The Thomas Jefferson Hour; #0426

Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, your weekly conversation with our third president of the United States. The Thomas Jefferson Hour is produced by High Plains Public Radio and New Enlightenment Radio Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to the search for truth in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. Today's program was recorded in June of 2004. Please join us as our host Bill Crystal speaks with Thomas Jefferson, portrayed by Humanity Scholar Clay Jenkinson. Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, your weekly conversation with the third president of the United States. Good day to you, Mr. Jefferson. Good day to you, my dear citizen. Sir, I know you're going to love today's program. We're doing something that I think is of great interest to you. We are going to be asking questions of you proposed by fifth grade students in Fresno, California Elementary School at Manchester Elementary School. I know that you love children. I know as well that you believe in the process of education. You were in fact one of the first to propose a universal educational

system that was based not simply on needing certain skills but also on merit. That is correct. Of course, as you know, New England was ahead of Virginia in public education. The New England town meeting and the New England public schools were really the the avant garde of the American enlightenment. And I always felt chagrin that my own Commonwealth Virginia lagged so far behind. And I think you know that right after the revolution began, I proposed something called the Bill for the more general diffusion of knowledge, which would have created the first merit-based school system in Virginia, but it wasn't passed during my lifetime. But you are correct. I do delight in the questions from children, which shows that the spirit of enlightenment is still alive in the 21st century. And it is indeed, sir. These are children in Virginia writings, fifth grade class. As I said at Manchester Elementary School in Fresno, California. They're wonderful questions. We might as well just jump right into this program. The first comes from Patrick Hullridge, who asks,

how did Maryweather Lewis become your secretary? That's a good question. Maryweather Lewis was a neighbor of mine. I lived in a county in Virginia called Opera Moral County. And when my father Peter moved us there, I was just a child. And it was the westernmost place in that part of Virginia. My father was a frontiersman. And he actually was a surveyor who went out into the Hullowing Wilderness from time to time to help map and survey Virginia. And my father had an abiding interest in the west. And so we were really pioneers living far from what was called the Tidewater region. The Tidewater region along the the tidal basins of the James and other rivers was where the the gentry tended to live. We lived in the mountains. That made my life somewhat different from that of other members of the Virginia gentry. So I was living there. And the Lewis family lived nearby. Maryweather Lewis grew up about a dozen miles from Monticello. His father William Lewis was a friend of mine. His mother Lucy was a good friend

of mine. And young Lewis established a reputation as a boy of being fond of the wilderness. I said later that he was intimate with the Indian character habits and principles and habituated to the hunting life. And so when he was about 18 he applied to me. I was then a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. And he applied to me for permission to accompany a French scientist by the name André Michaud into the far west into the Missouri country. I felt that he was too young at the time. But when I became the president of the United States on March 4th, 181, I hired young Mr. Lewis who was then in the army to come live with me in what you call the White House and to serve there as my aide-to-camp, the kind of all-purpose military attache, and to be my private correspondent secretary. And young Lewis

lived with me in the White House for two years before he began his famous journey. Thank you very much sir. So you were really grooming him perhaps to lead another expedition, although you did not know it at the time. It was sort of fortuitous. Well what I really wanted him to do was to help me decide how to reduce the size of the army. I did not campaign in 1800, but to the extent that the country knew my principles, I declared that I would reduce the size of the army and reduce the size of the Navy. They had been built up during the Adams Administration, during the Quays-I War. I felt now that the French had settled that dispute with us that we could stand down and that it was really ruinously expensive to have so large an army. So I had dedicated myself to the idea of reduction of the army and the officer corps was swollen too large. So how do you retire certain officers and under what criteria? And Mr. Lewis had been in the army

in one form or another since the whiskey rebellion, and that meant that he knew intimately the character and the reputations of the officer corps. And I wanted him to help me decide which officers to keep and which to retire. And there's actually in my collected papers, there is a chart that Mr. Lewis made of every officer in the army and his qualifications, what we knew about him and his age, whether he was a federalist or a Republican, frankly. And that's why I hired Lewis. But in the back of my mind, I had this idea that maybe during my administration I could convince Congress to send an exploring party into the west. Our thanks to Patrick of Ms. Writing's fifth grade class for the wonderful question. The rest of these questions, Mr. Jefferson, are really about the Lewis and Clark expedition. But there is no one better who can answer them than you. Well, Mr. Lewis, of course, if he were here, but as you

know, he committed suicide. Not for young minds, sir. He had he died just three years after his heroic return in 186. And that was a great loss to all of us. The next question comes from Aaron, who asks, how would the expedition, the Lewis and Clark expedition, have changed if the collapsible boat had worked? Interesting question. That is an interesting question for those who aren't aware of it. Mr. Lewis at Harper's Ferry in Virginia, which is the confluence of the of the Potomac and the Shenandoah rivers as a U.S. Army depot, had had constructed for his tour an iron frame that could be turned into a kind of collapsible boat somewhere out in the far west. His thinking was very shrewd. Mr. Lewis knew that at some point whatever boats they began with could go no farther that they would reach a falls in the river Missouri. Every river has a fall line or they would reach the Rocky Mountains and that would require them to abandon their heavy wooden boats. He reckoned that if he had a collapsible iron frame he could build a

