Medicine (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Company, in cooperation with the Century of Progress Exposition, 1933), p. 179. Fishbein was the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, which published a series of articles on quack and patent medicines from 1913 to 1925 with the assistance of Dr. Arthur Cramp.
6. Lyman H. Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush, 1793–1813, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951), 1: 149, n. 2; 2: 649, n. 2.
7. Benjamin Rush, An Account of the Bilious Remitting Yellow Fever (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1794), p. 200.
8. Ibid., p. 202; Oliver T. Osborne, The Principles of Therapeutics (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1922), p. 339; Benjamin Rush to Doctor Belleville, September 3, 1793, Philadelphia, ID: PACV92-A30, Record Group No. MSS 2/0146–02, College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
9. John Parascandola, “Patent Medicines in Nineteenth Century America,” Caduceus: A Museum Quarterly for the Health Sciences 1, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 1–41; James Harvey Young, The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America before Federal Regulation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 32–34; Lyman F. Kebler, “United States Patents Granted for Medicines during the Pioneer Years of the Patent Office,” Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association 24 (1935): 486–87.
10. William N. Boog Watson, “Two British Naval Surgeons of the French Wars,” Medical History 13, no. 3 (July 1969): n. 222.
11. John R. Christopher, School of Natural Healing (Provo, UT: Christopher Publications, 1976), p. 478; Louise Tenney, Today's Herbal Healing, 2nd ed. (Provo, UT: Woodland Health Books, 1983), p. 1.
12. Thomas Szasz, “A Bogus Benjamin Rush Quote: Contribution to the History of Pharmacracy,” History of Psychiatry 16, no. 1 (2005): 89. The Mark Twain quote (1882) was taken from page 90 of this article.
APPENDIX I: A FICTIONAL ROMANCE
1. “Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, February 23, 1801,” in Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1: 2–3.
2. Charles Felton Pidgin, Theodosia: The First Gentlewoman of Her Time (Boston: C. M. Clark, 1907), p. 236.
3. Charles Burr Todd, Life of Colonel Aaron Burr: Vice-President of the United States (New York: S. W. Green, 1879), pp. 236, 290.
4. Emerson Hough, “The Magnificent Adventure: A Romance of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” Munsey's Magazine 57 (April-May 1916).
5. Theodore P. Greene, America's Heroes: The Changing Models of Success in American Magazines (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 68.
6. I.J. Cox to Stella Drumm, October 9, 1916, Missouri Historical Society, Saint Louis, Missouri. Ms. Drumm pasted Cox's letter to the inside back cover of Emerson Hough's The Magnificent Adventure.
7. Delbert E. Wylder, Emerson Hough (Boston: Twayne, 1981), p. 55. Professor Wylder recommended an excellent dissertation on the colorful Emerson Hough. Carole McCool Johnson, “Emerson Hough and the American West: A Biographical and Critical Study,” (PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1975).
8. Anya Seton, My Theodosia (Boston: Riverside Press, 1941), p. 386.
9. Fillmore Norfleet, Saint Memin in Virginia: Portraits and Biographies (Richmond: Dietz Press, 1942), p. 183.
10. Eldon G. Chuinard, Only One Man Died: The Medical Aspects of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1980), p. 113; David Leon Chandler, The Jefferson Conspiracies: A President's Role in the Assassination of Meriwether Lewis (New York: William Morrow, 1994), pp. 140–41, 259.
11. Reimert Therolf Ravenholt, “Triumph Then Despair: The Tragic Death of Meriwether Lewis,” Epidemiology 5, no. 3 (May 1994): 378.
12. Seton, My Theodosia, p. 388.
13. Hough, “The Magnificent Adventure,” p. 526.
14. Charles Morrow Wilson, Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1934), p. 262.