Core ideas about Thomas Jefferson and the West: The Lewis and Clark expedition

The Northwest Passage

The Lewis and Clark expedition can be seen as the pursuance of the old European myth of the Northwest Passage, a mythical belief that had urged European sailors since Columbus to find a sea passage across the American continent to the Orient and the fabulous markets of China and the spices of India.

Symmetrical geography

In order to try and describe what the geography of the terra incognita of the hinterland of the American continent probably looked like, another theory had been developed by the French over the years, which came to be known as “symmetrical geography.”

… symmetrical geography, held that the topography of the western half of the continent was a mirror image of the continent’s eastern landforms and waterways. Thus the drainage patterns of the rivers on the Pacific slopes of the western mountains would resemble those of the rivers on the eastern side of the Appalachian Mountains. Further, once the construction of an eastern canal from the Potomac River to a tributary of the Ohio River appeared feasible, proponents of symmetrical geography believed that a similar internal improvement linking the rivers on the Pacific side of the continent might also be possible. A half-century later, one of the principal objectives of the Lewis and Clark Expedition was to resolve these geographical conjectures.[1]

The Enlightenment and Modernity come true in the United States: the American experiment

The Lewis et Clark expedition can be construed as the exploration of the West to assess the region’s resources and its availability to become the place where to emoby the ideals of the founding Fathers: Democracy, human rights, equality among men. In Jefferson's mind, the West was the place of American expansion, the very place where the republican experiment initiated by the Revolution was to prove the worth of  the Founding Fathers’ ideas. Jefferson’s agrarian policy also depended upon land, and Lewis et Clark alos assessed the fertility and climate of of western lands.

Knowledge and education were priorities for Jefferson.

Educated citizens could vote according to rational decisions. Part of the Enlightenment ideal.

The expedition: a “literary pursuit”

 This phrase was coined by Jefferson's in his Secret Message to Congress Regarding the Lewis & Clark Expedition - Jan. 18. 1803. The phrase is now  often used to depict Lewis et Clark expedition. Whether the expedition was a literary pursuit or became a military expedition to impose the sovereignty of the United States over lands acquired after the Louisiana Purchase is problematic.

The Great Chain of Being and the mammoth

Studying nature revealed a remarkably well organized interacting whole, a universe which could only be the creation of a grand planner, some entity that American contemporary environmental historian Donald Worster called “the Supreme Economist” in charge of the rational government of life on earth.[2] The central notion for that remarkably well organized and interacting whole was the “Great Chain of Being”. Each organism carefully fitted into the hierarchy of greater and lesser beings in the God-created whole. Its perfection precluded the possibility of evolution. In such a perfect natural world, Jefferson considered that no species could become extinct, or the perfection of the whole would have been impaired. That is why he expected the Corps of Discovery to find living mammoths in the far recesses of the West on their journey to the Pacific. In short, order prevailed in the world as the works of the Swedish naturalist Linné made clear: “Linnaeus's outline taxonomy of that world — the binomial naming of plants and animals — reified the idea of order and became the scientific basis for surveying the natural world.”[3] Jefferson accordingly collected the works of Carl von Linné in his library at Monticello—“surely the largest private collection in America by 1815”—, which was to become the nucleus of the Library of Congress.[4]

Buffon

Buffon had developed a theory that dismissed American nature as inferior to Europe's, a theory which, to American patriots, was unacceptable. Thomas Jefferson deployed much energy in his Notes to refute the assertions about the degeneracy of nature’s productions on the American continent. “[H]is shipment of mastodon fossils to Paris, therefore, was not entirely Enlightenment altruism; it was also a final salvo in a scientific war.”[5] When he was Minister to France, he met ageing Buffon and showed him various items like the skin of a giant American panther. Buffon promised he would correct his theory but died before he did. (F. D.)

See Fresonke Spence 52.

Madison’s idea of democracy (source: J. P. Ronda)

To most men of the Enlightenment, the republican regime was suitable only to a limited territory, and this dogma inherited from Montesquieu could hardly be challenged.

And there was a further complication. The eighteenth-century thinkers believed that all human societies went through four distinct stages. Just as plants and animals had life cycles, so did peoples and nations. Human societies began with hunting, moved to pastoralism. advanced to farming, and then declined in urban ways.

Jefferson wholly accepted this theory or social evolution. Writing to William Ludlow, he imagined a traveler journeying east from the Rockies. That "philosophic observer" would see in sequence all the stages of societal development. From hunters and shepherds to farmers and merchants. Here was the past and future of all human folk. Such a future deeply troubled the Republican Jefferson. If societies moved inexorably from stage to stage surely the American republic would eventually become a highly developed, commercialized nation. Since Jefferson ardently believed that "cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens," the future seemed bleak. The challenge for Jefferson and his intellectual collaborator James Madison was to create the theory or an expanding republic. The Jeffersonians had to fashion a rationale for expansion that would at once avoid what Montesquieu said had destroyed Rome and what prophets of a commercial-mercantilist future like Alexander Hamilton insisted was not only inevitable, but also beneficial.

