Book review of Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis,...

Book review of Undaunted Courage:Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American Westby Stephen E. Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002)

Reviewed by Ray White

I first read "Undaunted Courage" soon after its publication in 1996 and found it to be gripping story in the way that "Seabiscuit" was—well, maybe not that good—but a suspenseful story with narrative drive. An adventure story of Lewis and Clark "discovering" the West (despite the presence of thousands of indians) for White America. They could ride and shoot, live off the land, braving deadly rapids, grizzly bears, indians friendly and hostile, and meet entirely new and unexpected challenges and survive.

We all assume we know the larger outcome—but it doesn't matter, because in the hands of a storyteller like Stephen Ambrose, events grab the reader by the lapels and tug him along for the ride. On the other hand, I also was aware that in the years since its publication there had been controversy about Ambrose the author, accusations of sloppiness and even plagiarism, so that gave me pause. But that, too, was something I wanted to know more about.

Those accusations weren’t an issue when, after reading it soon after its publication 20 years ago, my wife and I decided that since we were headed west on vacation we would listen to the books-on-tape version while roughly following Lewis and Clark's route across the country. (“You actually did this?” asked Robert. “We did,” I replied.) Judy says the thing that most impressed her was a stop at Lewis & Clark State Park in Missouri, where we saw what was then thought to be an accurate replica of the expedition’s keelboat. The thing is awkwardly massive. You struggle to imagine how a small group of men could push, pull, row and pole that thing—up to 12 tons fully loaded—against the current—from the mouth of the Ohio up past St. Louis and then up the Missouri to the Mandan Villages in North Dakota. No wonder they were eating nine pounds of meat a day.

Of course, nowadays when you make that trek there are developed historic sites all along the way, like the visitor’s center at the Lewis & Clark Historic Site near St. Charles, Mo., their starting point for their keelboat run up to the Missouri. The park has a faithful replica of the keelboat and the two pirogues afloat in the river. When we did our tour — we were not slavish about following the route — there were a few statues and markers and the burial site of Sergeant Floyd (the only member of the Corps of Discovery to die during the trip). But now the National Park Service has a wonderful map of the entire route with information about visiting sites all along it. Ambrose's favorite is the "White Cliffs" river tour on the Missouri—a three-day pontoon boat excursion—for moderns. He took his family on trips to Lewis and Clark areas and they would read portions of the journals around the campfire as part of a family ritual.

Another reason for my choice is that after reading Ambrose's book I became interested in Lewis and Clark themselves, and particularly in the mystery surrounding Lewis's death. It's a much less settled issue than Ambrose lets on here.

REVIEW OF "UNDAUNTED COURAGE" 1

So I made my choice and I'm sticking to it.

We all learn the broad outlines of the story in high school — how the two captains led their intrepid band to the West coast, with their loyal Indian companion, Sakajawea, with a papoose strapped to her back, no less, guiding them to her tribal lands and then saving their lives when she recognizes the chief of the warriors they fear might attack them is her brother.

But the story is both more complicated and more interesting than the high school version. In our book it’s two bro-mances — first Jefferson and Lewis bonding while living together in the White House when Lewis was Jefferson's personal secretary and go-between, then of Lewis and Clark and their colluding, against orders, to lead the expedition as captains and equals, with many odd turns of fortune both good and bad along the way. And then, once the Corps of Discovery has returned, heroes despite their report that the hoped-for Northwest Passage doesn’t exist, the story turns dark, with Lewis’s troubling attempt to resume civilian life and the puzzling denouement resulting in Lewis’s death that still hasn't been resolved.

Years passed before their journals were published, and their scientific discoveries were mostly ignored for nearly a century. This was a failure on many levels and it's hard to know where to place the blame. Lewis, primarily, of course, but Ambrose doesn't try very hard to assess Clark's and Jefferson's role, except to note that they are puzzled by their friend Lewis. Why won't he get on with being governor of Louisiana and publishing the journals? Maybe it was that he had a tendency toward manic-depression, that he was an alcoholic and opium addict, that he had syphilis from sleeping with indian squaws, that he was under crushing debt, and was that he was unsuited to his desk job as governor of Louisiana.

More about that later. First let’s talk about the author, who died, for sure, in 2002.

