Mrs. Smith also fell prey to the charms of Martha’s daughter Ellen, whom she called “without exception one of the finest and most intelligent children I have ever met with.” Finding Ellen “singularly and extravagantly fond of poetry,” Mrs. Smith recited for her The Hermit, by Oliver Goldsmith. Ellen listened “with the most expressive countenance,” looking Mrs. Smith in the eye and clasping her arms around her.
Martha and Maria left Washington the first week in January 1803. The President’s House seemed empty again after their departure, but Jefferson would see his family again when he returned to Monticello for a brief visit in March. Shortly before he returned to Washington from that quick trip home, he received a copy of Joseph Priestley’s Socrates and Jesus Compared in the mail. Priestley’s work gave him much to think about on the road to Washington. He explained, “It became a subject of reflection, while on the road, and unoccupied otherwise. The result was, to arrange in my mind a Syllabus, or Outline of such an Estimate of the comparative merits of Christianity, as wished to see executed, by some one of more leisure and information for the task than myself.”43
He briefly outlined his thoughts for a book comparing the development of moral philosophy from the ancients to the time of Christ. He sketched out his ideas in a letter to Priestley and developed them further for Benjamin Rush. Here was the long promised outline of his ideas on Christianity. He titled it “Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus, Compared with Those of Others.”
Start with the ethics of the ancients, he suggested. Next, discuss the ethics of the Jews. After that, present the life, character, and doctrines of Jesus. Avoid altogether the issue of Christ’s divinity. Discuss the problematic nature of the evidence of Christ’s life and teaching, recorded “by the most unlettered of men, by memory, long after they had heard them from him; when much was forgotten, much misunderstood, and presented in very paradoxical shapes.” Despite the fragmentary nature of Christ’s system of morality, enough evidence survives to show that it was “the most benevolent and sublime probably that has been ever taught, and eminently more perfect than those of any of the antient philosophers.”44 In his “Syllabus,” Jefferson characterized Jesus: “His parentage was obscure, his condition poor, his education null, his natural endowments great, his life correct and innocent; he was meek, benevolent, patient, firm, disinterested, and of the sublimest eloquence.” Jesus’ system of morals “if filled up in the true style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man.”45
Jefferson’s use of the wall-of-separation metaphor in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association elegantly describes the proper relationship between church and state in an enlightened world. To understand Jefferson’s general attitude toward Christianity, Samuel Willard’s application of the metaphor may be more useful. Willard placed God on one side of the wall and man on the other. For Jefferson, there was no doubt where Jesus stood: Christ is on our side.
CHAPTER 33
“Life of Captain Lewis”
History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, the most substantial work of American literature to appear in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, was based on journals Meriwether Lewis and William Clark kept during their transcontinental expedition. Eight years would pass between their return in 1806 and the publication of History of the Expedition. During that time Nicholas Biddle began preparing their unwieldy journals for publication but wearied of the task before its completion. Paul Allen took over as editor and saw the work through the press.1
Initially, Allen asked Jefferson to write a biographical sketch of both Lewis and Clark. Jefferson knew little of Clark’s life but said he would write a biography of Lewis for History of the Expedition. Since Lewis and Clark’s return from their journey, Jefferson had been anxious for the publication of their story. Allen was hurrying the work along as fast as he could, but he agreed to forestall publication briefly to accommodate Jefferson’s biography of Lewis. Though Jefferson knew Lewis well, he wanted to learn more about him before completing the biographical sketch. Consequently, he dispatched a messenger to Lewis’s family to retrieve additional information about the explorer’s early life.2
Allen saw the biography of Lewis as a valuable addition to the completed book. Explaining what he hoped Jefferson’s contribution would add to History of the Expedition, Allen provided a perceptive, if cynical, comment on reading tastes in early-nineteenth-century America: “I wish very much to enliven the dulness of the Narrative by something more popular splendid and attractive. The publick taste has from a variety of adventitious causes been gorged to repletion on fanciful viands and the most nutritive and invigorating aliments will not be relished unless seasoned with Something of that character. Biography partakes to a certain extent of this quality, and is essentially connected with subjects dear to every heart.”3 Allen’s words emphasize the importance of biography as a popular literary genre, but his negativity toward the narrative of Lewis and Clark makes it sound like his heart was not entirely devoted to his editorial task. Jefferson, on the other hand, understood the book’s inherent interest and was happy to participate in its publication.
Upon completing his biography of Lewis, Jefferson turned it into a letter by adding an introductory paragraph in the margin of the manuscript’s first page.4 Before submitting the letter to Allen, he ran it past Allen’s editorial predecessor, offering Biddle the opportunity to revise the biography as he saw fit. Biddle found Jefferson’s biographical sketch of Lewis “very interesting” and saw no need for revision. He forwarded it to Allen unchanged.5
Details within the biography, combined with remarks in an earlier letter to Allen, show that Jefferson expected him to print the entire biographical sketch. Allen greatly appreciated Jefferson’s life of Lewis. He printed not only the biography in its entirety, but also the introductory paragraph Jefferson had added at the last minute. Jefferson’s letter forms the book’s introduction, which Allen titled “Life of Captain Lewis.”