 Could an expanding Republic remain true to its promise? The Jeffersonians thought so. James Madison's political philosophy was always more rigorously argued and logically presented than Jefferson's. In numbers 10 and 14 of the Federalist [original essays 1787-1788] Madison effectively challenged the traditional wisdom of small republics. He asserted that size was an advantage, allowing otherwise dangerous factional disputes to be diluted. While classical democracies indeed demanded that each citizen participate in every decision, republics delegated much of the governing to elected representatives. "A republic," Madison declared, "may be extended over a large region." In a burst of uncharacteristic rhetoric, Madison predicted the rise of "one great, respectable, and nourishing empire." (Ronda - quoted in Duban’s course)

Turner

Dans ses études sur la Frontière dans l’histoire américaine, Frederick Jackson Turner imagine qu’au début du XIX^e siècle le voyageur  traversant  l’Amérique   depuis  la côte  pacifique  jusqu’à Philadelphie aurait  couvert en quelques mois l’équivalent de deux mille ans d’histoire européenne, entre les cités lacustres  et  les agglomérations urbaines du monde moderne. (DR)

Jefferson’s continental dream

Jefferson’s continental vision of the American West developed in the wake of European colonial imperialism. Part of the European colonial imperialism doctrine held that colonies were to be purveyors of raw materials. Jefferson’s policy to start the development of the West thanks to the lucrative fur trade is part of that heritage. Moreover, extending the sovereignty of the United States over vast areas in the West was a way to assert the power and influence of a fledgling nation on the international scene. Free navigation on the Mississippi for American traders and boats was also essential to keep the loyalty of frontier farmers across the Alleghenies and the control of New Orleans was vital for the United States. It led to the Louisiana Purchase.

But Jefferson’s vision was also idealistic and included the spreading of  American democratic ideals  across the continent. The West was to become the Empire of Liberty [or Empire for Liberty] for an agrarian free society thus reinforcing the myth of the West as the Garden of the World. Although the phrase “manifest destiny” was coined in 1845, the idea that America developed according to a divine plan to show the way to democracy to the rest of the world befitted the Founding Fathers’ vision, especially Jefferson’s.

Jefferson’s Indian policy

Jefferson’s Indian policy is often criticized as ambiguous, if not deceitful. In the beginning at least, Jefferson certainly envisioned a grand plan to associate Indians with the grand American experiment. Civilization was the policy that would help integrate Indian nations into the Union. The goal was to secure peace and security on the frontier to obtain the support of frontiersmen, always tempted by secession (Whiskey Rebellion). The policy Jefferson had designed to lure Indians to become farmers included the creation of trading posts (also called factories hence the “factory system”) where Indians would buy the white man’s artifacts like axes or plows on credit. Once indebted and on their way to acculturation, the tribes would sell their lands to the benefit of the expansion of agrarianism. Jefferson insisted again and again on the fact that no violence should be inflicted upon Indians. The “obtaining lands” as he called it should always be carried out by means of treaties and land sales. However, in case of utter resistance and hostility, removal was to become an acceptable alternative policy. Jefferson thus considered that the lands bought from France after the Louisiana Purchase could be opened to tribes removed from the east. If Indians lost their culture as they became integrated was not an issue. The Indians were considered at the time to be a race doomed to extinction.

Threat of secession

When Jefferson became President, factions—Federalists and Antifederalists—had torn apart the unity of the Revolution. Secession, dissolution were real possibilities, not only in the States along the Atlantic coast, but also in the territories and States in the West where frontiersmen saw no advantage in remaining in the so-called Union that imposed taxes upon them but that proved unable to maintain peace and security on the frontier which was plagued by Indian wars. No wonder then that American settlers in the Mississippi valley repeatedly turned to Spain or France for help in order to create an independent state across the Appalachians. The French diplomat Genet tried to take advantage of this attitude and his agitation irritated Jefferson and put an end to the Michaux expedition. In fact, as early as 1783, many American settlers dreamed of an independent state across the Appalachians with the help of Spanish authorities in Louisiana. Aaron Burr’s « treason » is to be assessed in that perspective. 

Strict construction of the Constitution by Jefferson

Jefferson’s main challenge was to keep the Union together. One of his preferred means to achieve this end was to act according to the Constitution. The strict construction of the Constitution hopefully would avoid criticism by the Federalists, Jefferson hoped. Yet he had to ignore his constitutional qualms when he gave his agreement to Livingstone and Monroe in Paris for the Louisiana Purchase. Strictly speaking, the president of the United States has no power to expand the territory of the nation. The Louisiana Purchase was thus an example of constitutional infringement. But no real opposition developed to the purchase in Congress.

A national myth

The Lewis and Clark expedition by inspiring the American mind enhanced the myth of the West as the land of plenty and opportunity and contributed to unite a country that was torn apart by scandals (Aaron Burr’s alleged treason), the possibility of secession of territories in the West, and conflicts between the Federalists (led by Hamilton) and the Republicans (Jefferson and his friends).

Lewis and Clark followed the prescriptions of Doctor Rush

No doctor  was on the roster of the expedition but Lewis had been trained in medical practice by Doctor Rush in Philadelphia. The Corps followed the doctor’s advice like wearing flannel to keep bodies warm and repeatedly used Doctor Rush’s pills to cure nearly all pains. Those pills proved to be a powerful laxative.