boat in the middle of nowhere very quickly. And of course iron would be a very strong framework and then cover it with animal skins and that that would produce an instant pierog or an instant canoe. And so he had this iron framed boat built at Harper's Ferry and placed in a canvas bag. I think it weighed something between one and two hundred pounds. And then they carried it in their boats all the way from Harper's Ferry and Pittsburgh down the Ohio and up the Mississippi and the Missouri to the great falls of the Missouri. And when they finally reached the five great falls of the Missouri on June 13th 185 Lewis established a camp called Upper Portage Camp and he had the frame put back together by John Shields the blacksmith of the expedition and then he sent out a select party of expert hunters to kill elk and I believe they killed 29 elk and stripped their skins off and sewed them together but the frame was a little larger than that and they had to piece it

out with several buffalo hides. They sewed all of that into a kind of an immense tarpulin and then they stretched it around that iron frame and turned the boat over upside down above fires to shrink the the skins over it so they were tight as a drum and then the crisis came because Mr. Lewis realized that there were no pine trees in the neighborhood of the great falls and he needed pine trees for their resins to create a pitch that would seal that boat and he had not brought any pitch along with him figuring that there would be pine trees wherever he traveled and he couldn't find any and so he had to create a makeshift resin out of beeswax I believe and buffalo tallow and he used it but it didn't work and the boat sank. He was very proud of this invention of his and when he first put it in the water at the great falls he said it floated like a perfect cork but the rain storm came up and it sank and he realized that to spend any more time on it would be really

counterproductive in fact they had spent weeks on this boat and so I suppose that the answer to this this young person's question is that if he had never reckoned on that iron frame boat the minute they got to the portage site it was an 18 and a quarter mile portage around the five great falls the minute they got there he would have dispatched a carpentry crew to find adequate trees to hollow out dug out canoes and they probably could have had those ready by the time all the luggage had been portage around the falls and that would have gotten them back on the river road sooner than they did so he probably could have saved a few weeks of time if he hadn't lost his his experiment and still living in the time that we live today one one admires the idea of a collapsible boat certainly history is replete ever after with stories of of inventions like that that have proven to be quite quite a godsend. It was an ingenious idea and the boat frame was put together by John Shields in a single afternoon I think there were several screws missing but Shields was apparently a very

adept metal worker and he was able to to produce some makeshift screws in Montana and the frame was there and and they there was plenty of game in the neighborhood so they were able to produce a very adequate tarpaulin out of skins and they the men who there was there was a skin dresser by the name of Joseph Whitehouse so he knew how to sew tightly with sinew so they had everything in place except this the sealant and they could not have anticipated I think that that they would need to carry sealant several thousand miles from Harper's Ferry for this purpose I'm sure Lewis just assumed that that the the sealing of the boat would be the least of his problems hard to imagine one would be in a place where there were no pine trees something so absolutely prevalent in so many parts of this country absolutely and furthermore you know I want every one of the young people in this in this class to understand that when mr. Lewis left St. Louis on May 14th 18th 4 he had to take everything with him that he could possibly need for a journey of up to three years

in other words there were no forts or trading posts or stores of any sort between St. Louis and the Pacific Ocean no resupply if they if they didn't have an essential item they had to produce it in the field but there was no way that they could replenish their supply of of guns weapons tools medicines clothing blankets mosquito netting nothing could be replenished and so that's this putting enormous pressure on the planning and it put enormous pressure on the boats because how do you carry from the beginning enough goods to take you through a journey of up to three years it's an impossibility so if mr. Lewis had 10 keel boats instead of one he might have taken several gallons of sealant but he didn't have that luxury and he assumed that's one of the things I can take care of in the wilderness that's something I'll be able to find a tree that can provide just as he didn't take a skin covering for it he assumed we'll be able to hunt he didn't know that

these would be elk that they would be hunting but he knew there'd be something there'd be deer or or goats of some sort or maybe wild horses but they they assume there'd be something when they got to the right moment that they could use to cover that boat and so it was a very ingenious idea and unfortunately it failed and Clark then having watched poor captain Lewis wrestle with this thing for almost a month with I think with some impatience finally said I took a group of men and we went out and made canoes and they made canoes very quickly out of out of cottonwood trees that leads nicely to the next question although we thank Aaron for her thoughtful question this one comes from hiato could this expedition have succeeded with only Lewis in charge of the core you just made reference to to mr. Clark how about it mr. Jefferson would the expedition have succeeded with only Lewis in charge I know that was certainly what you intended yes I think it it would have and and technically Lewis was

