1804

A curious native tried to wipe the paint off York,
having never seen a black man.

Lewis and Clark head West. Time-Life: 

Lewis was shy and awkward and had a frightening moodiness; a shadow hung over him. A seeker of the wilderness, rather than native to it like Clark, he found his innermost needs satisfied by the challenge of nature. Clark, outgoing, forthright, practical, was a wilderness craftsman and a born leader who understood both the woods and men. It was essential that these two get along. They did. In all the vicissitudes they shared, they differed only on the palatability of dog meat and the necessity for salt.

 

Lewis took his dog, Seaman; Clark took York, “a black giant of a man.” They were gone for twenty-eight months, and many gave them up for dead. On their return, Congress voted both captains 1,600 acres of land, each man 320. 

Paddy Gass, a veteran of the journey, fought in the War of 1812 and lost an eye in battle. He drank up his pension, married at 60, had seven children, and at age 90, wished the troops headed off to fight in the Civil War god speed. 

Rumors of what might be found in the Far West included: a lost tribe of Israel, and possibly a lost tribe of Welshmen. Jefferson thought there might be llama. 

And mastodon!

 

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THIRTY SLAVES from plantations near Natchitoches escape, headed for New Spain, with nine crossing the Sabine River. 

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THE FOLLOWING selections are from Charles Coffin: 

Alexander Hamilton fought at White Plains and also fought at Trenton, Princeton, and Yorktown. Coffin says Burr had been practicing with his pistols for weeks. Hamilton: 

He wrote a tender letter to his wife, and bought a beautiful bouquet for her, bade her an affectionate good-night, arose at daybreak, stole softly out of his beautiful home, walked down to the river, stepped into a boat with Mr. Pendleton and a doctor, and was rowed across the Hudson to Weehawken. The sun was just rising as he landed…

 

At the signal, Burr fired first, fatally wounding his foe. Hamilton fell, his pistol going off, the bullet cutting the twig from a tree. “I had no ill-will toward him; I did not intend to fire,” Hamilton told friends before he died.  

Ministers preached against dueling. Grand juries in New York and New Jersey indicted Burr. The Rev. Dr. Nott, of Schenectady, preached a sermon, calling dueling a sin. Other ministers joined the chorus. 

Afterwards, “men who gave or accepted a challenge, instead of gaining lost the respect of their fellow-men.” (72/134-138)

 

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ACCORDING to one Federalist newspaper, Alexander Hamilton’s death called forth “the voice of deep lament” save from “the rancorous Jacobin, the scoffing deist, the sniveling fanatic, and the imported scoundrel.” (2/303)

 

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WITH JEFFERSON running for a second term, Clement Clarke Moore publishes an anonymous pamphlet attacking the religious and racial views of the Virginian. His polemic, titled in full “Observations upon Certain Passages in Mr. Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, which Appear to Have a Tendency to Subvert Religion, and Establish a False Philosophy,” painted Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia (published in 1785) as an “instrument of infidelity” that “debases the negro to an order of creatures lower than those who have a fairer skin and thinner lips.” 

Today, Moore is remembered, if at all, for his poem, “A Visit to Saint Nicholas,” about “the night before Christmas.” (See: 1823.)