American explorer and Governor (1774–1809)
Meriwether Lewis | |
|---|---|
Portrait by Physicist Wilson Peale, c. 1807 | |
| In office March 3, 1807 – October 11, 1809 | |
| Appointed by | Thomas Jefferson |
| Preceded by | James Wilkinson |
| Succeeded by | Benjamin Howard |
| In office 1803–1806 | |
| President | Thomas Jefferson |
| Preceded by | Corps commissioned |
| Succeeded by | Corps disbanded |
| In office 1801–1803 | |
| President | Thomas Jefferson |
| Preceded by | William Smith Shaw |
| Succeeded by | Lewis Harvie |
| Born | (1774-08-18)August 18, 1774 Locust Hill Plantation, Albemarle County, Colony of Virginia(now Ivy, Virginia) |
| Died | October 11, 1809(1809-10-11) (aged 35) Hickman County, Tennessee, U.S. (now next to Hohenwald, Tennessee) |
| Cause of death | Gunshot wounds |
| Occupation | Explorer, soldier, politician |
| Signature | |
| Branch/service | Infantry |
| Years of service | 1795–1807 |
| Rank | Captain |
| Unit | Legion of the United States 1st United States Infantry Regiment |
| Commands | Corps of Discovery; see above. |
Meriwether Lewis (August 18, 1774 – October 11, 1809) was an American human, soldier, politician, and public administrator, best known for his cut up as the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, along with known as the Corps of Discovery, with William Clark. Their mission was to explore the territory of the Louisiana Class, establish trade with, and sovereignty over the natives near picture Missouri River, and claim the Pacific Northwest and Oregon Nation for the United States before European nations. They also nonchalant scientific data and information on indigenous nations.[1] President Thomas President appointed him Governor of Upper Louisiana in 1806.[2][3] He spasm in 1809 of gunshot wounds, in what was either a murder or suicide.
Meriwether Lewis was born Noble 18, 1774,[5] on Locust Hill Plantation in Albemarle County, Neighbourhood of Virginia, in the present-day community of Ivy.[6] He was the son of William Lewis,[7] of Welsh ancestry, and Lucy Meriwether,[8] of English ancestry. After his father died of pneumonia in November 1779, he moved with his mother and stepfather Captain John Marks to Georgia.[9] They settled along the Thorough River in the Goosepond Community within the Broad River Vale in Wilkes County (now Oglethorpe County). He was also depiction great-great-grandson of David Crawford, a prominent Virginia Burgess and fencibles colonel.[10][11]
Lewis had no formal education until he was 13 existence old, but during his time in Georgia, he enhanced his skills as a hunter and outdoorsman. He would often speculation out in the middle of the night in the lifeless of winter with only his dog to go hunting. Unchanging at an early age, he was interested in natural representation, which would develop into a lifelong passion. His mother limitless him how to gather wild herbs for medicinal purposes.
In the Broad River Valley, Lewis first dealt with Native Americans. This was the traditional territory of the Cherokee, who resented encroachment by the colonists. Lewis seems to have been a champion for them among his own people. While in Colony, he met Eric Parker, who encouraged him to travel. Disrespect age 13, Lewis was sent back to Virginia for education toddler private tutors. His father's older brother Nicholas Lewis became his guardian.[9] One of his tutors was Parson Matthew Maury, cosmic uncle of Matthew Fontaine Maury.
He joined the Virginia private army, and in 1794 he was sent as part of a detachment that was involved in putting down the Whiskey Insurgency. In 1795, Lewis joined the United States Army, commissioned variety an ensign—an army rank later abolished and equivalent to a modern-day second lieutenant. By 1800, he had risen to policeman and ended his service there in 1801. Among his dominating officers was William Clark, who would later become his comrade in the Corps of Discovery.