solely in charge you know Clark was called captain and Lewis generously called him his partner in discovery the fact is that Lewis was a captain and Clark was a lieutenant so there was a hierarchy and the commander of this expedition was my friend and protege and neighbor marry whether Lewis and Clark was a subordinate officer they pretended a level of equality that simply wasn't the case would it have succeeded without Clark it's hard to know because Clark of course took on a large share of the responsibilities but one has to assume that had he not been there Lewis would have performed those duties equally well in our time mr. Jefferson we we often use a word synergy which suggests something along the lines that one plus one equals something in addition to two it would seem that that Lewis himself understood this concept synergy and by selecting lieutenant Clark

he found a person that together gave them a great deal more than than the one would have had to offer by himself no question Clark was an excellent cartographer and that means map maker he was a good waterman you knew I think more about boats and boat navigation than did mr. Lewis he was I think more relaxed and steadier with the men I think that that he and the 40 some men who were pushing these boats up towards the source of the Missouri River had had an easier relationship than than they had with captain Lewis who kept himself somewhat aloof Clark I think was more patient with the frustrations that come from a long journey of this sort and and I think he had more generosity of spirit towards the Indians that they met but if Clark had never been attached to the expedition I'm assuming that Lewis would have

would have performed it admirably I would not have chosen him of course if I had thought that he had weaknesses you know you when you have a mission of this sort you have to choose somebody that you feel can really do it and I would never have chosen a man that I thought maybe he can do all of this and maybe he can't I think Lewis felt that he that he really had two responsibilities one was a very simple one although very difficult take a large group of men across the continent through an absolute wilderness where there is potential hostility and bring them back alive and safely that is a huge responsibility and that alone would have been enough for any commander of an expedition of this sort but of course I wanted to do more than that in addition to that I had a very large enlightenment agenda by which I mean maps latitude and longitude discovery of new plants and animals ethnographic examination of Indian cultures taking

down their vocabularies describing their dresses their their hunting styles their their agricultural systems their their dwellings in other words I wanted Lewis and Clark to be observers and scientists in the west in addition to being people who could cross the continent safely under trying conditions these are two quite different things and I think what Lewis realized was that he could not be an adequate scientist for me if he were spending too much time with the boats and so I think the reason that he chose Clark is that he he felt that he needed to liberate himself from some of the day today grind of the expedition in order to be on shore with his notebook and I think in that sense there was what you call synergy what I would call complimentary skills that contributed greatly to the success of the expedition but I will say once again and emphatically if there had been no William Clark I feel certain that Lewis would have reached the Pacific Ocean successfully I feel certain that he would have come back

and he might have written more in his journals because I think in a certain way Lewis came to depend upon Clark as a daily journal keeper when he might have performed that function himself had there been no willing Clark thank you Mr. Jefferson and and thanks to you Hayato for that question this question comes from Asha she asks did Seaman the dog have any diseases or die on the trip and if yes if he had diseases what were they? well the dog was very healthy this was a 150 pound Newfoundland water dog and for the young people who are who are asking these questions and perhaps listening to my answers I'm sure that your your teachers can show you what a Newfoundland dog looks like they still exist in our time and in fact at Lewis and Clark by centennial activities there is frequently if not always a Newfoundland dog or a herd of Newfoundlands present and so they're a very common dog and they are excellent water dogs they're also highly intelligent and Lewis had

purchased this dog for around 20 dollars early on just as a as a pet and he and the dog were I think inseparable Lewis liked to be on shore the dog would be on shore with him Lewis was kind of a strange man he was not a very gregarious man he he was something of a loner and I think that he and the dog had a kind of master dog bonding that was important to Lewis's emotional success all I can say is the dog was never ill but it was bitten by a beaver in its leg and the beavers teeth were very sharp and it's severed in artery and Lewis thought the dog would die thank you mr. Jefferson we'll be back in just a moment with more questions from the fifth grade please visit our website www.th hyphengeverson.org www.th hyphengeverson.org

please stay tuned we will be back in just a moment welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour today mr. Jefferson's answering

questions concerning the Lewis and Clark expedition from Ms. writings fifth grade class at Manchester Elementary School in Fresno California mr. Jefferson before we went to break we were a little abrupt we had Asha's question regarding seam in the dog she was concerned whether the dog suffered any diseases on the trip did it die and you've suggested that a beaver bit it and that its artery was severed that is correct the the dog was highly intelligent and it was a hunter and it would go into the Missouri River and swim out and attack antelope pronghorn antelope and drown them or or break their necks swim them back to shore and it also attacked beaver and what beaver turned on seamen when he was attacking it and bit him under the leg and severed an artery and Lewis who was something above of a physician felt that the dog would die that it would simply bleed to death he couldn't staunch the blood but eventually

