by David Nevin
“Templates, maybe? Wooden templates?” Bit’s voice was small.
“Shut up, Bit! I’m thinking.” A silence. “Well, Cap’n, straight pieces are easy enough, and you got the same curves at each end, right? Now what we’ll have to do, we’ll build one end in wood, then keep bending our pieces till they fit the wood. What we call templates.”
“Sounds excellent,” Lewis said. He didn’t look at Bit. “Let’s get the carpenters in.”
“Bit,” Jimson said, “go get old Mayfield. Tell him to bring his box; he’ll have to build it right here off the plans.”
They watched Bit scurry out the door. “Straight rods for the length of her, we can start on that now. It’s them curves that trouble. I reckon we can get it done, but it ain’t going to be fast. Some weeks, at least.”
Weeks? After a single week the president expected him in Philadelphia. Yet he couldn’t just leave this in the hands of Jimson and Bit. They would have to move along, but he didn’t need to say that now.
For two years Lewis and his men must feed and defend themselves solely with the arms they carried. Yet he could hardly come to Indian country looking as if he came for war. Muskets, a couple of blunderbusses firing scattershot, two small cannon that could deliver charges of grape, but the core of his defenses would be rifles crafted to his design.
Mr. Perkins gazed with interest at Lewis’s drawings; weapons were his business. Take their standard rifle, fiftyfour caliber, barrel hexagonal for strength, highly reliable flintlock, 1803 model standing as tall as a small man. It was a fine weapon and it went against the older man’s grain to plan alternations, but he was a professional and he listened.
Shorten the barrel to thirty-three inches. Round the part extending beyond the stock to reduce weight. Weld ramrod holder to the barrel. Cut the stock down to bring overall length under four feet—forty-seven inches to be exact. The result would be a carbine versatile in the close confines of a boat and in dense brush, where hunting would be good and ambush would be a threat.
At last Perkins nodded. “Yep,” he said slowly, “I’ll put a couple of men on it. Two weeks, say three to be safe.”
But he didn’t have weeks! Couldn’t they use more men?
Perkins gave him a cold look. “If the president tells me to cancel my regular schedules in order to do these chores for you, of course I’ll comply.”
But the president didn’t want him here anyway! Indeed, Mr. Jefferson assumed Lewis was en route now; soon the scientists awaiting him in Philadelphia would be writing the president to ask if his man was still coming. Lewis’s breath felt short.
Slowly the bow of a boat took shape in wood before Jimson Cotton’s shop. Mayfield proved to be a talented if irascible man of indeterminate age, his shirt stained with the tobacco juice that dribbled from his mouth as he worked. He endured a great many jokes—did Noah chew tobacco? Was that an ark he was building?—but under his skilled hands the design that until now had been only on paper was taking shape, bow nicely curved to a point, ribs rising in a graceful round.
Cotton and Bit laid in a store of straight rods for the long middle section of the forty-foot vessel and devised a lightweight flange at the end of each for the linking bolts. Cotton watched Mayfield’s work carefully, offering suggestions that clearly improved the design. It was becoming real before Lewis’s eyes but the idea of the president wondering where the hell his wandering secretary had gone still hollowed out his guts.
His supplies were piling up in Philadelphia even as he lingered at Harper’s Ferry. Bar lead and bullet molds; fifty-two pounds of the best European powder sealed in lead canisters that when emptied could be melted into bullets; five hundred best rifles flints from England, two hundred musket flints, fighting knives, tomahawks, two espontoons that hadn’t been standard since medieval war but would function as pikes—all this just starting the list. Chisels, nails, rope, awls, needles, lamps, cord, fishhooks and line, kettles, axes, spades, files, augers, a vise, oilcloth. He thought of something new every day. Spices, salt, tobacco, whiskey, salt meat, and another invention of which he was proud, worked out with a Philadelphia chef, portable soup, dry matter that would keep forever till boiled in water. Six hundred pounds of trade goods to give Indians on arrival and then swap for food and later, when they reached the mountains, for horses. These were mostly beads, the currency of the frontier, and mirrors, kettles, knives, medals, scarlet cloth, uniform jackets.
