Meriwether Lewis was an American explorer and statesman. He served as the 2nd Governor of Louisiana Territory from 1807 to 1809.
Background
Meriwether Lewis was born on August 18, 1774, a native of that cradle of noted Americans, Albemarle County, Virginia, United States where he was a neighbor of the Jeffersons, Randolphs, and other prominent families. He was named for his mother, Lucy Meriwether, and was the eldest child of her marriage with her cousin, William Lewis. Both families were among the élite of their region; William Lewis, a cousin of Fielding Lewis, served in the Continental Army and died soon after the surrender at Yorktown, leaving a considerable estate. Within a brief time his widow married John Marks, and when Meriwether was about ten years old the family removed with a large group of kinsfolk to upper Georgia, where they had plantations on the Broad River in the present Oglethorpe County. Here young Lewis grew up amid pleasant surroundings. Much of his time was spent in the open, and he became an expert hunter. He also took note of the fauna and flora of the vicinity and early showed both scientific and literary tastes. It is said that when told by his schoolmaster that the earth turned around he jumped high in the air and was disappointed that he came down in the same place, until it was proved to him that he moved with the moving earth. He also showed great presence of mind during danger; when a group of women and children, gathered about a bonfire, were frightened at an alarm supposed to be caused by Indians, it was Meriwether Lewis who dashed a bucket of water on the flames, leaving the group to grateful darkness.
Education
At the age of thirteen Lewis returned to Virginia to study under the Rev. Matthew Maury, who grounded him well in Latin and also taught him mathematics and the rudiments of science. He continued his studies under private tutors for five years.
Career
When Lewis was eighteen years old his step-father died, his mother returned to the Virginia plantation, "Locust Hill, " on Ivy Creek near Charlottesville, and Meriwether as the eldest son felt it his duty to remain at home and manage the estate. He also took great interest in the education of his brother, Reuben Lewis, and his young half-brother and sister, John and Mary Marks.
Lewis was twenty when the president called for troops to suppress the Whisky Rebellion; as a member of the local militia he went into camp first at Winchester, then across the mountains near Pittsburgh. There early in 1795 he wrote to his mother that he was "quite delighted with a soldier's life. " In consequence, May 1, 1795, he enlisted in the regular army, being commissioned ensign in the 2nd Legion. That year he marched to Greenville, Ohio, where he attended the treaty made by Anthony Wayne with the northern Indians, which ended the wars in the Northwest Territory. During this campaign he was one of the subordinates of William Clark, his future companion in exploring the West.
On November 1, 1796, Lewis was transferred to the 1st Infantry and in 1799, commissioned lieutenant. During the last years of the eighteenth century he was stationed in turn at several cantonments. His honesty and industry were so noted that he was chosen paymaster for his regiment. In 1797 he obtained a furlough, visited his home, and later journeyed to Kentucky on business, for his own and the family estate. Late in the summer of 1797 he was on active duty in command of a company at Fort Pickering, a newly erected fortification near the site of Memphis, built after the evacuation of that region by the Spanish. This fort was in Chickasaw Indian Territory and here Lewis learned the language and the customs of these Indians. Thence he was ordered to Detroit and was stationed at that outpost in 1801 when his friend and neighbor, Thomas Jefferson, was elected president.
In the first week after his election Jefferson wrote to Lewis, offering him the post of private secretary. The letter was couched in flattering terms. In selecting a secretary, said Jefferson, "I thought it important to respect not only his capacity to aid in the private concerns of the household, but also to contribute to the mass of information which it is interesting to the administration to acquire. Your knowledge of the Western country, of the Army and of all its interests and relations has rendered it desirable for public as well as private purposes that you should be engaged in that office. " The salary would be only five hundred dollars, but Lewis would live in the executive mansion, and could retain his military rank. The letter concluded, "It has been solicited by several who will have no answer till I hear from you". Lewis received Jefferson's letter at Pittsburgh, en route from Detroit. He immediately accepted the offer it contained, and, acting on the President-Elect's suggestions, obtained leave of absence from his military superior, Gen. James Wilkinson. He was in Washington about the time of the inauguration, and shortly afterwards removed with the President to the White House. There he was expected to oversee the domestic arrangements, since Jefferson's daughters were both married and could stay with their father only occasionally. The establishment was served by eleven servants brought from Monticello; hospitality was lavish and democratic; Jefferson kept open house for diplomats, congressmen, and friends. Dinner was served at four o'clock and the table was surrounded by men of note, who often continued the conversation until midnight. Thomas Paine and Joel Barlow, Jefferson's former companions in Paris, were in Washington that winter, and the discussion and councils must have been a liberal education for the President's young friend and secretary. He was also employed in affairs of state.
On December 8, 1801, Jefferson sent Lewis to convey his annual message to the Senate, not wishing to appear and to read it in person as his predecessors had done. During Lewis's two years at the White House, the matter of exploring for a land route to the Pacific Ocean was frequently discussed. It was a project which had occupied Jefferson's thought for twenty years, and Lewis had long cherished the wish to be chosen leader of such an expedition. In 1792 when but eighteen years of age he had importuned Jefferson, then secretary of state, to permit him to undertake the journey. It was deemed premature at that time, but the plan had never been abandoned by either Jefferson or Lewis. Now the time seemed ripe for carrying it into execution.
On January 18, 1803, Jefferson sent to Congress a private message concerning Indian trading houses; in it he discussed the advisability of learning something of the far western Indians, and proposed an appropriation for a journey of discovery. Lewis himself had made the estimate of the necessary expenses, and Congress quickly appropriated the $2, 500 he desired. Jefferson considered Lewis's qualifications for the leadership of such an expedition unsurpassed. All he lacked, in Jefferson's opinion, was scientific knowledge--methods of taking latitude and longitude and the use of astronomical instruments. Jefferson therefore sent him to Philadelphia to study with the scientists there; afterwards, at Lancaster, Andrew Ellicott gave him advice on astronomy and map-making. Jefferson had prepared instructions of a detailed nature for Lewis's conduct on the journey; these he sent him June 30, 1803, and with them his passports through French territory. Before his departure, however, news reached Washington of the purchase of Louisiana, which made it possible for the expedition to pass through territory belonging to the United States.
At the instance of Jefferson, Lewis was to choose a companion officer; he offered the position to William Clark of Louisville, and the names and fame of Lewis and Clark are inseparably united. The expedition mustered in Illinois, not far from the mouth of the Missouri; there during the winter of 1803-1804 the men were enlisted and drilled. In the spring of 1804 Lewis assisted in the transfer at St. Louis of upper Louisiana to the United States, while Clark brought on the men and was joined by Lewis at St. Charles, Missouri. The route was to follow the Missouri to its source. The chief difficulty apprehended was the enmity of some of the upper river tribes, especially the Sioux. A band of these Indians attempted to arrest the passage of the expedition, but the leaders' firmness and tact prevailed and they reached the Mandan villages in North Dakota late in the fall. There the men wintered and prepared for the further journey. Thence Lewis sent letters to his family and the President which were the last messages from him for eighteen months.
As guides for the upper river a French-Canadian and his Shoshone wife, Sacajawea, were taken from the Mandans, when, on April 7, 1805, the voyage was resumed. By July they reached the falls, where a long portage was made; by August the explorers came to the end of navigation. Sacajawea here found relatives from whom horses were obtained to cross the divide. Arrived at the Columbia, the expedition built canoes and descended that river to the ocean. The continent had at last been crossed by means of its two great rivers. Fort Clatsop was built, not far from Astoria, to house the party for the winter and the rainy seasons. Since no ships came to this port in the spring, it was determined to recross the continent by the route the party followed coming out. The explorers returned over another pass to the place where they had cached their canoes the previous autumn. Lewis determined to make a detour along Maria's River, which he had named on the outward journey for his cousin, Maria Wood. It appeared that this tributary went farther north than any other and might interlock with higher branches of the Columbia. On this stream he had a hostile encounter with a band of Indians, the only serious skirmish on the trip. Some days later he was accidentally wounded by one of his men, who mistook him for a deer.
By the time they reached the Mandans Lewis was in bad condition, but with rest and care he made a quick recovery. The captains persuaded a Mandan chief to accompany them to St. Louis, where they arrived on September 23, 1806, to the great joy of the entire nation, who had long given them up for lost. The success of the expedition was due to the combined abilities of the two leaders, Lewis and Clark. Lewis, however, was the true chief, the ultimate authority on every question. His journals show that he was deeply impressed with his responsibility; they show also his intellectual ardor and scientific spirit, and his humane feeling for man and nature. The two chiefs at once began to plan for a published account of their adventures.
In November 1806 they started for Washington. There Lewis resigned from the army and Jefferson appointed him governor of Louisiana, the territory embracing all the province north of the present state of that name. On returning to St. Louis in the summer of 1807, he found much to do in pacifying factions and reconciling feuds. His services as governor were brief but useful.
In the summer of 1809 he learned with distress that because of some technicality some of the bills he had issued on the government had been repudiated. He decided to go to Washington to investigate, and left St. Louis intending to go by way of New Orleans and the ocean. At Chickasaw Bluffs (now Memphis), however, he changed his plan and went overland, striking the Natchez Trace at the crossing of the Tennessee below Muscle Shoals. He had with him two servants, a negro and a half-breed Spaniard. On the night of October 11, at a rude inn in central Tennessee, he died. Jefferson later assumed it was by his own hand. His family and the people of the locality where his death occurred believed he was murdered, and the weight of evidence seems to be with this surmise. No money was found on his body and his watch was later recovered in New Orleans.