STEPHEN AMBROSE

Ambrose was born in Illinois in 1936 but is thought of as a Southern historian because of his long connection to the University of New Orleans. His father was a physician who served in the Navy during WWII. Stephen grew up in Wiscoonsin, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he played football. He credited a history professor, William Heseltine, with turning him into a history buff the first time Ambrose heard him lecture. He took a master's at Louisiana State University in 1958 and a PhD in history back at his alma mater under his mentor. Early in his career he worked as associate editor of the Eisenhower papers and produced a book on Ike that began a long relationship with the former general and President.

In addition to lecturing in New Orleans, he did stints at the Naval War College, Kansas State University (where in 1970 he heckled President Richard M. Nixon (during a speech there; Ambrose opposed the Vietnam war) and was invited to find employment elsewhere, which he did, and he lectured at Louisiana State University, Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers University, U.C. Berkeley, and a number of European schools, including University College Dublin.

He was the author of 27 books and part-author of others.


His books include a two-volume Eisenhower biography (that is considered definitive) and other books about Eisenhower, a three-volume biography of President Nixon, "Crazy Horse and Custer," "Band of Brothers," that became a TV mini-series, about Easy Company, "D-Day, June 6, 1944" and his most popular single book, our book about Lewis and Clark.

He was executive producer for the HBO mini-series "Band of Brothers" after his book helped revive interest in WWII, and worked as a history consultant on the movie "Saving Private Ryan." He gained fame as a gravel-voiced historian on Ken Burns's PBS series on Lewis and Clark. He mingled with celebrities, including Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. He also participated in a bunch of historical documentaries, acted as a tour guide to European battlegrounds, wrote articles and so forth, and won lots of awards, including the National Humanities Medal, in 2000, before being called out for plagiarism.

He maintained homes in Helena, Montana, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. His first wife, with whom he had two children, died in 1965. He remarried in 1967 and adopted her three children. His wife and all five children helped him as assistants for his books.

He was accused of plagiarism after the publication of “The Wild Blue” in 2001, and then a slew of accusations came down, questioning many of his works, including “Undaunted Courage.” More about that later.

His death was not instant but was sudden. A longtime smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2002. His health deteriorated rapidly, and seven months later he was dead at the age of 66.

But lets turn to the book.

Undaunted Courage

An editor plucked the title from Jefferson's description of Lewis as a man of "undaunted courage" ideal to lead an expedition West. Lewis, Jefferson said, had the "firmness of character, prudence, habits adapted to the woods, familiarity with indians' manners and character, required for the undertaking."

The book begins with Lewis's birth in 1774, eldest son and heir of a Virginia planter, whose 2,000-acres were within sight of Monticello. Jefferson knew Lewis from his boyhood. Lewis’s father died of pneumonia when he was 5 years old. His mother remarried and had three more children. He learned about roughing it the hard way, when his stepfather took him on a trek to Georgia for several years. As a teen, Lewis ran his Virginia plantation "out of necessity" but what he really wanted to do was "to roam and explore," Ambrose says, which, happily, fits neatly into Ambrose's story.

Ambrose tells us how 20-year-old Lewis, looking for adventure, joins the Army and participates in putting down the Whisky Rebellion. A Republican like Jefferson, he gets into a drunken quarrel over the French Revolution (Lewis has taken to calling people “citizen” comme les Francais) and is court-martialed for accepting a challenge to a duel (the duel was never fought).


His superiors actually encouraged dueling, so he gains favor and is transferred into the rifle company where he meets William Clark, who become his fast friend. What did they do together? Why were they so loyal to each other? Ambrose doesn’t say. Ambrose doesn't have a lot to say about Clark, but it is obvious that he acts as a steadying influence on Lewis.

In December 1800, Lewis is promoted to the rank of Captain and appointed paymaster for the Army and in that position he can roam the western forts—traveling on keelboats on the Ohio—getting to know the officer corps personally. That comes in handy when newly-elected President Jefferson asks Lewis to become his personal secretary and makes his first task to help trim the officer corps. Ambrose says Lewis did this methodically, rating every officer on a chart of 11 traits, including their political loyalties.

Lewis lived in the White House with Jefferson and 11 "servants," I'm assuming slaves, and in addition to "secretarial work," was a political operative and go-between, taking messages to members of Congress and so forth. Jefferson even sent Lewis to deliver the "State of the Union" address to Congress, setting a pattern that was not broken until Woodrow Wilson decided to read his own speech.