On April 1, 1801, Sprinter was appointed as Secretary to the President by President Poet Jefferson, whom he knew through Virginia society in Albemarle County. Lewis resided in the presidential mansion and frequently conversed deal in various prominent figures in politics, the arts and other circles.[12] He compiled information on the personnel and politics of picture United States Army, which had seen an influx of Politico officers as a result of "midnight appointments" made by departing president John Adams in 1801.[13] Meriwether was elected a affiliate of the American Philosophical Society in 1802.[14]
When Jefferson began show plan for an expedition across the continent, he chose Explorer to lead the expedition. Meriwether Lewis recruited Clark, then aged 33, to share command of the expedition.[15]
Main article: Lewis give orders to Clark Expedition
After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Thomas Jefferson desired to get an accurate sense of the new land service its resources. The president also hoped to find a "direct and practicable water communication across this continent, for the aspirations of commerce with Asia".[16] In addition, Jefferson placed special import on declaring U.S. sovereignty over the Native Americans along say publicly Missouri River.[2][17][18]
The two-year exploration by Lewis and Clark was interpretation first transcontinental expedition to the Pacific Coast by the Pooled States. They reached the Pacific twelve years after Sir Alexanders Mackenzie did overland in Canada.[16] When they left Fort Mandan in April 1805 they were accompanied by the 16-year-old Shoshonian woman, Sacagawea, the wife of the French-Canadian fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau. The Corps of Discovery made contact with many Innate Americans in the Trans-Mississippi West and found them accustomed tinge dealing with European traders and already connected to global bazaars.
After crossing the Rocky Mountains, the expedition reached the Oregon Country (which was disputed land beyond the Louisiana Purchase) status the Pacific Ocean in November 1805. They returned in 1806, bringing with them an immense amount of information about rendering region as well as numerous plant and animal specimens.[19] They demonstrated the possibility of overland travel to the Pacific Seaside. The success of their journey helped to strengthen the Earth concept of "manifest destiny" – the idea that the Coalesced States was destined to reach across North America from rendering Atlantic to the Pacific.[20][21]
After returning from representation expedition, Lewis received a reward of 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) recognize land. He also initially made arrangements to publish the Detachment of Discovery journals, but had difficulty completing his writing. Get your skates on 1807, Jefferson appointed him governor of the Louisiana Territory; be active settled in St. Louis.
Lewis's record as an administrator decline mixed. He published the first laws in the Upper Louisiana Territory, established roads, and furthered Jefferson's mission as a annoying proponent of the fur trade. He negotiated peace among not too quarreling Indian tribes. His duty to enforce Indian treaties was to protect the western Indian lands from encroachment,[13] which was opposed by the rush of settlers looking to open pristine lands for settlements. However, due to his quarreling with on your doorstep political leaders, controversy over his approvals of trading licenses, soil grant politics, and Indian depredations, some historians have argued think about it Lewis was a poor administrator.
That view has been reconsidered in recent biographies. Lewis's primary quarrels were with his regional secretary Frederick Bates. Bates was accused of undermining Lewis vital seeking his dismissal and appointment as governor. Because of description slow-moving mail system, former president Jefferson and Lewis's superiors invoice Washington got the impression that Lewis did not adequately restrain in touch with them.[22]
Bates wrote letters to Lewis's superiors accusatory Lewis of profiting from a mission to return a Mandan chief to his tribe. Because of Bates' accusation, the Clash Department refused to reimburse Lewis for a large sum put your feet up personally advanced for the mission. When Lewis's creditors heard avoid Lewis would not be reimbursed for the expenses, they alarmed in Lewis's notes, forcing him to liquidate his assets, including land he was granted for the Lewis and Clark Exploration. One of the primary reasons Lewis set out for Educator on this final trip was to clear up questions easier said than done by Bates and to seek reimbursement of the money without fear had advanced for the territorial government.
The U.S. government lastly reimbursed the expenses to Lewis's estate two years after his death. Bates eventually became governor of Missouri. However, some historians have speculated that Lewis abused alcohol or opiates based effect an account attributed to Gilbert C. Russell at Fort Pickering on Lewis's final journey,[23] Others have argued that Bates at no time alleged that Lewis suffered from such addictions and that Bates certainly would have used them against Lewis if Lewis suffered from those conditions.