He now saw that a single boat couldn’t possibly contain all he must haul up the Missouri to keep his men alive. A keelboat and a Saint Louis bateau at the least. That meant he’d need more men than the dozen planned—hunters ranging the shore for game, men on tow ropes dragging the boats upstream, men to handle the sheer bulk of supplies. Thirty to forty would be more like it.
He would name sergeants from the ranks, but he would need a second-in-command. He had just the candidate, too, except that if Will Clark accepted it would have to be as co-commander. Will wouldn’t take an inferior position. He had been captain commanding the Mounted Rifle Company when Lewis was a lieutenant, and they had become fast friends until Clark left the army to care for an ailing family. Given equality, Lewis would eat his hat if Clark didn’t leap at the great adventure.
The weapons were ready. Lewis had been three weeks in Harper’s Ferry. He’d started a half-dozen letters to the president trying to justify his delay but finished none. One by one he sighted in the rifles till they were dead accurate. Only the boat remained. Cotton and Mayfield had dismantled the finished wooden form and created a series of templates against which to measure each curved piece of iron. There was nothing that more men could have done even if Perkins would permit it, and he knew that to ask would insult his artisans. Cotton was hard at it now. But he must heat each piece to a vivid glow, bend it a little farther, and then cool it in water before he could lay it against the wooden template. Might take a dozen fittings to get the final nuances of the curve set. Still, piece by piece, bolt flanges in place, it was taking shape. Then the bow was finished and Cotton started on the ribs. Lewis and Bit bolted the bow together. It looked perfect. He felt a glow of pride until he thought of the waiting president.
He must walk! It was always the cure for his upsets of mind. He primed his pistol, closed the cap, stuck it in his waistband, and set out down the path along the river. He saw only a few men and spoke to none, walking as if he were pursued. Men gave him an odd look and stepped out of his way, and he walked with grim intent, pounding along, eyes locked on the path before him. He couldn’t go on with this feeling of guilt!
Well, what of Mr. Jefferson? The president’s interest in the expedition was intellectual and scientific. Yes, finding the Northwest Passage was the primary objective, but he also hoped that countless new plants and animals would be found, each to be classified by the methods Linnaeus had devised milleniums past. The expedition commander must know celestial navigation; how else would he pinpoint the Northwest Passage for others to find? He must know medicine; how else to care for thirty to forty men far beyond the farthest frontier? He must understand ethnic studies and be able to classify and delineate the tribes he met and their languages. All awaited him in Philadelphia.
He had not written nor had the president written him. Now this took on an ominous note. He felt sure the president was furious, his very silence a reprimand. Perhaps Lewis should have written and explained himself, but he hadn’t and now it seemed very late to do so. Yet, damn it, he really didn’t feel guilty! Botany was just fine, but Captain Lewis was a field commander and he had an understanding of the problems of leading a band of soldiers through strange territory that Mr. Jefferson would never have.
Take the puzzle of the terrain itself. The Missouri would take them far to the West, but no one knew how far. Did it come from the mountains, or did it swing down from mountains far to the north? Or to the south? When the river dried up or took turns that no longer served them, they would have to start overland, with horses if no water was near,
by portage if water was within range. The keelboat would be too heavy to move; they would have to sink it where they left the river for use on their return. It might be possible to move the smaller bateau with rounded logs serving as rollers but not very far. At that point, see the incredible value of a boat that weighed under a hundred pounds, that one man could carry in its dismantled state but when assembled could float two thousand pounds! They must run out of river when they came to the mountains, but mountains are full of streams and lakes.
The boat he had devised could mean the real difference between success and failure. Whether a new plant was identified now or at some later day was really small potatoes compared to this. Notice that if in the end the expedition failed, it would be his failure, not Mr. Jefferson’s. And that was right too, for he was the field commander, he was the cap’n to whom the men would look, he who would make the crucial decisions.