Jefferson hosted four or five dinner parties a week at the White House with all the luminaries of politics and science, and our boy was right there, hearing all the latest philosophical developments, political gossip and scientific news that Jefferson and his active mind soaked up. A number of these guests brought information that was plainly wrong, like a Canadian explorer's who assured Jefferson that the Rockies were easily crossed.

They had a number of ideas that today seem odd. They believed that the Blue Ridge Mountains were the highest on the continent, that they would find giant sloths and mammoths out west, along with active volcanoes and a fabled miles-long pillar of salt. Most importantly, they expected to find a water route to the Pacific that would facilitate trade. They shared the Enlightenment view that the "noble savages" out West were capable of being “civilized,” and he expected that after being introduced to modern ways, they would become regular citizens, something Ambrose says Jefferson never expected of blacks. (Ambrose also says it’s impossible to know the nature of his relationships with his slaves and but now we have DNA evidence that proves Sally Hemmings’ descendants share Jefferson’s genetic material.)

Despite all this, Ambrose finds Jefferson was one of the few, and certainly the most powerful, person with a vision of an America stretching from ocean to ocean, and he meant to do everything in his power to make it happen. And he is credited with bringing new states into the union as equals with existing states, not as colonies to be exploited.

Jefferson set about educating young Lewis so he would be able to perform the navigational, mapmaking, botanical, scientific and other chores he would face on his westward trek. Through all this they they pretended it was a scientific journey to study the flora and fauna of the West. Nobody was fooled. The Spanish and French knew what Jefferson was up to.

I try to picture Jefferson and Lewis, in candlelight with a glass of port, speculating on the frontier, wondering what to expect, how to equip the expedition and so on. Their blend of sophistication and naivety, culture and frontier roughness, is fascinating to me.


Then Jefferson got lucky. When the French realized they couldn't possibly hold "Louisiana," they and sold it to America, something the Federalists ridiculed Jefferson for years. Sound familiar? Jefferson figured it was cheaper than fighting a war. Anyway, now Lewis didn't have to beg passage from the Spanish or French. (The Spanish did send an expedition to arrest Lewis and his crew, but they never encountered each other in the vastness of the West.)

So Jefferson finally tells Lewis he wants him to explore the West and sends him to Pennsylvania to meet the leading experts of the day to gain the skills he would need to classify plants and animals and to plot his position for maps. Lewis starts ordering supplies and outfitting himself. By July 4, 1803, when he learns of the Louisiana Purchase, he is ready to go.

I’m not going to go over how they pick crew and get to St. Louis but I want to mention an incident that seems an ominous. Lewis is in Pittsburgh getting frustrated that the workmen building his keelboat are constantly drunk and lazy. But on August 31 he finally sets out. Three miles downriver he stops, is asked to demonstrate his unusual air gun, and while passing it around it goes off and shoots a woman 40 yards away in the head. She suffers only a superficial wound, but think how different this could have turned out!

On May 21, 1804, after wintering north of St. Louis, they set out from St. Charles, not to return till Sept. 26, 1806, more than two years later.

A couple of other oddities: (1) Sept. 28, Clark records that Lewis, while exploring, climbed to an overlook and nearly fell to his death but somehow caught himself 20 feet into the drop and "saved himself by the assistance of his knife. And (2) the next day they go ashore at Daniel Boone's frontier settlement and fail to mention whether they met Daniel himself.

They run their command with military discipline. They dole out punishment in the form of lashings--from 50 to 500 per offense--for desertion, sleeping on guard duty and stealing from their precious store of whiskey. An indian chief witnessing a lashing gets tears in his eyes.

They encounter indians —Otos and Sioux—and do not impress them with their gifts or Lewis’s long-winded dissertation on their new father in Washington. At one stop they nearly get into a fight with the Teton Sioux but a chief has a cooler head and prevents violence. Ambrose said the expedition, badly outnumbered, could have been wiped out.

Finally on Oct. 24, 1804, they reach the Mandan Villages, pop. 4,000, including 1,300 warriors, a place where Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, Arapahoe and other tribes met to trade goods with trappers. Here they build a stockade and settle in for the winter.

They also meet trapper TOURSAINT CHARBONNEAU and his two teenage Shoshone (or Snake) indian "wives," bought from Hidatsu indians who had kidnapped them, one of whom is SACAJAWEA, who is pregnant. Her nickname is . . . Janey. The men busy themselves preparing for spring and having sex with the local indian “squars,” as Lewis refers to them.