he was able to do it and the dog did in fact live that was the worst accident that seamen had he was also attacked viciously by mosquitoes there were really more mosquitoes than I think anyone listening can can possibly contemplate this was in a time when there was no repellent and there had been no chemical attacks on them on the populations of mosquitoes and Lewis and Clark were both at times appalled by the number of mosquitoes once in what's now Iowa Clark said the mosquitoes were literally the size of house flies and the captains had mosquito netting and they'd form a kind of a beer or a little netting sleeping chamber for themselves but the most of the men did not have this netting so they would have to sleep under blankets or have smudge fires and the dog at some points was so viciously and constantly attacked that it would haul through the entire night it was just in terrible pain so that was not life-threatening but it was certainly upsetting do we know what happened to seamen

after the expedition returned we do not the journals were never completed for publication by Maryweather Lewis after Lewis's tragic death in 189 I asked Clark to handle the journal to see it into publication and he was diffident and felt that he did not have the proper skills to to do a literary project of that sort so he found a ghost writer in Philadelphia by the name of Nicholas Biddle later the president of the Bank of the United States and Biddle did it he took the raw journals and turned them into a classic of American prose but he did not get all of his follow-up questions answered and one of the mysteries of the Lewis and Clark's story in your time is what happened to the dog because the dog appears quite frequently in the journals of Lewis and Clark but then on the return journey in mid-July of 186 when they were in Montana the dog disappears from the journals I'm not saying the dog disappeared from

the expedition but the dog disappears from the journals no longer as mentioned but keep in mind that they they were not mentioning the dog on a regular basis they were mentioning the dog when something happened when the dog did something remarkable or when the dog was suffering or when the dog was lost when Indians took the dog when the dog hunted for them but they didn't mention the dog every couple of days just for the fun of it indeed a lot of members of the expedition didn't get on the radar very often that's correct or at all these were very busy army officers I think there were seven journal keepers all together they were you know mostly surviving hunting building temporary camps digging latrines posting guard to make sure that they weren't attacked lugging all that I think it's 30 tons worth of baggage back and forth across the continent they had many duties and yet at the end of the day they also tried to keep up their journals and they wrote down

the most obvious things you know if they if they had an boat accident they would write that up if they had an encounter with an Indian they would would write that up if there were grisly bear attack they would they would note that in their journals but they didn't write the way you might write a diary kind of looking around and describing things more or less at random they were jotting a few things at the end of the day under very difficult field conditions and they didn't say I haven't talked about the dog for a while or let me mention some of them lesser known members of the expedition and their contributions to our success that wasn't their style if Mr. Lewis had lived and he had written up his account he would have told us what happened to the dog and there is a story that circulates and I'm not sure whether it is true or not that after Mr. Lewis's death in 189 you know he was buried in a very obscure place near Nashville Tennessee on the Natchez Trace which was a kind of a trail highway there is a story that the dog had followed him all this way and that and the dog loyal to its master stayed on top of this burial site for a number of months

after Lewis's return whether that story is true or not I cannot say but I would again say to these young people that your teacher can find the books that have been written about Seaman there are five or six of them of varying degrees of accuracy and that there's a whatever's known about the dog can be found in a school library or on your internet and I think it's possible to to learn a good deal about Seaman even though nobody can tell you accurately what happened to the dog in July of 186 but I will say this finally if the dog had died in 186 or walked off I feel pretty certain that Mr. Lewis would have written about that. In other words the fact that he is silent about the dog means that it's more likely that it lived than that it died or disappeared. Thank you Mr. Jefferson and thank you to Asha for that interesting question this one comes from Hannah did Lewis and Clark ever fight about things and if so what did they fight about interesting question that's a wonderful question

there's no evidence that they ever fought about things I'm sure they they disagreed from time to time I've mentioned that that Clark was the journal suggests the Clark was a little frustrated when the iron boat proved to be a a failure because that meant not only time delay but now both still had to be made. Clark mentions once that that he and Lewis had a minor disagreement about food at a certain point the expedition began to eat dogs they were they were in the Columbia River Valley where the elk and the deer were scarce or no buffalo they had a very large group number 33 at this time to feed and they began to buy dogs from Indians Indians had lots of dogs semi-wild semi-tame and this Clark would buy small herds of dogs and use them as food and Lewis actually said that while the expedition was dining on dog it was

sleeker and healthier and the men had better stamina and then they had under any other form of food that he that he was aware of so from a captain's point of view keeping your man fit strong and healthy he thought dog was a good idea and he said dog tasted just fine to him but Clark admitted in his journal that he he did not like the idea of eating dog you know wasn't the taste that bothered him was the idea of eating man's best friend and so he would eat it in extremity of course but he he said he could never reconcile himself to the eating of dog so there's a I suppose a disagreement but it certainly wasn't a fight there's no evidence from the journals that there was ever a serious dispute between the two captains you know on any trip of this length 7,689 miles where you are hot and sweaty and working hard every day and you are a small group of people living constantly in each other's presence there will certainly be annoyances but if there were moments of disagreement

