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Lewis, Meriwether 1774-1809
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Eager to expand the country in the early 1800s, President Thomas Jefferson appointed Meriwether Lewis, formerly his private secretary, to seek a Northwest passage to the Orient. Lewis and his partner, William Clark, were seasoned soldiers, expert woodsmen, and boatmen. They both kept journals and so did four sergeants and a private in the party of 43 men. They started from St. Louis, Missouri, in 1804, heading up to the Missouri River, across the Rockies, and down to the Pacific coast at the mouth of the Columbia River. The Indian woman Sacajawea (Bird Woman) gave them valuable help on the hazardous journey, which lasted 2 years, 4 months, and 10 days, and cost the U.S. government a total of $38,722.25. Lewis was the better educated of the two captains, and his account of the expedition has more force, but Clark was a superb observer who wrote in an ingenious phonetic spelling of his own invention.
The official edition of the Journals did not appear until 1814, after they had been edited in two volumes by Nicholas Biddle and Paul Allen. This text, a paraphrase of the journals, was used in various editions until 1904, when Reuben G. Thwaites edited an eight-volume edition, published in 1904-1905. Many recent editions have followed the original text, making the journals available in all of their original freshness.
Early in 1960 the New York Times announced that Frederick W. Beinecke of New York had given 67 notes written by Clark to the Yale University Library. The finger-smudged documents blotted and blurred with cross-outs consisted of personal observations previously unknown to historians. The documents became the subject of an unusual legal fight. After the Clark notes were found in an attic in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1952, the United States moved to obtain them. The government stated that the documents were part of the official records of Clark while he served the United States. On January 23, 1958, the Federal Court of Appeals in St. Louis dismissed