Though written five years after he left office, “Life of Captain Lewis” provides a convenient way to retell the story of President Jefferson’s involvement in the Lewis and Clark expedition while simultaneously examining one of the fullest biographical works he wrote.
In his opening paragraph, Jefferson sketched out his theory of biography writing: “The ordinary occurrences of a private life, and those also while acting in a subordinate sphere in the army, in a time of peace, are not deemed sufficiently interesting to occupy the public attention.”6 Jefferson’s approach to biography resembles his approach to autobiography. Much as he excluded personal details—“egotisms”—when writing about himself, much as he omitted personal and private information from The Anas, he saw no need for private details of personal life in a published biography. Lengthy accounts of ancestry are also unnecessary to biography. A brief account of minor incidents from a person’s youth is permissible—provided the incidents help reveal important aspects of character.
Jefferson’s Lewis is a prodigy of the backwoods. Stories of the boy’s hunting excursions prove it. Jefferson wrote: “When only eight years of age he habitually went out, in the dead of night alone with his dogs, into the forest to hunt the raccoon and opossum, which, seeking their food in the night, can then only be taken. In this exercise, no season or circumstance could obstruct his purpose—plunging through the winter’s snows and frozen streams in pursuit of his object.”7 Jefferson’s “Life of Captain Lewis” presents a vivid picture of a hardy and determined boy American readers could appreciate. From colonial times through the nineteenth century, the coon hunt was practically a rite of passage for boys growing up in the South.
Meriwether Lewis, from Life, 1807, by Charles Willson Peale. (Independence National Historical Park)
No document better reveals how carefully Jefferson crafted the story of young Lewis than a manuscript fragment in an unknown hand that survi
ves among his papers. This fragment lists several of the same details as Jefferson’s “Life of Captain Lewis,” but the two accounts differ in places. The fragment begins:
M. Lewis, born August 18, 1774 in Albemarle. At first went to common day schools, learning to read, to write and Arithmetic with ordinary facility, he was early remarkable for intrepidity, liberality and hardihood, at eight years of age going alone with his dogs at midnight in the depth of winter, hunting wading creeks when the banks were covered with ice and snow. He might be tracked through the snow to his traps by the blood which trickled from his bare feet.8
In its details, this fragment is close enough to the “Life of Captain Lewis” to confirm it as Jefferson’s source. Apparently, this manuscript fragment is what Jefferson’s messenger brought back from his quest to learn more information about Lewis’s early life. While incorporating information from this source, Jefferson made three crucial changes.
His source text uses a favorite rhetorical device of Jefferson’s—the list of three—but the three qualities it ascribes to young Lewis—intrepidity, liberality, hardihood—did not jibe with Jefferson’s understanding of him. In Jefferson’s version, young Lewis is remarkable “for enterprise, boldness, and discretion.” This phrase echoes advice Jefferson had given Peter Carr many years earlier. He recommended hunting to Carr as a good form of exercise because it could give “boldness, enterprize, and independance to the mind.”9 Revising his source, Jefferson remained true to its structure but substituted personal characteristics he generally admired and personally recognized in Lewis.
Jefferson also eliminated the gory detail. The image of a barefoot boy traipsing through the snow with so little regard for personal safety that he leaves bloody footprints wherever he walks was not an image Jefferson wanted for the hero of “Life of Captain Lewis.” He wanted to depict the man he chose to lead a great expedition across the continent as someone with more cognizance of personal danger.
The third way Jefferson’s “Life of Captain Lewis” diverges from his source concerns its factual organization. To give the story more impact, Jefferson changed the order of its details. The source text describes Lewis’s early education before the coon hunting episode and then returns to the subject of his education. Jefferson withheld the story of Lewis’s formal education until after he related the coon hunt. In Jefferson’s version, Lewis perfected his woodcraft as a boy, studied Latin as a teen, and left school at eighteen to become a farmer. Describing the early life of Meriwether Lewis, Jefferson created a hero who exemplified a personal ideal. As Lewis matures from adolescence to adulthood in Jefferson’s version, he moves from the wilderness to the world of books to a farm of his own. But Lewis was too restless to stay farmer for long. He joined the army, participated in the Whiskey Rebellion, and rose to a captaincy.
Once he set Lewis on the path to military glory in “Life of Captain Lewis,” Jefferson paused his biographical sketch to recount the history of the exploration of the American West. Seemingly a digression, this section greatly contributes to the story as a whole. Nicholas Biddle, for one, found it quite valuable. After reading “Life of Captain Lewis” in manuscript, Biddle observed, “The account of the previous projects for exploring the country west of the Mississipi contains new and curious information.”10 This section performs an important role in the story of Lewis’s life, too. Jefferson recognized the Lewis and Clark expedition as the defining event in Lewis’s life. The biography of Meriwether Lewis and the history of the expedition were inextricably linked. A section on the prehistory of the expedition suited his “Life of Captain Lewis.”