or frustration or tension they do not rise to the level of being written up in the journals these were both gentlemen Lewis belong to the gentry Clark belong to the gentry they would have prided themselves on their politeness and so even if they were angry at each other they probably would still have been stiffly polite in all of their transactions thank you mr. Jefferson we're listening to the Thomas Jefferson hour we're answering questions today that are being posed by miss writings fifth grade class at Manchester Elementary School in Fresno California mr. Jefferson you just answered a question about whether or not and that was a question from Hannah whether Lewis and Clark had fought about things they seem to remember that there was some disagreement over the way a slave the only slave on the on the journey was treated afterwards it's true you know there were 33 permanent members of the expedition and one of them was black

a man named York was Clark's valet his his body servant and York and Clark were roughly the same age and had grown up together in Virginia and Kentucky and York came along and this was not that uncommon for an army officer who was a slaveholder to take along a personal body servant and and York went all the way to the Pacific Ocean and back again and performed apparently rather admirably and had some unexpected capacities I mean the Indians were astonished by him because they were people who had never seen a black man before and so they were they didn't know what to make of this creature you know they it was like a martian to them or someone from Jupiter because they they knew white people and they knew each other but they had never seen a Negro and so this was astonishing to to a people who had lived entirely in isolation from African experience but when they got back in 186 York was something of a hero in the in the

taverns of St. Louis because he was a great storyteller and he would go to these taverns and tell stories about all of this and apparently he was very colorful figure and something of a practical jokester and so York got it into his head that he should be freed by William Clark that his services on the expedition merited manumission merited that he be formally freed and Clark refused and in fact Clark reacted with real hostility to this the suggestion by York and he threatened to sell York down into the sugar islands of the Caribbean which was a terrible fate for a slave it was that was a if you if you said to a slave if you upset me I'll sell you into the sugar trade that was a way really of severely threatening the happiness of that the mortality rate was very very high in the sugar islands is no one ever came back I mean no one ever you go there if

you live you stay for the rest of your life but you don't come back to your kin so York wanted his freedom York had gotten it into his head in the west that that he was he deserved certain rights Clark responded the way most Virginians and Kentuckyans would do he regarded York as a human being of course but also as property as a valuable investment and he wasn't willing to to cast away his investment in York and but Lewis intervened Lewis is usually seen as the more on generous of the two captains certainly with respect to Indians but in this case Lewis was the more sympathetic and he he stopped Clark and said no you're not going to sell York down into the sugar trade you work this out with him and it's not a very pretty story Clark beat York rather severely and said that he had knocked some of the uppityness out of him and he kept York with him in St. Louis for many years York wanted to

be home in Kentucky at a wife there in a family Clark had them separated for many years and he he actually rented York out which was not that uncommon for slaveholders to rent out their slaves to severe masters so you instead of being the the the rebuker yourself you you rent out your slave to somebody who is known for his severity and that's a form of punishment but eventually as we understand it there's some mystery here but eventually it seems as if York was freed by Clark and Clark actually helped set York up in a in a freight business as a freight hauler in the in Tennessee so that's what we know about this but I would say that two things happened one is that York could not have anticipated in 1800 that that he was going to be famous and when he became this sort of central figure of the expedition in summary specs it did go to his head I mean he he he quite rightly believed

that he had he had pushed boats just as severely as anybody else and had endured all the hardships and that there ought to be summary ward you know Clark got 1600 acres of land and and a large compensation package why would York get nothing so I suppose he had a very human response to that but Clark's response was also a typical slaveholders response and I would suggest that York's life after the expedition was was a long series of disappointments and frustrations because he was in a sense thrust back into the much more severe world of of American slavery thank you mr. Jefferson and and thanks yet again to Hannah for this interesting question our next question comes from Nathan was Lewis or Clark married while they were on the expedition no Lewis never married Clark did marry he married in 1888 a young woman named Julia Hancock she became Julia Hancock Clark

he was much older than she was she was he met her if you can imagine it when she was 11 years old and when he was in Montana this was undiscovered unnamed country in 185 he named a river for her he named it the Judith River her nickname was Judy or Judith and that river is still called the Judith in your time so there's a river in Montana that was named for who what was now a 13 year old girl back in Fin Castle Virginia and when Clark came back she was 14 and he married her at 15 he was old enough to be her father and it wasn't that uncommon in my era for women to marry at a very young age indeed but imagine he had barely known her he met her when she was 11 he named her river for her when she was 13 and he married her when she was 15 and they lived together for many years but this was after the expedition