They send the keelboat back to St. Louis and set out West into uncharted territory. They have


various narrow escapes on the water — Sacajawea demonstrates her coolness under pressure — and hard slogging against the current ensues, and Ambrose keeps the story moving.On June 13 Lewis reports hearing "the agreeable sound of the fall of water" --big enough to be a great waterfall, meaning they are on the right river. He calls it "the grandest sight I ever beheld." They discover that the falls are not one but a series of five separate falls of from 14 to 80 feet tall, stretching over at least 12 miles before reaching calmer water. The area around the falls on either side is not easily passed, with chasms and obstacles to portage.

i think it's instructive to hear somebody besides Stephen Ambrose describe the same material he covers. In this case, a webste called Americaslibrary.com, sums this obstacle up succinctly:

“The Corps would have to hike 18 miles to get around the five waterfalls. They left their heaviest boat and equipment hidden near the base of the falls. The other canoes and supplies were carried, dragged, and pushed. The Corps created makeshift wagons. When the wind was strong, they attached the boat sails to help move the equipment.

The ground was rocky, uneven, and hard. Prickly pear cactuses were everywhere. The Corps wore through their moccasins every two days. The intense heat of the summer sun was interrupted by violent storms, with thunder, rain, and hailstones the size of eggs. Swarms of gnats and mosquitoes pestered them. Rattlesnakes and grizzly bears were a constant threat.”

This is a much condensed version compared to Ambrose-- it's just one example where the storyteller stretches the suspense to heighten the drama. Descending the Columbia is another instance. We know they make it but Ambrose has the indians lurking on the banks hoping for a spill that allows them to steal their supplies.

We've come to one of my favorite parts of the story -- how Lewis, exploring the falls on foot, sees a herd of buffalo and shoots one of them for food. Immediately he discovers a bear stalking him for food. His rifle is empty and would take a minute to load. He starts to walk away from the bear but it is pursuing so he winds up sprinting 80 yards and into the river, where he turns to face the bear with his "espontoon" as a weapon, but the bear stops at the water's edge, wheels and runs off. The same day, three buffalo charge him but he runs toward them to bluff them and they turn and retreat as well. Skeptics point out that this is a single-source story since Lewis is alone. And some wags have asked why the bear went after him rather than the dead buffalo. Never mind. It's a good story. And that may be the key to Stephen Ambrose's scholarship. Don't let it get in the way of a good tale.

Meanwhile Sacajawea fell ill and Clark nearly killed her by bleeding her. Lewis takes over the doctoring, using opium (laudanum) and sulphur water and she improves. Lewis struggles unsuccessfully to float his “iron boat” but winds up using dugouts made by Clark and the men using cottonwood trees.

July 2. At the three forks, they pause. The country opens up and Lewis is able to climb to a promontory that allows him a good look at the snow-capped mountain range in front of them. Their optimism about the Northwest Passage is fast fading. This is where, Sacajawea says, Hidatsu warriors overran her camp and kidnapped her and other tribe members while killing eight others. Lewis writes that she "shows no intimation of sorrow" and concludes that "if she


has enough to eat and a few trinkets to wear" she could be happy "anywhere in the world." This is one of the few clues to her character but Ambrose doesn’t much try to fill in the picture. I am assuming there isn’t much in the historic record.

They are tremendously eager to encounter Shoshone, from whom they expect to get ponies to cross the Rockies.

Ambrose builds up the suspense to the encounter with the Shoshone and we hear of the tense meeting with Shoshone warriors that turns into an tearful reunion when Sacajawea recognizes an old friend, Jumping Fish, and realizes that the chief is her brother, CAMEAHWAIT, who she hasn’t seen since she was a child. Other versions of this story make it less fraught.

in September 1805, the start out for the Bitterroot Mountains with an indian guide named Old Toby and 39 Shoshone ponies, 3 colts and a mule. Crossing is rough. They have to eat the colts and a couple of the horses to survive. Two pack horses tumble downhill but survive the experience. There are other ups and downs in the mountains. They make it to a Nez Perce village and the going gets easier. The Nez Perce want to kill them for their rifles but a woman who had survived capture by the Blackfoot and well treated by traders who bought her persuades them not to.

Her name was WATKUWEIS, and this is the second woman who has saved them from probable destruction. Yet another oddity and narrow escape for the Corps.