Jefferson’s prehistory begins in Paris, where he and John Ledyard discussed the possibility of exploring the American West. Calling Led-yard to mind, Jefferson inserted a brief biography of him into “Life of Captain Lewis.” This life of Ledyard also seems like a digression, but it offers an important parallel. Using the biographical parallel as a rhetorical technique, Jefferson borrowed a leaf from Puritan historiography. In Magnalia Christi Americana—to name one of several Puritan histories he had in his library at Monticello—Cotton Mather frequently used biographical parallels to illuminate the lives of his subjects. This literary device derives from a form of biblical exegesis known as typology.11 The practice of typology involved identifying parallels between types (characters from the Old Testament) and antitypes (characters from the New Testament). The Old Testament types foreshadow the New Testament antitypes. Including a brief biography of Ledyard within his life of Lewis, Jefferson nationalized and secularized this traditional form of exegesis. John Ledyard, the type, prefigures Meriwether Lewis, the antitype.
The specific details of Ledyard’s life reinforce the scriptural resonance. The last letter Jefferson received from him came from Egypt, where the ever ambitious, ever adventurous Ledyard was planning to trace the Nile to its source. Shortly after writing this letter, Ledyard died in Cairo under mysterious circumstances. In other words, Ledyard had died seeking the headwaters of the great river of the Old Testament. Similarly, Lewis would explore the headwaters of the Missouri, the great east–west river of the American continent—the New Canaan, according to Puritan historiography. Where the type had failed, the antitype would succeed.
Placing the prehistory of the Lewis and Clark expedition where he did, Jefferson allowed himself to skip a big chunk of Lewis’s life, specifically, the time from the Whiskey Rebellion through Lewis’s appointment as his presidential secretary in 1801. Jefferson resumed the story on January 18, 1803, the day he submitted his confidential message to Congress that proposed an expedition across the American continent. Although Jefferson breezed past this message in the “Life of Captain Lewis,” it is worth lingering over here.
He pitched the expedition to Congress as a commercial venture but suggested that in terms of international diplomacy, it would be better if other nations considered it undertaken for “literary purposes.” This phrase indicates how closely Jefferson associated literature and science. An expedition undertaken for literary purposes was one that would be written up and offered to the world as a contribution to science. He explained:
While other civilized nations have encountered great expense to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge, by undertaking voyages of discovery, and for other literary purposes, in various parts and directions, our nation seems to owe to the same object, as well as to its own interest, to explore this, the only line of easy communication across the continent, and so directly traversing our own part of it. The interests of commerce place the principal object within the constitutional powers and care of Congress, and that it should incidentally advance the geographical knowledge of our own continent can not but be an additional gratification. The nation claiming the territory, regarding this as a literary pursuit which it is in the habit of permitting within its dominions, would not be disposed to view it with jealousy, even if the expiring state of its interest there did not render it a matter of indifference.12
Jefferson greatly admired the voyages of discovery that had been sponsored by the philosophical societies of France and Great Britain and underwritten by their governments. These journeys were landmark events in the history of the Enlightenment, events that contributed to man’s greater understanding of the world. Similarly, the Lewis and Clark expedition would be America’s contribution to the mapping of the globe. Jefferson may have persuaded Congress to fund the expedition by emphasizing its commercial nature, but by the end of his confidential message, the literary purposes he mentioned reflect his personal impulses more closely.
After recalling the message to Congress and Lewis’s subsequent scientific training in “Life of Captain Lewis,” Jefferson got down to his instructions for the expedition. At this point in the manuscript that would become “Life of Captain Lewis,” Jefferson inscribed a brief note to Paul Allen: “Here insert the instructions verbatim.”13 Though Jefferson had told Allen to include whatever details he wished, this note clearly indicates that Jefferson expected Allen to pr
int the entire biographical essay and the complete set of instructions.
Jefferson’s desire to include the instructions within the biography of Lewis affirms an impulse he had articulated and exemplified in other writings from The Anas to his autobiography. He found the inclusion of important historical documents essential to history writing. Contemporary readers appreciated the inclusion. A headnote to a contemporary reprint of “Life of Captain Lewis” called the instructions “the most valuable part of this paper” and suggested that subsequent American explorers could use these instructions as a pattern to follow.14
Besides contributing to the historical accuracy of the “Life of Captain Lewis,” “Instructions to Lewis” enhances the literary complexity of the entire work. Where the biography meets the instructions, Jefferson’s narrative voice splits in two. The casual, easygoing voice of biographer Jefferson gives way to the authoritative, official voice of President Jefferson.
“Instructions” meticulously outlines the preparations and procedures Lewis should follow. It describes the ammunition, provisions, and scientific instruments he should bring; tells him how to maintain communications; and explains what to do after crossing the Mississippi, that is, after leaving the United States and entering Louisiana, which the French had recently obtained from Spain. Establishing these details, Jefferson carefully articulated the expedition’s purpose: “The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, and such principal streams of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregan, Colorado, or any other river, may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across the continent, for the purposes of commerce.”15
The Road to Monticello Page 63