He tore off a branch, trimmed it with his hand axe for a walking staff, and pounded on. People he met pulled to one side to give him room. Turning over his situation with all its confusions, he had a sudden engulfing memory. His father, who’d died when he was only five, so at that time he probably wasn’t over four, had been demanding something of him. He had been desperate to comply but couldn’t, didn’t know or couldn’t find or was afraid—all he remembered now was the powerful feeling, the great figure who he so wanted to please radiating disappointment—
But wait! That memory dredged from deep in his mind was not real or rather, not germane. He was no longer that wistful child. He had grown to take his father’s place; the mighty figure in command was he himself!
At once he saw the full reality. So long as he was Mr. Jefferson’s secretary, the president was in command. But the moment he moved into the expedition, their positions reversed. Mr. Jefferson had already surrendered command, only he didn’t yet know it, for how could he even understand the issue? Indeed, it was not for him to surrender, but for Captain Lewis to take command. And that act was overdue and had been for the month Lewis had anguished at Harper’s Ferry.
The boat, in his command judgment, was more important than botany. Hence, taking the time to perfect it, putting his men and their equipment before science, was justified. No one else could make that decision for no one else knew, nor did anyone else have the authority. As he had the authority, so he had the responsibility to his men, to the country, to science, to the president. Because he was responsible he must use his own best judgment in responding.
Time for him to write the president and explain—but not to apologize. Describe his own frustration at the delays, not that he understood the president was frustrated. It didn’t matter what the president felt; he had become a spectator whether he knew it or liked it or not. If he were angry, now was the time to have it out. But somehow he knew that Mr. Jefferson wouldn’t be angry. This stress and strain had been of his own making, and it was rapidly dissipating.
Yet as he turned back toward Harper’s Ferry, walking in ever swifter strides, filled with certainty, he felt he had crossed a great divide, gone from youth to manhood, from subordinate to leader. Everything seemed different now, and it struck him that this transition that he hadn’t even understood yesterday had been the remaining essential. He could not lead a great expedition until he was solid within himself.
That evening he wrote Mr. Jefferson explaining that, despite his distress at the delay, he judged the boat worth waiting for. Two days later he had the presidential letter he had been dreading, it having crossed his in the mail. Mr. Jefferson was warm and friendly; he was sure any delays were caused by necessity.
A few days later Captain Lewis covered the finished frame with tarred skins, and she floated perfectly. A boat that in its bare frame weighed ninety-seven pounds would carry near two thousand pounds of supplies. It was a triumph!
The next day he set out for Philadelphia, pleased and relaxed. War now seemed certain—no break had come in the month he had passed at Harper’s Ferry—and he would be marching across enemy territory. But he set the thought aside; the chance that French patrols would find him would be like two needles getting together in a haystack. His goal was the Northwest Passage to the Pacific, and he was sure that he would make it.
38
WASHINGTON, LATE MAY 1803
Dolley felt enervated and sad. She was sure she was coming down with a cold or the flu or pneumonia or some dreadful thing but no symptoms arose and after a while she realized she simply was sick at heart. Two months had passed and nothing suggested Napoleon Bonaparte was any the less eager for war.
The embers of his war with England and its allies, scarcely banked during the temporary truce, flamed into the open again. Malta or war, he had told the British envoy; but the British knew if they gave up the Mediterranean island, it would become the staging place for a new French assault on Egypt and after that on its empire in India. To force the United States to join the war on the British side seemed foolish, but they waited in vain for any sign that the man heard or cared. Their every move was another head butted into a stone wall.
The president named Gov. James Monroe of Virginia as envoy extraordinary and dispatched him to Paris to support Mr. Livingston. Support? What did that mean? Dolley thought it pointless and a reproach to Mr. Livingston, who had given it eighteen months of heroic effort. But Jimmy snapped that effort without results didn’t mean much, and anyway, this was another signal, once more to the French but also to our own West, showing them we were doing something, anything.