They use canoes (this time the Nez Perce show Clark how to hollow out the logs by suspending them over trenches of burning coals) and descend the Columbia to the Pacific despite a number of narrow escapes. Their dream of a Northwest Passage is gone.

On Dec. 7, 1805, they vote to winter on a prominent hill at present-day Astoria, Oregon, overlooking the mouth of the Columbia. My daughter's sister-in-law lives on the Columbia near its mouth, on the other side of the river in Washington State, and it is a beautiful and dramatic setting. Today you can watch the ships performing the perilous act of "crossing the bar" to get to ports along the river.

Dec. 8-March 23

They build a 50-foot square enclosure, Ft. Clatsop, where they settle in for the winter, trading with the indians for food, hunting and fishing, making moccasins for the return trip, and sharing various venereal diseases with the local indians. They keep an eye out for a ship to come to the mouth of the Columbia but none does.

Meanwhile, back in Virginia, Jefferson has met 24 indian leaders sent to Washington from St. Louis. He also receives the indian artifacts, samples of flora and fauna, and the long report that came back with the keelboat. And he receives word through Pierre Choteau, via Lewis's brother Rubin, that the corps is alive and headed toward the Pacific.

Now Ambrose says Jefferson’s toyed with the idea of "civilizing" the indians as a cheaper alternative to exterminating them. I struggle to rationalize this thinking with the man who was


principal author of the Declaration of Independence. I’d like to know what others in the group think about this — is it symptomatic of a slaveholder to be brutal? as Ambrose suggests? Does that explain it. Is it ignorance? I struggle with this question.

I’m not going to go into their struggles to cross the Rockies on the return trip because it mirrors their earlier crossing, except to say that Lewis, in his anxiety to get back, takes the corp into the mountains against the advice of the Nez Perce and has to turn back because of deep snow. The indians are always around them looking for opportunities to steal things, and Lewis at one point loses it and threatens to burn down a village.

Eventually they cross the mountains and then split up so they can explore more territory. Ambrose points out they are taking a terrible risk, especially since they have the answers to the main questions they sought. Lewis goes North to present-day Missoula, Montana, looking again for a definite answer to how far north the Missouri waters reach. They encounter young Blackfeet indians, play host at their campsite but at first light the indians are caught trying to steal rifles and horses. Ambrose does a good job telling the blow-by-blow of how they pursued and killed two of the indians, one stabbed, the other shot by Lewis after he fires a musket at Lewis, then had to flee south hoping to avoid retaliation.

They connect with Clark’s party and head downriver, now with the current, so they make far better time than coming up. Then one of the expedition’s curious incidents happens — Lewis is hunting with Cruzette in tall grass on August 11 when a rifle bullet hits him in the left buttock and passes through flesh to wind up in his breeches. He sounds an alarm and the others, armed and ready, plunge into the bush. Lewis, back at the boatss, organizes a defensive stance. No indians are found. Cruzette denies shooting Lewis or even hearing his shouts after he was hit. The spent bullet is a 54-cal. army rifle bullet. Not something indians would typically have. Sgt. Ordway questions Cruzette but believe that Cruzette is ignorant of having shot his captain. Lewis returns to the Mandan villages on his belly in the bottom of a canoe.

The news among the indians is bad. All the tribes are at odds. Even the Mandans are quarreling among themselves. So their attempts to bring peace are in tatters.

When they reach St. Louis, Lewis writes a report for Jefferson calling for fur trading to prevent the British from exploiting the area, and for pacification of the Sioux, Blackfeet and other Northwest tribes. Then, together the captains draft a letter to Clark’s family in Kentucky — full of adventure, telling of the privations of crossing the Rockies, encounters with various tribes, bears, etc. — and send it off knowing it will be published and republished across the nation. They are already somewhat famous from having set off into the wild and sent back the keelboat, but this gets them national publicity.

Lewis and Clark are feted in St. Louis. By November they are ready to set out for Washington with Big White and his family, a delegation of Osages led by Pierre Choteau, Sgts. Gass and Ordway, Pvts. LaBiche and Frazier, and York. They visit George Rogers Clark in Louisville, move on to Frankfurt, then split up. Lewis does the rounds in Washington, winds up in Philadelphia, where he is greeted as a celebrity. He drinks and carouses to excess. He courts unsuccessfully. All this time he is ignores work. He wastes a year before reporting to St. Louis, where he has been appointed governor of Louisiana Territory, angering Jefferson. And he has


done little toward preparing the journals for print.

Back in St. Louis he struggles in the job, the city is full of rumors about the failed Burr conspiracy, who can be trusted and who can’t, he is constantly at odds with his deputy, and finally, deep in debt, sets out for Washington to presumably finish publication of the journals, explain himself to Jefferson, and set things to right with the government, which has now changed since Jefferson’s term has ended and Madison is now President. It is 1809 and he’s in trouble. But he behaves erratically on the trip back and finally at Grinder’s Inn on the Natchez Trace near Nashville he commits suicide, shooting himself in the head and the chest, and ends his life. Thus ends the book.

Footnote and a final oddity: Clark arranged for the journals, his and Lewis’s, to be edited, finally, by Nicholas Biddle, a young, wealthy Philadelphian who was dabbling in various fields trying to choose a career among literature, politics and banking. Biddle took a year, dilligently rising at 5 a.m. every day to work. When his first publishing deal fell though, he found another publisher and it was finally printed seven years after the return of the expedition. He refused to take any credit or remuneration for this work. He later became president of the Second Bank of the United States. Today, his Greek Revival estate, Andalusia, in Bucks County, Pa., near Philadelphia, is a museum.

CONCLUSIONS

The first time I read this book I accepted more or less at face value Ambrose's assessment that Lewis & Clark had in general had performed splendidly. He mentions mistakes, but he rationalizes many of them away.

This time around I wasn't willing to be so charitable. They made a lot of mistakes. Lewis's original estimate for the entire expedition was $2,500, not even a tenth of the cost. They wasted time and treasure. The impetuous Lewis took great trouble to carry along an untried iron boat frame that slowed them down before he abandoned it in the wilderness, they got lost, were merely lucky in taking that fork in the river despite strong evidence against it, they attempted things they shouldn't have, like trying to cross the Rockies when the Nez Perce assured them there was still 8-10 feet of snow in the passes, they made many false assumptions, let down their guard in Blackfeet country and, partly because of lax guard procedures at the critical dawn hour, wound up killing a couple of young indians who tried to steal their rifles. They either lost or didn't bother to write about a year's worth of expedition notes, and then on their return failed to publish their results for so long that (a) other popular versions were published so they couldn't profit from it and, (b) their contributions to science lay fallow as others made the same discoveries of flora and fauna after them, re-named their rivers and places, and so on. They missed virtually every timetable they set for themselves. One of their most brilliant acts was accidental — taking along a woman as a member of their party. Her presence signaled to the indians they met that this was not a war party. Her very presence signaled peaceful intentions. But that wasn't why they took her, and they didn't keep her out front when they approach her own people despite the fact that she was the only one of them who spoke Shoshone. Their greatest contribution, even Ambrose says, was making it to the Mandan villages halfway to their goal but still in territory that had been mapped before them, and sending back the important notes and scientific materials they had collected to that point before they went off the map


toward the Pacific.

Big-picture wise, they had four stated goals for the expedition:1. To find the Northwest Passage. It doesn't exist.2. To examine possibilities for commerce and agriculture. They did, but many significant

details were lost or unpublished until long after their voyage. Found that only the fur trade would be practical in the near future.

3. To scout the waters of the Missouri hoping to take America's boundary north of the 49th parallel. They concluded that obviously the waters of the Missouri ended short of the 49th parallel, our current border with Canada.

4. To initiate diplomacy with indian tribes along the way. Just the first of many failures with regard to native Americans in our history.

So. Accurate findings, but not the result Jefferson was looking for, and I don't know if this book offers a thorough explains why.

But beyond the history of the expedition, there’s this issue of plagiarism. It started when The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes criticized Ambrose for cribbing passages for his book "The Wild Blue," about B-24 bomber crews. That led to others to look back at his earlier works and finding instances of plagiarism throughout, including "Undaunted Courage," which his critics describe as a cut-and-paste job that added little if anything to Lewis & Clark scholarship. At least it's a good read, they say.

Why did he do it? His detractors blame his "assembly-line" writing and editing methods that made extensive use of assistants (including his five children) to pull together resource materials. After the “Wild Blue” dustup, George McGovern, a B-24 crew member mentioned in the book, praised Ambrose and excused him, saying, "He writes so many books; I don't know how he can avoid making some mistakes."

The more digging, the more instances they turned up. Slate put it this way: "Ambrose's assertion that he's not a thief is ludicrous. One plagiarism is careless. Two is a pattern. Four, five, or more is pathology." They were looking at dozens of examples.

Ambrose defended himself, saying:

"I tell stories. I don't discuss my documents. I discuss the story. It almost gets to the point where, how much is the reader going to take? I am not writing a Ph.D. dissertation."I wish I had put the quotation marks in, but I didn't. I am not out there stealing other people's writings. If I am writing up a passage and it is a story I want to tell and this story fits and a part of it is from other people's writing, I just type it up that way and put it in a footnote. I just want to know where the hell it came from."

After the scandal he went on to publish a couple more books, proving what I have come to accept, which is that you can get through almost anything in the public eye using hutzpah alone.

What about Ambrose. Those who want to excuse Ambrose have two main ways of forgiving


him: (1) Saying he has a lot of company and then listing the vast number of writers who have been caught cheating, and (2) and, in my view more plausibly, that by writing historical works in a language a lay audience not only appreciated but lapped up, he contributed to the common knowledge of historical events and people. So cut him some slack?

William Everdell, a reviewer for the New York Times, opined that while Ambrose evidently did commit plagiarism, "he certainly deserved better from some of his envious peers" and credited the historian with reaching "an important lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice or sacrificing the profession's standards of scholarship."

I don't know. It's just so lazy, when you're a perfectly fine writer, to take these shortcuts. Perhaps he wouldn't have been so prolific, but then you start to think about how much money he was making -- in royalties and speaking fees -- on top of his celebrity -- and you think, nah. Whatever we think, he's now dead, so the point is moot.

For a thorough rundown on all the instances of plagiarism that have arisen I can recommend historynewsnetwork.org/article/504 on the internet. In its account toward the end of his life, they say:

As for the allegations of plagiarism, he said that he had decided "Screw it," he would finish his memoir. "If they decide I'm a fraud, I'm a fraud. I don't know that I'm all that good at academics. I'm a writer."

There was a further dustup over how well he knew Eisenhower, with whom he claimed to have had "hundreds of hours" of conversation. Ike's records show only three meetings for a total of five hours. But then a further investigation, by Tim Rives, Deputy Director of the Eisenhower Presidential Center, found a "secret relationship" between Ike and Ambrose and finally concluded that figuring out how much time they had spent together was "too complicated" to be described by his critics.

Enough of Ambrose's problems. They only surfaced within the last two years of his life at any rate.

So he was a complicated man who lived large. Maybe not the most thorough scholar but certainly one of the best popularizer of historical knowledge the country has had.

MURDER OR SUICIDE?

And so at last we come to the intriguing mystery of Lewis’s death. Murder or suicide?

Let’s review the stories that are told after he’s dead.

Let's get the basic facts that everyone agrees on at the outset. The important dates are Oct. 10 and Oct. 11, 1809. Lewis died at Grinders Inn or Grinder's Stand in Tennessee, 70 miles west of present-day Nashville. Who are the people involved? Robert Grinder, the innkeeper, is away but his wife, Priscilla, and a couple of their children are there operating this rustic inn along the Natchez Trace, the Devil's Backbone. Lewis has gone ahead of his designated traveling


companion or chaperone, James Neely, an indian agent but not a friend or anything of Lewis's, just and official who was asked to look after Gov. Lewis on the trail after he exhibited bizarre behavior back at Ft. Pickering in Memphis. Lewis had a slave traveling with him, Pernier, but he lagged behind with Neely and Neely's unnamed "servant" collecting some stray horses. The two servants come up after Lewis has turned in for the night. They are sleeping in the loft of a barn 200 yards from the building where Lewis is housed and hear no gunshot. Neely was looking after scattered horses and as far as I can tell did not arrive until the 11th. But nothing is certain because no one present wrote an account of Lewis's death except Neely, who says he wasn't there, based on what Priscilla Grinder and the two servants told him.

So Mrs. Grinder tells her account to James Neely, and he writes in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, “Mrs. Grinder said that she noticed when Lewis came that something was just a little bit off. He didn’t seem to be of sound mind. So she gives him the house, but makes sure she sleeps nearby in case something goes wrong. And the servants also sleep nearby in the stable loft. Around three a.m. [on the 11th] she hears two pistol shots. So she wakes up the servants, and they get there, and Lewis has shot himself in the head and the chest. He asks for water, and then dies shortly thereafter.” And again, Neely’s not there, so he only hears this later from Mrs. Grinder, and she doesn’t see the shooting, she just hears it.