and Lewis Lewis never managed to marry it was practically an arranged marriage was it not Mr. Jefferson this might be of interest to to Miss writings fifth grade class well I don't know the circumstances but it does sound that way doesn't it because how can an 11 year old know what she wants from life and and what sort of man she wants to marry particularly one that she almost never sees and who is old enough to be her father it's very difficult to know exactly what to make of all of this except that it appears to have been a very successful marriage so that's good news and it was not uncommon produced many offspring there many descendants of the Clarks are are alive in America in your time and many of them attend Lewis Clark related activities their first child was named Mary whether Lewis Clark after Clark's best friend Mary whether Lewis that shows I think some of the the real affection that the two captains held towards each other it may have been arranged you know in my day

people did not marry for pure romance in the way they do in in your day you have a very romantic idea of mating or somebody falls in love with somebody else and they don't really think about circumstances they just build a life together and assume that things will work out that's not the way it worked in the 18th and early 19th century marriages were economic activities and people married for economic advantage and so a man would look for a woman who had wealth in her family and a woman would look for a man who had connections or wealth and they were there was it was it was like a merger of corporations almost and it seems likely given the fact that Julie Hancock was 11 or so one Clark matter that this was either an arranged marriage or one that was heavily encouraged by the families and Clark was a member of the Kentucky gentry the Hancock family was a member of the Virginia gentry both sides probably gained economically from

this this coalition so people had to think about some kind of unromantic ideas and and and themes when they were mating in my time I married my wife Martha I loved her desperately but and I don't mean to be cynical but she was also a very wealthy widow and when her father died she brought 134 slaves and I believe 10,000 acres of land into my portfolio so suddenly that marriage made me a very wealthy man indeed. Thank you Mr. Jefferson these are interesting questions that the fifth grade class in Fresno has been offering to us today they certainly reveal a great deal of steady surely you commend this activity on their part that's wonderful I will we'll do more questions another time thank you we'll return in just a moment and we'll talk to the scholar who stands behind you

you're listening to the Thomas Jefferson hour with humanity scholar Clay Jenkins in portraying Thomas Jefferson and his host Bill Crystal a congregational minister in Reno Nevada please visit our website www.thhyphengeverson.org www.thhyphengeverson.org for information about Clay's upcoming performances please stay tuned we will be back in just a moment welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour today Mr.

Jefferson has been answering questions from Miz writings fifth grade class at Manchester Elementary School in Fresno California and I know Clay Clay Jenkinson now has seated across from me instead of Mr. Jefferson I know Clay that Mr. Jefferson enjoyed every minute of that. Absolutely you know I love to work with young people and I've never taught in in the public school system I've been a college professor but I've never taught young people but if I could choose a grade to teach it would be fifth and whenever I travel around the country giving talks on this and that and whenever somebody says would you like to do a school program and if so what year I always say fourth or fifth fifth is I think a wonderful period when when young minds are bursting with curiosity and enthusiasm and their lives for reasons that will be obvious to every adult are relatively uncomplicated still and it's just a delight to work with them and I remember to this day first of all appearing before a class in post falls

Idaho many years ago Mary Roman's class and they they not only asked these wonderful questions of Thomas Jefferson but later I got a pop-up book from them they had they had done Thomas Jefferson pop-up book and I didn't realize this but there is a whole method for doing pop-up books out of construction paper and they sent this brilliant pop-up book which I still have as a one of the treasures of my otherwise misguided career and the other thing is that the best question that I ever received was from a fifth grader this was in New England somewhere and she said Mr. Jefferson now that you've had time to spend with us what would you like to take back with you into the 18th century and if you just think about it that is a wonderfully interesting and imaginative question so I was delighted when our producer Janie Guil suggested that we would do not just one but two programs at least on questions from this school in Fresno we love our friends at Valley Public Radio and in fact we urge listeners all over the country who are teachers to have

your class put together questions for Thomas Jefferson or John Adams or Maryweather Lewis or about whatever subject interests you that has a Jefferson connection and we will spend a program answering those questions and we'd be glad to send you a copy of our of the CD for use in your in your classroom in later years thank you very much well you have something that you're going to read us in in the light of what what we've been doing today answering questions from Ms. Writing's class you have a letter that Maryweather Lewis wrote to his mother we you know every week on the Jefferson hour now we try to do a letter usually a Jefferson letter that's appropriate to the theme and we and we each week have a comment by somebody in Jefferson's era on the theme of the program these are new Thomas Jefferson hour features that we have added and by the way while I'm on the subject our website is up and running again under new web management it's still www.th-Jefferson.org that's th-Jefferson.org we urge people to go there leave their comments post their

questions for the Jefferson hour we really do thrive on listener generated questions and there is a way on on the Jefferson hour website to to put questions to Thomas Jefferson about any subject whatsoever from our time the 21st century or from his the 18th and 19th centuries this week the letter that we're going to focus on is one that Lewis wrote from North Dakota I had the great honor of being able to edit the journals of Lewis and Clark in North Dakota for the North Dakota State Historical Society over the last couple of years and Lewis wrote a really remarkable letter to his mother Lucy from North Dakota and he says lots of interesting things in it in this in this Arab bill letters were like news releases if I wrote a letter well it still happens in war doesn't it but but if I wrote a letter to my family they would hand that letter around to relatives and they might even hand it around generally people would sometimes make copies of letters and then hand them farther and frequently they ended up in newspapers much to the chagrin of the