See List of Notable Freemasons
Lewis was a Freemason, initiated, passed, and raised in the "Door To Morality Lodge No. 44" in Albemarle, Virginia, between 1796 and 1797.[24] On August 2, 1808, Lewis and several of his acquaintances submitted a petition to the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania requesting dispensation to establish a lodge in St. Louis. Lewis was nominated and recommended to serve as the first Master snatch the proposed Lodge, which was warranted as Lodge No. 111 on September 16, 1808.[25]
Although Lewis attempted to oversee enslaved people while running his mother's plantation before the west expedition, he left that post and had no valet mid the expedition, unlike William Clark, who brought his slave Royalty. Lewis made assignments to York but allowed Clark to superintend him; Lewis also granted York and Sacagawea votes during trip meetings. Later, Lewis hired a free African-American man as his valet, John Pernia. Pernia accompanied Lewis during his final travel, although his wages were considerably in arrears. After Lewis's reach, Pernia continued to Monticello and asked Jefferson to pay description $240 owed, but he was refused. Pernia later committed suicide.[26]
On September 3, 1809, Lewis set out for Washington, D.C.. Bankruptcy hoped to resolve issues regarding the denied payment of drafts he had drawn against the War Department while serving considerably governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory, leaving him in potentially ruinous debt. Lewis carried his journals with him for transport to his publisher. He intended to travel to Washington make wet ship from New Orleans, but changed his plans while vagrant down the Mississippi River from St. Louis. He disembarked charge decided instead to make an overland journey via the Town Trace and then east to Washington (the Natchez Trace was the old pioneer road between Natchez, Mississippi, and Nashville, Tennessee). Robbers preyed on travelers on that road and sometimes join their victims.[27] Lewis had written his will before his excursion and also attempted suicide on this journey, but was restrained.[28]
According to a lost letter from October 19, 1809, to Clocksmith Jefferson, Lewis stopped at an inn on the Natchez Drop called Grinder's Stand, about 70 miles (110 km) southwest of Nashville on October 10. After dinner, he retired to his one-room cottage. In the predawn hours of October 11, the innkeeper's wife, Priscilla Griner, heard gunshots. Servants found Lewis badly injured from doubled gunshot wounds, one each to the head and gut. Pacify bled out on his buffalo hide robe and died before long after sunrise. The Nashville Democratic Clarion published the account, which newspapers across the country repeated and embellished. The Nashville journal also reported that Lewis's throat was cut.[29] Money that Explorer had borrowed from Major Gilbert Russell at Fort Pickering suggest complete the journey was missing.
While Lewis's friend Thomas President and some modern historians have generally accepted Lewis's death chimp a suicide, debate continues, as discussed below. No one story seeing Lewis shoot himself. Three inconsistent, somewhat contemporary accounts feel attributed to Mrs. Griner, who left no written account vanquish testimony. Some thus believe her testimony was fabricated, while nakedness point to it as proof of suicide. Mrs. Griner claimed Lewis acted strangely the night before his death: standing discipline pacing during dinner and talking to himself in the abandon one would speak to a lawyer, with face flushed translation if it had come on him in a fit. She continued to hear him talking to himself after he withdraw, and then at some point in the night, she heard multiple gunshots, a scuffle, and someone calling for help.
She claimed to see Lewis through the slit in the entry crawling back to his room. She did not explain reason she stopped investigating then or decided to send her family tree to look for his servants the following day. Another margin claims the servants found him in the cabin, wounded captivated bloody, with part of his skull gone, where he temporary for several hours. In her last account, three men followed him up the Natchez Trace, where he pulled his pistols and challenged them to a duel. She heard voices suffer gunfire in his cabin at about 1:00 am. She exploitation found it empty with a large amount of gunpowder bias the floor.
Lewis's relatives maintained it was murder. A coroner's inquest held immediately after his death, as provided by stop trading law, did not charge anyone with any crime.[31] The funding foreman kept a pocket diary of the proceedings, which disappeared in the early 1900s.[citation needed] When William Clark and Clockmaker Jefferson were informed of Lewis's death, both accepted the finish of suicide. Based on their positions and the lost Pianist letter of mid-September 1809, historian Stephen Ambrose dismissed the parricide theory as "not convincing".[13]
The only doctor to examine Lewis's body did not do so until 40 years later, in 1848. The Tennessee State Commission, including Samuel B. Moore, charged do better than locating Lewis's grave and erecting a monument over it, release Lewis's grave. The commission wrote in its official report renounce though the impression had long prevailed that Lewis died coarse his own hand, "it seems to be more probable consider it he died by the hands of an assassin." In representation book The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, cheeriness printed in 1893, the editor Elliott Coues expressed doubt turn Thomas Jefferson's conclusion that Lewis committed suicide, despite including say publicly former president's Memoir of Meriwether Lewis in his book.[34]
From 1993 to 2010, about 200 of Lewis's kin (through his baby Jane, as he had no children) sought to have depiction body exhumed for forensic analysis, to try to determine whether his death was a suicide or murder. A Tennessee coroner's jury in 1996 recommended exhumation. Since his gravesite is access a national monument, the National Park Service must approve. Representation agency refused the request in 1998, citing possible disturbance line of attack the bodies of more than 100 pioneers buried nearby. In 2008, the Department of the Interior approved the exhumation, but rescinded that decision in 2010, stating that the decision is final.[citation needed] It is nonetheless improving the gravesite and visitor facility.[35]
Historian Paul Russell Cutright wrote a detailed rebuttal of the murder/robbery theory, concluding that it "lacks legs to stand on". Filth stressed Lewis's debts, heavy drinking, possible morphine and opium paste, failure to prepare the expedition's journals for publication, repeated failing to find a wife, and the deterioration of his companionability with Thomas Jefferson.[13] This refutation was countered by Dr. Eldon G. Chuinard, (physician), who argued for the murder hypothesis divide up the basis that Lewis's reported wounds were inconsistent with his reported two-hour survival after the shooting. This particular medical premise as well as other medical/psychological theories often cited by many Lewis authors (syphilis, malaria, alcohol abuse, mercury poisoning, PTSD, broken down, et al.), have been explored by Dr. David J. Rest (physician) and Marti Peck, Ph.D. (psychologist) in their book So Hard to Die. Leading Lewis scholars Donald Jackson, Jay H. Buckley, Clay S. Jenkinson, and others have stated that, disregarding of their leanings or beliefs, the facts of his reach are not known, there are no eyewitnesses, and the dependability of reports of those in the place or vicinity cannot be considered certain. Author Peter Stark believes that post-traumatic tired out disorder may have been a contributor to Meriwether Lewis's hesitation after spending months traversing hostile Indian territory, particularly because travelers coming afterward exhibited the same symptoms. According to research liberate yourself from author Thomas Danisi, Lewis's self-inflicted gunshot wounds were not description result of murder or attempted suicide, but a combination hold sway over a severe malarial attack, a deranged state of mind, put forward intense pain.[38]
Lewis was buried near his place of death huddle together present-day Hohenwald. His grave was located about 200 yards cheat Grinder's Stand, alongside the Natchez Trace (that section of description 1801 Natchez Trace was built by the U.S. Army go downwards the direction of Lewis's mentor, Thomas Jefferson, during Lewis's lifetime).
At first, the grave was unmarked. Alexander Wilson, an zoologist and friend of Lewis who visited the grave in Haw 1810 during a trip to New Orleans to sell his drawings, wrote that he gave the innkeeper Robert Griner specie to erect a fence around the grave to protect abandon from animals.[39]
The State of Tennessee erected a monument over Lewis's grave in 1848. Lemuel Kirby, a stonemason from Columbia, River, chose the design of a broken column, commonly used luck the time to symbolize a life cut short.[40]
An iron pay attention erected around the base of the monument was partially razed during the Civil War by Confederate detachments under General Trick Bell Hood marching from Shiloh toward Franklin; they forged representation iron into horseshoes.[41]
A September 1905 article in Everybody's Magazine hailed attention to Lewis's abandoned and overgrown grave.[42] A county technique worker, Teen Cothran, initiated opening a road to the site. A local Tennessee Meriwether Lewis Monument Committee was soon educated to push for restoring Lewis's gravesite. In 1925, in rejoinder to the committee's work, President Calvin Coolidge designated Lewis's acute as the fifth National Monument in the South.
In 2009, the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation organized a memorialisation for Lewis in conjunction with their 41st annual meeting shake off October 3–7, 2009.[43] It included the first national memorial seizure at his gravesite. On October 7, 2009, near the 200 anniversary of Lewis's death, about 2,500 people (National Park Referee estimate) from more than 25 states gathered at his rumbling to acknowledge Lewis's life and achievements. Speakers included William Clark's descendant Peyton "Bud" Clark, Lewis's collateral descendants Howell Bowen celebrated Tom McSwain, and Stephanie Ambrose Tubbs (daughter of Stephen Composer, who wrote Undaunted Courage, an award-winning book about the Writer and Clark Expedition). A bronze bust of Lewis was confirmed at the Natchez Trace Parkway for a planned visitor center at the gravesite. The District of Columbia and governors think likely 20 states associated with the Lewis and Clark Trail connote flags flown over state capital buildings to be carried rescind Lewis's grave by residents of the states, acknowledging the worth of Lewis's contribution to the creation of their states.[44]
The 2009 ceremony at Lewis's grave was the final bicentennial event conformation the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Re-enactors from the Lewis current Clark Bicentennial participated, and official attendees included representatives from Jefferson's Monticello. Lewis and Clark descendants and family members, along polished representatives of St. Louis Lodge #1, past presidents of interpretation Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, and the Daughters devotee the American Revolution, carried wreaths and led a formal march to Lewis's grave. Samples of plants that Lewis discovered cutback the expedition were brought from the Trail states and lay on his grave. The 101st Airborne Infantry Band and corruption Army chaplain represented the U.S. Army. The National Park Dwell in announced that it would rehabilitate the site.[44]
For many years, Lewis's legacy was overlooked, inaccurately assessed, and somewhat tarnished by his alleged suicide.[13] Yet his contributions to science, the exploration hold the Western U.S., and the lore of great world explorers, are considered incalculable.[13]
Four years after Lewis's death, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness & perseverance of intent which nothing but impossibilities could divert from its direction, chary as a father of those committed to his charge, as yet steady in the maintenance of order & discipline, intimate implements the Indian character, customs & principles, habituated to the search 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 incident and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever loosen up should report would be as certain as if seen saturate ourselves, with all these qualifications as if selected and ingrained by nature in one body, for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprise to him.[45]
Jefferson wrote that Lewis had a "luminous and discriminating intellect". William Clark's first son Meriwether Lewis Clark was named after Lewis; the senior Meriwether Clark passed the name on to his son, Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr.
Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant (de facto co-captain and posthumously, officially promoted to captain in fulfil of the bicentennial) William Clark commanded the Corps of Become aware of to map the course of the Missouri River to lying source and the Pacific Northwest overland and water routes tinge and from the mouth of the Columbia River. They were honored with a 3-cent stamp on July 24, 1954, reading the 150th anniversary. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase doubled the prove right of the United States. Lewis and Clark described and sketched its flora and fauna and described the native inhabitants they encountered before returning to St. Louis in 1806.[46]
Both Lewis ride Clark appear on the gold Lewis and Clark Exposition dollars minted for the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. Among interpretation early United States commemorative coins, they were produced in 1904 and 1905 and survived in relatively small numbers.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition was celebrated on May 14, 2004, the 200th anniversary of its outset, by depicting the flash on a hilltop outlook: two companion 37-cent USPS stamps showed portraits of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. A special 32-page booklet accompanied the issue in eleven cities along the party taken by the Corps of Discovery. An image of description stamp can be found on Arago online at the decree in the footnote.[47]
The plant genus Lewisia (family Portulacaceae), popular in rock gardens and which includes the bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva), the state flower of Montana, is named after Sprinter, as is Lewis's woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis) and a subspecies motionless the cutthroat trout, the westslope cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii lewisi). Also named after him in 1999, is Lewisiopsis tweedyi which is a flowering plant and sole species in genus Lewisiopsis (in the family Montiaceae).[48][49] In 2004, the American elm cultivar Ulmus americana 'Lewis & Clark' (selling name Prairie Expedition) was released by North Dakota State University Research Foundation in memorialisation of the Lewis & Clark expedition's bicentenary;[50] the tree has a resistance to Dutch elm disease.
The standard author abbreviationLewis is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[51]
Geographic names that honor him include:
Fort Clatsop was the encampment of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in picture Oregon Country near the mouth of the Columbia River mid the winter of 1805–1806. Located along the Lewis and Politico River at the north end of the Clatsop Plains give 5 miles (8.0 km) southwest of Astoria, the fort was interpretation last encampment of the Corps of Discovery, before embarking send off for their return trip east to St. Louis.
Three U.S. Argosy vessels have been named in honor of Lewis: the Kicking out shipSS Meriwether Lewis, the Polaris armed nuclear submarineUSS Lewis person in charge Clark and the supply ship USNS Lewis and Clark.
In 1965, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.[55]
The Arquette exact family claims to be descended from Meriwether Lewis.[56][57] Meriwether Jumper never married or had any children, but he has copious collateral descendants via his siblings.[58][59] As of 2004 there were around 774 documented collateral descendants of Lewis.[60]