The Monroes weren’t her idea of diplomats, certainly. Elizabeth’s restraint, if that was the right word, was often mistaken for hostility, and her husband’s manner was scarcely better. He was intelligent, able, unfailingly decent, and always ready for public service; but he also was hungry for fame and position, and in personality was vain, proud, and almost totally humorless. Of course he must collide with Mr. Livingston; each would bring out the worst in the other. What could he accomplish that the New Yorker couldn’t?
But she said nothing for she knew Jimmy would scent out her real motives—which she was quite willing to admit to herself—and declare them ignoble. The truth was that she had been watching the question of who would succeed Tom in the President’s House. It already was being debated in the party, so vigorous was Tom’s insistence that he couldn’t wait to get back to his farm on the Virginia hill. The radical Democrats, Chairman Randolph and their old friend Sam Smith in the Senate, had never gotten beyond their fury when they found the administration wouldn’t give them the clean ideological sweep they had expected. Now they couldn’t wait for Tom to go so they could install one of their own to work the revolution they felt he had denied them, and James Monroe was the horse they expected to ride into office.
But when Tom did step down, not soon, she hoped, she wanted Jimmy to step into his spot. Was this ambitious and self-seeking? Absolutely, and why not? Didn’t everyone seek for himself? Hadn’t Monroe accepted in the full knowledge that success in Paris could make him the next president? But Jimmy would pish tosh the whole idea. Jimmy was a darling and brilliant, but sometimes he was just too noble!
Or was she ignoble and perhaps foolish to boot, worrying about succession when war with the French and consequent submission to Britain would ruin them anyway, providing new life to old Federalist claims and make Mr. Hamilton and company, the darlings of the day and arbiters of the American future … which, in her view, would be the ultimate disaster of war.
Monroe departed late and there had been no word from him. Their last shards of time ran out. The president called a cabinet meeting to approve seeking alliance with Great Britain. We would make ourselves junior partner to the mistress of the seas, ready to jump when she cracked the whip. There was nothing the British knew better than how to crack the whip.
It meant war within weeks and the very thought took away any desire to socialize. She canceled a game of whist and waited at home for Jimmy’s return, knowing he would be sore of heart and would ne
ed her. Her windows were open and the drifting scent of some flowering tree came as a mockery in this season of despair.
She saw Mr. Cutts approaching the house and heard Anna clattering down the steps, off to still another party. “Don’t wait up for me, Dolley.” All this youthful exuberance made her think of Merry, who was just back from Philadelphia, different now, somehow—he seemed older or perhaps stronger in some way. Thank God she had abandoned her feckless idea of forcing an apology from Anna. It would have been presumptuous.
It came as a surprise to realize that when war came Merry would be crossing enemy territory—and her surprise told her she still had not grasped the harsh reality of war, which in turn suggested how ill prepared Americans in general would be despite the war talk they flung around so casually. Talk is so cheap … .
Apparently the expedition would be going, war or no war. Merry had joined her briefly one day when she was sunning herself on the mansion’s south terrace, and she’d been impressed by the extent of his tutoring from Dr. Rush and the others in Philadelphia. She knew Dr. Rush well—a strange, romantic figure and a superb physician, who responded unfailingly to a pretty woman. Merry talked on and on about celestial navigation, quite losing her in the process, but it all emphasized the chilling fact that they would be on their own in the wilderness for two years or more—what a grand and awesome venture!
She knew privately that he’d had another romance too. Poor Merry didn’t find women easy. A letter from Millie Sandwich in Philadelphia said that Merry had cut quite a swath with the Landros girl, and then it had all collapsed and June Landros went off to an aunt’s in New York City. June’s mother said that Merry had become very interested overnight, which had been startling and even alarming, given his force and intensity. Apparently June had been—well, frightened was not too strong a word, so said Millie. Dolley thought of the way Anna, now about to marry Mr. Cutts, had recoiled; there was something frightening about Merry. Perhaps it would take a real woman to handle him, while he, defeating himself, turned to girls like Anna. He’d need luck to find the right woman.