people who were reading them writing them and in some cases who had had disclosed things privately they thought that certainly they would not want read publicly that's why Jefferson developed his secret cipher systems but in the case of Lewis and Clark each one wrote several letters during the journey which they intended their relatives to have published at the end of the journey Clark wrote one to actually Lewis did the ghost writing but wrote one to his brother and and he knew that it would be published in a series of newspapers so it was in a sense a letter slash news release they wouldn't write a news release that wasn't done but they would write a letter to a family member and then it would be published in newspapers and newspapers freely plagiarized each other and it was accepted business and Clark also wrote such a letter to his brother from Fort Mandan in North Dakota and Lewis wrote this one to his mother assuming I suppose that parts of it at least extracts as we said them would be handed around but so he talks about the journey and he actually says many many interesting things one of them was that they've had more trouble from the Missouri River than from the Indians they have met

which is really interesting because they have when he wrote this letter they had had a very difficult time with the Titansu in today's South Dakota with the Dakota and it had almost led to bloodshed but in reflecting upon their first year of travel during the course of the winter at Fort Mandan Lewis says to his mother the river has really been the big deal it's such a treacherous difficult river so hard to push our 30 tons of of luggage against but then what I love most about this letter in the part that I will read and we by the way posted on on the website th hyphen jefferson.org but the part that I want to read is the the clothes uh Lewis says you may expect me in obmermoral in our home obmermoral county about the last of next september 12 months he was pretty close they got back in late fall I request that you will give yourself no uneasiness with respect to my fate for I assure you that I feel myself perfectly as safe as I

should do in obmermoral and the only difference between three or four thousand miles and 130 is that I cannot have the pleasure of seeing you as often as I did while at Washington now there's a whopper he's saved his mother I'm just as safe out here in the middle of absolute nowhere as I would be if I were in mr. jefferson's white house that too is a typical soldier letter typical story about me a son's letter or a child's letter to the parent I'm sure you've received a few of these but I just he said I want to read it again I love this so much and I out to read you my footnote here in a second because I wrote the footnote as a for my mother my own mother in North Dakota I request that you will give yourself no uneasiness with respect to my fate Lewis writes for I assure you dear mother that I feel myself perfectly as safe as I should do in obmermoral and the only difference between three or four thousand miles and 130 is that I cannot have the pleasure of seeing you as often as I did while at Washington here's my footnote this was

you know you get you get a few little personal indulgences in a in an immense research project of this sort footnote 20 in the way of all sons Lewis assured his anxious mother that the risks he was undertaking were far less dangerous than they in fact were so I circled that when I sent my mother her copy of this book she's she's stayed awake many a night wondering whether I were dead or alive when you were in an Eastern European jail what that and when I camped out on bully and viewed in North Dakota on them on the millennium it was like 70 below and the wind was how like a 70 miles per hour and I borrowed her Honda CRV her little Honda mini SUV to go out there she said before I left the house she said tell me where you're going so I can at least collect the car anyway I read on this is the last paragraph this is the I love this because this is the first one of the first letters written

in the history of North Dakota my home state and it's a letter about education which I think is very appropriate I must request a view says Lewis to his mother before I conclude this letter to son John Marx his brother the college at Williamsburg William and Mary as soon as it shall be thought that his education has been sufficiently advanced to fit him for that seminary for you may rest assured that as you regard his future prosperity you had better make any sacrifice of his property than suffer his education to be neglected or remain incomplete give my love to my brothers and sisters and all my neighbors and friends and rest assured yourself of your most devoted filial affection of yours marry whether Lewis not a great letter it is indeed written from Fort Mandan the middle of North Dakota in sometime in late March or early April of 18 five and sent down people maybe wonder how do you how do you deliver a letter I was about to ask that question sent down the river in the keelboat which

had now been discharged and then when the keelboat got to St. Louis it was either the letter either went overland to Washington and Avarmall County or it went around through New Orleans but it eventually got to Lewis's mother and she must have been pleased when she read an account by her now famous son from what was then known as the great bend of the Missouri River in Dakota I suppose now we are to let all our listeners know something that maybe only a portion of them know that in addition to being Thomas Jefferson on the road you two Portray marry whether Lewis so questions about the Lewis and Clark expedition are for you second nature as well you know I've been I've spent the last couple of years Bill doing a little more than read about Lewis and Clark and go on the Lewis and Clark trail I just came back the time of this recording from a little auto journey in the American west and I went twice to the grave of Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau which is in the Jordan River Valley in southeastern Idaho