Two years later she tells a different story in which Lewis shoots himself, somehow manages to go outside and sit or lean against a tree, then comes back in and says the famous quote, “I am no coward, but I am so strong, it is so hard to die.”

Now, I have to say that "the murderists," as they are called, point out that when committing suicide, you usually don't get a second shot. So keep that in mind.

There’s a podcast, Stuff You Missed in History Class, from HowStuffWorks.com, that addresses this subject succcinctly. The speakers are two e-journalists, Katie Lambert and Sara Dowdy.

They run down the arguments in favor of suicide: His stress. Financial problems, here he is going to D.C. to explain himself basically. He’s thought to be unlucky in love, maybe a broken proposal or a refused proposal. He has a drinking problem. And a drug problem, laudenum. He’s not very good at being governor. He may have had syphillis, which can lead to dementia, and there are reports of him acting demented in the run up to his trip. Plus, he’s an outdoorsy type, and not suited to a desk job. And he hasn’t got the journals done and it’s 1809.

QUOTE :

Katie: And we have some pretty big names in that suicide camp. James Neely had told Tomas Jefferson that Lewis “appeared at times deranged in mind.” William Clark, of course his good friend, thought that Lewis committed suicide even before he heard it for real. He’d seen a report in the newspaper that he’d killed himself, and said, “I fear, oh I fear, the weight of his mind has overcome him. What will be the consequence?” He never even questioned that it was suicide. And neither did Thomas Jefferson or Mullen Dickerson who were very good friends of Lewis’. Steven Ambrose, who wrote the Lewis biography Undaunted Courage, says it was definitely a suicide, as does a historian named Paul Russell Cutwright. So again, we’ve got some pretty good names in the suicide camp. But then -


Lewis’s family years later mounted a campaign in favor of murder, but that’s discounted because they are suspected of trying to rid Lewis’s death of the stigma of suicide.

Sara: Yeah, and Lewis’ mother particularly did not want to believe that her son killed himself. Then there’s this sort of weird story that you’ll see presented as fact in a lot of sources that there was a Tennessee commission that later studied Lewis’ remains.

So that's a summary of some of the main theories.

There is yet another account, two years after the fact, by the officer in charge of the fort Pickering, Capt. Gilbert Russell, where Lewis had spent perhaps as much as two or three weeks, where he was informally detained, in fact, because of his drinking and wild behavior, in which Lewis is portrayed as “deranged,” drinking heavily, and there were second-hand reports that Lewis had tried to kill himself, twice, before reaching the fort. Russell kept Lewis at the fort until he was better, he says, but after Lewis left, he got worse, and then Russell says that he “destroyed himself in the most cool, desperate, and barbarian like manner.” And this is where the story of Lewis cutting himself to shreds with a razor gets started. And this is supposedly after he’s shot himself. Twice.

Later Mrs. Grinder told a completely different story so her testimony is confused at best.

Yet another theory was advanced most persuasively by a Seattle physician, Dr. Reimert T. Ravenholt, who says that Lewis's behavior is consistent with a diagnosis of paretic neurosyphillis, or third-stage syphillis affecting the brain and spinal column.

"Other symptoms of early mental deterioration may have been present, such as forgetfulness, tardiness, discourtesy, carelessness of personal appearance, unsound judgment, undue suggestibility, irascibility, and self-assertiveness. Periods of depression with undue sensitivity, suspiciousness, and ideas of guilt may occur and sometimes alternate with periods of elation, undue optimism, sense of well-being, and over-activity. Sleep is at times disturbed, restlessness appears, and bodily complaints are mentioned, occasionally leading to erroneous diagnoses of neurasthenia."

Ravenholt argues for suicide, brought on by his disease.

A further theory is that malaria -- and Lewis had recurring bouts of malaria -- can actually cause dementia and “melancholy” so his suicide was an attempt to end his pain, so his death can be seen a collateral effect of trying to cure his disease with a bullet.

And there is the fact that neither Clark nor Jefferson, the two men who knew him best in the world, were not surprised that he had killed himself.

You can find accounts online that involve Jefferson and the Illuminati, so there are lots of wild stories out there.

And there was an effort in late 2000 to exhume the body and do a forensic investigation but the


National Park Service denied permission to dig up a national monument.

So now, what say you?


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