“Mr. Madison tenders to Mr. Merry his distinguished consideration.”
The friction arising out of this and interlocking incidents was part of the unfortunate train of events which later led up to the war of 1812.
[2] It is generally conceded that Theodosia Burr Alston must have been acquainted with her father’s most intimate ambitions, and with at least part of the questionable plans by which he purposed to further them. Her blind and unswerving loyalty to him, passing all ordinary filial affection, was a predominant trait of her singular and by no means weak or hesitant character, in which masculine resolution blended so strangely with womanly reserve and sweetness.
[3] Mr. Merry did so and reported the entire proposal made by Burr. The proposition was that the latter should “lend his assistance to his majesty’s government in any manner in which they may think fit to employ him, particularly in endeavoring to effect a separation of the Western part of the United States from that which lies between the mountains in its whole extent.”
But though deeply interested in the conspiracy to separate the Western country, Mr. Merry was not too confiding, for in his message to Mr. Pitt he added the following confidence, showing his own estimate of Burr:
“I have only to add that if strict confidence could be placed in him, he certainly possesses, perhaps in a much greater degree than any other individual in this country, all the talents, energy, intrepidity, and firmness which it requires for such an enterprise.”
[4] The original journals of these two astonishing young men—one of them just thirty years old, the other thirty-four—should rank among the epic literature of the world. Battered about, scattered, separated, lost, hawked from hand to hand, handed down as unvalued heritages, “edited” first by this and then by that little man, sometimes to the extent of actual mutilation or alteration of their text—the journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark hold their ineffacable clarity in spite of all. Their most curious quality is the strange blending of two large souls which they show. It was only by studying closely the individual differences of handwriting, style, and spelling, that it could be determined what was the work of Lewis, which that done by Clark.
And what a labor! After long days of toil and danger, under unvarying hardships, in conditions of extremest discomfort and inconvenience for such work, the two young leaders set down with unflagging faithfulness countless thousands of details, all in such fashion as showed the keenest and most exact powers of observation. Botanists, naturalists, geographers, map-makers, builders, engineers, hunters, journalists, they brought back in their notebooks a mass of information never equaled by the records of any other party of explorers.
We cannot overestimate the sum of labor which all this meant, day after day, month after month; nor should we underestimate the qualities of mind and education demanded of them, nor the varied experience of life in primitive surroundings which needed to be part of their requisite equipment. It was indeed as if the two friends were fitted by the plan of Providence for this great enterprise which they concluded in such simple, unpretending, yet minutely thorough fashion. Neither thought himself a hero, therefore each was one. The largest glory to be accorded them is that they found their ambition and their content in the day’s work well done.
[5] Cam-e-ah-wit was the name of Sacajawea’s brother, the Shoshone chief. The country where Lewis met him is remote from any large city today. Pass through the Gate of the Mountains, not far from Helena, Montana, and ascend the upper valley of the Missouri, as it sweeps west of what is now the Yellowstone Park, and one may follow with a certain degree of comfort the trail of the early explorers. If one should then follow the Jefferson Fork of the great river up to its last narrowing, one would reach the country of Cam-e-ah-wit. Here is the crest of the Continental Divide, where it sweeps up from the south, after walling in, as if in a vast cup, the three main sources of the great river. Much of that valley country is in fertile farms today. Lewis and Clark passed within twelve miles of Alder Gulch, which wrote roaring history in the early sixties—the wild placer days of gold-mining in Montana.