Charbonneau was born on this Charbonneau was born on February 11th 185 at Fort Mandan then he accompanied his famous mother Sacagaroia all the way to the Pacific Ocean and back again he later came to with his parents to St. Louis where Clark sponsored them and took up the boys education and in a certain sense adopted Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau as his own and Charbonneau went to Europe for a time and became a kind of linguist and a celebrity guide to the American west and he had a very long and interesting and colorful life he's sort of in a in a certain way the forest gump of his time he's in the California gold rush he was on his way to the Montana gold rush at the time of his death he was involved in some of the Indian fighting in the southwest and he then died at the age of 66 on his way from California to the California to the Montana gold fields and he died at inskip station in what's the Jordan Valley of southeastern Oregon extreme southwestern Idaho and I went there twice on this on this recent trip to sort of pay respects to

this site I've been doing a lot of Lewis and Clark traveling a lot of Lewis and Clark writing a lot of Lewis and Clark lecturing and research and I do also perform as Mary whether Lewis among a number of other characters that I have done it was called Pompey wasn't he by the folks on the expedition yeah a car called him my dancing boy Baptist and also pomp and he named a place in Montana Pompey's tower now known as Pompey's pillar which is near east of buildings I also stopped there and on Pompey's pillar along the Yellowstone northeast of of Billings Montana we have the only known graffiti of the expedition Clark signed his name there in 186 and it's been of course much improved upon by visitors but but it's still there and it's behind plexiglass and you can for a fee you can go up and look at at Clark signature he signed his name many many times on trees and rocks and so on this is the only known

remnant of his of his presence in the American west this was on the return journey and so yeah the boy was called poppin and actually I had on a cultural tour that I did a couple of years ago in Idaho we heard from Rosanne Abrahamson who is a Sacagawea expert that her pronunciation is Sacagawea there in the Salmon River basin in Idaho and she said pop and Shoshone means rich the care and that his nickname was actually a Shoshone nickname the boy with the the full head of rich hair and that Clark adopted that he heard it somehow being spoken by Sacagawea and adopted that and called him my boy pomp but he called him in a late letter my dancing boy baptized his formal name and so it gives you quite a picture doesn't it my dancing boy it sounds like little sharpened out did a fair amount of entertainment while the fiddle was being scratched at late at night on the Lewis and Clark trail very interesting and what a life you know to to kind of start out in that in that

greatest of western exploration trips and and yet be around for for the gold rush in California which was certainly one of the most dramatic moments here again in American history some would consider it the cultural low well we've reached another one sense but if you watch television lately but you know I was just been writing about this for an essay for the North Dakota Quarterly about Lewis and Clark in North Dakota and I they gained four new members of the expedition in North Dakota and three of them were Charbonneau's Sacagawea of course Tucson Charbonneau the bumbling cook of the expedition and then Clark's dancing boy baptized and and what I said in this essay was that each one of them had a very interesting story to tell I mean what would we give for the memoirs of any one of them even even the bungler Charbonneau these were people Charbonneau had been all over the place and he had many many wives and he was he was famous long after Lewis

and Clark he was still famous in the 1830s in North Dakota as a kind of strange French famous cook and guide in translator and a womanizer and none of these people left documents unfortunately we would give anything to have Sacagawea's version of the journey or Jean-Baptiste Memoirs he was in a sense of like a woodstock child you know born born for this expedition and then he went on he used that celebrity for the rest of his life and was everywhere in the west and if he had written an oral if he had given an oral account to a ghostwriter we'd have a national treasure indeed indeed missed opportunities missed opportunities but these these questions from young people are extremely delightful and we want more from around the country on every possible subject particularly Jefferson subjects but as our listeners are sensing we're spending a fair amount of time talking about Lewis and Clark because the country is and it was Jefferson's pet project and in a later program Clay I would like to actually in our out of character segment ask you how this bison teniole is

going on around the country is it over yet thank you very much for another enlightening program we'll we'll be with our listeners on a later day good day bill crystal the Squab Valley United Church of Christ is sponsoring a dialogue between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on the topic of Warren Peace this will occur on July 17th 2004 at Lake Tahoe please call one five three zero five eight one four zero one one again the number is one five three zero five eight one four zero one one and ask for extension one Jane Carlson for ticketing information music for the Thomas Jefferson Hour was provided by Steven Swinford of Reno Nevada you may visit mr. Jefferson's homepage on the worldwide web at www.thhyphengepherson.org to ask mr. Jefferson a question or to donate nine dollars and receive a copy of today's program on cd please call one eight eight four five eight eight

eighteen oh three again the number is one eight eight four five eight eighteen oh three you have been listening to the Thomas Jefferson Hour with humanity scholar Clay Jenkins and portraying Thomas Jefferson in his host bill crystal a congregational minister in Reno Nevada thank you for listening and we hope you join us again next week for another entertaining historically accurate and thought provoking commentary through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson