Lewis & Clark "ss2.01"

NOTES

1. Not much has been written on Jefferson's leadership of the APS other than Gilbert Chuinard, “Thomas Jefferson and the American Philosophical Society,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 87 (September 1943): 163–276. A portion of the following text is taken from Edward C. Carter II, “Jefferson's American Philosophical Society Leadership and Heritage,” in “The Most Flattering Incident of My Life”: Essays Celebrating th e Bicentennial of Thomas Jefferson's American Philosophical Society Presidency, 1797–1814 (Philadelphia: Published for the Friends of the APS Library, 1997), 9–15. [BACK]

2. For Jefferson's thoughts on these specific topics see William Peden, ed., Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), 7–10, 15–16, 92–107, 43–63. [BACK]

3. The possible early involvement of Lewis in the Michaux expedition is based on a statement in Jefferson's “Life of Captain Lewis,” which served as an introduction to Nicholas Biddle's 1814 two-volume History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clarke to the Sources of the Missouri, Thence Across The Rocky Mountains And Down The River Columbia To The Pacific Ocean. Performed during the Years 1804–5–6. By Order of the Government of The United States (1814; reprint, New York: Allerton Book, 1922), wherein Jefferson states that when Lewis was on recruiting duty in Charlottesville in 1792 he applied for the job but was turned down. Most historians have merely repeated Jefferson's statement although Lewis did not volunteer for the militia until 1794 when he was twenty. Anthony F. C. Wallace recently pointed these facts out and sets the date of Lewis's raising the issue as 1799, when he was in Charlottesville on recruiting duty (Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1999], 342). Lewis himself seems to place the date earlier; upon departing from Fort Mandan on 7 April 1805, he joyfully wrote in his journal about his “most confident hope of succeading in a voyage which had formed a da[r]ling project of mine for the last ten years [of my life]” (Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–99], 4:10). [BACK]

4. For excellent biographical sketches of the dramatic, productive lives of the two Michaux see their entries in John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American

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National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 15:414–417. For a more modern and intriguing “Michaux story,” see the amazing and even amusing account of how a 1979 high school summer intern discovered one of the society's most famous and valuable documents, the manuscript of the Michaux expedition instructions and subscription list, in a small 1770 package of the old Silk Society (Whitfield J. Bell, Jr.'s “Report of the Committee on Library,” APS Year Book [1979]: 159–160). On the document are all the signatures of the contributors—who joined the APS in 1780—and the amounts they gave: George Washington, $100; John Adams, $20; Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Hamilton, each $50. No historian or biographer for 175 years had seen this breathtaking document until it was found by young Robert E. Mooney. “There cannot be many documents which bear the signatures of the first four Presidents of the United States” (Bell, “Report,” 159). Through the generosity of the Pew Charitable Trusts it was conserved in 1999 and recently exhibited in the APS library's lobby (November 1999 to August 2000). [BACK]

5. Quoted in Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians, 158. [BACK]

6. Quoted in ibid., 320. [BACK]

7. For a more detailed discussion of the committee see ibid., 139, 156–157, 319–321. [BACK]

8. Jefferson to Vaughan, Monticello, 28 June 1817; Jefferson to Peter S. Du Ponceau, Monticello, 7 November 1817; Du Ponceau to Jefferson, Philadelphia, 5 December 1817; Clark to Biddle, Washington, D.C., 27 January 1818; Biddle to William Tilghman (APS 1805), chairman of committee, Philadelphia, 6 April 1818, Vaughan to Biddle, 8 April 1818; all in Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents 1783–1854, 2d ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 2:630–637. For a summary of the negotiations through which the journals were acquired see also the minutes of the APS Historical and Literary Committee, especially entries of 19 November 1817 and 8 April 1818. [BACK]

9. Jackson, Letters, 2:74. [BACK]

10. The Philadelphians were also distinguished faculty members of the University of Pennsylvania. [BACK]

11. These quotations are from Jefferson to Lewis, Washington, D.C., 27 April 1803 in Jackson, Letters, 1:44. [BACK]

12. For an excellent review of postexpedition history of the numerous plant and animal specimens, Indian artifacts, and other objects collected see Paul Russell Cutright, Lewis and Clark, Pioneering Naturalists (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969), 349–402. Moulton ably brought the botanical aspect of this story up to date in his edition's twelfth volume, Herbarium of the Lewis & Clark Expedition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 1–10. [BACK]

13. Biddle, History. [BACK]

14. Entry for 21 October 1803, in Early Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society … Compiled … from the Manuscript Minutes of Its Meetings from 1744 to 1838 (Philadelphia: McCalla and Stovely, 1884), 343. [BACK]

15. Entries for those dates in ibid., 396–398. [BACK]

16. Biddle, Eulogium on Thomas Jefferson Delivered before the American Philosophical Society on the Eleventh Day of April 1827 (Philadelphia: Robert H. Small, 1827), 33–35. [BACK]

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17. Catalogue of the Library of the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia: Joseph R. A. Skernett, 1824) [the society's first printed catalog]; and Catalogue of the American Philosophical Society Library, 4 parts (Philadelphia: C. Sherman, Son., 1863–84). [BACK]

18. Moulton, Herbarium, 6. [BACK]

19. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 141. [BACK]

20. Edward C. Carter II, “One Grand Pursuit”: A Brief History of the American Philosophical Society's First 250 Years, 1743–1993 (Philadelphia: APS, 1993), 44–45, 49, and 54. [BACK]

21. The following discussion of Coues's publication and three modern editions is taken from Edward C. Carter II, ed., introductory booklet to Three Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition 1804–1806, from the Collections of the American Philosophical Society: a facsimile edition (Philadelphia: APS, 2000), 17–21. [BACK]

22. Moulton, Journals, 2:39. [BACK]

23. Ibid., 40. Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1806, 8 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1904–05). [BACK]

24. See Gunther Barth, “Strategies for Finding the Northwest Passage: The Roles of Alexander Mackenzie and Meriwether Lewis,” and Albert Furtwangler, “Do or Die, But Then Report and Ponder: Palpable and Mental Adventures in the Lewis and Clark Journals,” both in Surveying the Record: North American Scientific Exploration to 1930, ed. Edward C. Carter II (Philadelphia: APS, 1999), 253–266, 267–278. As the APS librarian, Carter also organized and directed the conference. [BACK]

25. The final selections were William Clark Codex A journal 13 May–14 August 1804 (getting the expedition under way up the Missouri); Meriwether Lewis Codex E journal 24 May–16 July 1805 (going westward from the Mandan villages up the Missouri to the Great Falls and around them); and Meriwether Lewis Codex J journal 1 January–20 March 1806 (damp and rainywinter at Fort Clatsop with splendid summary of flora and fauna, descriptions of northwestern coastal tribes, and preparations for the homeward journey). See Carter, introductory booklet, Three Journals, 19–21. [BACK]