[1] During the following winter Mr. Merry had opportunity to fulfill his threat. In February, 1804, the President again invited him to dine, in the following words:

“Thomas Jefferson asks the favor of Mr. Merry to dine with a small party of friends on Monday, the 13th, at half past three.”

Mr. Merry, still smarting all these months, stood on his dignity and addressed his reply to the Secretary of State.

Reviewing at some length what seemed to him important events, he added:

“If Mr. Merry should be mistaken as to the meaning of Mr. Jefferson’s note, and it should prove that the invitation is designed for him in a public capacity, he trusts that Mr. Jefferson will feel equally that it must be out of his power to accept it, without receiving previously, through the channel of the Secretary of State, the necessary formal assurance of the President’s determination to observe toward him those niceties of distinction which have heretofore been shown by the executive government of the United States to the persons who have been accredited as our Majesty’s ministers.

“Mr. Merry has the honor to request of Mr. Madison to lay this explanation before the President, and to accompany it with the strongest assurance of his highest respect and consideration.”

The Secretary of State, who seems to have been acting as social secretary to Mr. Jefferson, without hesitation replied as follows:

“Mr. Madison presents his compliments to Mr. Merry. He has communicated to the President Mr. Merry’s note of this morning, and has the honor to remark to him that the President’s invitation, being in the style used by him in like cases, had no reference to the points of form which will deprive him of the pleasure of Mr. Merry’s company at dinner on Monday next.

“Mr. Madison tenders to Mr. Merry his distinguished consideration.”

The friction arising out of this and interlocking incidents was part of the unfortunate train of events which later led up to the war of 1812.

[2] It is generally conceded that Theodosia Burr Alston must have been acquainted with her father’s most intimate ambitions, and with at least part of the questionable plans by which he purposed to further them. Her blind and unswerving loyalty to him, passing all ordinary filial affection, was a predominant trait of her singular and by no means weak or hesitant character, in which masculine resolution blended so strangely with womanly reserve and sweetness.

[3] Mr. Merry did so and reported the entire proposal made by Burr. The proposition was that the latter should “lend his assistance to his majesty’s government in any manner in which they may think fit to employ him, particularly in endeavoring to effect a separation of the Western part of the United States from that which lies between the mountains in its whole extent.”

But though deeply interested in the conspiracy to separate the Western country, Mr. Merry was not too confiding, for in his message to Mr. Pitt he added the following confidence, showing his own estimate of Burr:

“I have only to add that if strict confidence could be placed in him, he certainly possesses, perhaps in a much greater degree than any other individual in this country, all the talents, energy, intrepidity, and firmness which it requires for such an enterprise.”

[4] The original journals of these two astonishing young men—one of them just thirty years old, the other thirty-four—should rank among the epic literature of the world. Battered about, scattered, separated, lost, hawked from hand to hand, handed down as unvalued heritages, “edited” first by this and then by that little man, sometimes to the extent of actual mutilation or alteration of their text—the journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark hold their ineffacable clarity in spite of all. Their most curious quality is the strange blending of two large souls which they show. It was only by studying closely the individual differences of handwriting, style, and spelling, that it could be determined what was the work of Lewis, which that done by Clark.

And what a labor! After long days of toil and danger, under unvarying hardships, in conditions of extremest discomfort and inconvenience for such work, the two young leaders set down with unflagging faithfulness countless thousands of details, all in such fashion as showed the keenest and most exact powers of observation. Botanists, naturalists, geographers, map-makers, builders, engineers, hunters, journalists, they brought back in their notebooks a mass of information never equaled by the records of any other party of explorers.

We cannot overestimate the sum of labor which all this meant, day after day, month after month; nor should we underestimate the qualities of mind and education demanded of them, nor the varied experience of life in primitive surroundings which needed to be part of their requisite equipment. It was indeed as if the two friends were fitted by the plan of Providence for this great enterprise which they concluded in such simple, unpretending, yet minutely thorough fashion. Neither thought himself a hero, therefore each was one. The largest glory to be accorded them is that they found their ambition and their content in the day’s work well done.

[5] Cam-e-ah-wit was the name of Sacajawea’s brother, the Shoshone chief. The country where Lewis met him is remote from any large city today. Pass through the Gate of the Mountains, not far from Helena, Montana, and ascend the upper valley of the Missouri, as it sweeps west of what is now the Yellowstone Park, and one may follow with a certain degree of comfort the trail of the early explorers. If one should then follow the Jefferson Fork of the great river up to its last narrowing, one would reach the country of Cam-e-ah-wit. Here is the crest of the Continental Divide, where it sweeps up from the south, after walling in, as if in a vast cup, the three main sources of the great river. Much of that valley country is in fertile farms today. Lewis and Clark passed within twelve miles of Alder Gulch, which wrote roaring history in the early sixties—the wild placer days of gold-mining in Montana.

As for Sacajawea, she has a monument—a very poor and inadequate one—in the city of Portland, Oregon. The crest of the Great Divide, where she met her brother, would have been a better place. It was here, in effect, that she ended that extraordinary guidance—some call it nothing less than providential—which brought the white men through in safety.

Trace this Indian girl’s birth and childhood, here among the Shoshones, who had fled to the mountains to escape the guns of the Blackfeet. Recall her capture here by the Minnetarees from the Dakota country. Picture her long journey thence to the east, on foot, by horse, in bull-hide canoes, many hundreds of miles, to the Mandan villages. It is something of a journey, even now. Reverse that journey, go against the swift current of the waters, beyond the Great Falls, past Helena, west of the Yellowstone Park, and up to the Continental Divide, where she met her brother. You will find that that is still more of a journey, even today, with roads, and towns, and maps to guide you. Meriwether Lewis could not have made it without her.

While he was studying the courses of the stars, at Philadelphia, preparing to lead his expedition, Sacajawea was learning the story of nature also; and she was waiting to guide the white men when they reached the Mandan villages. Who guided her in such unbelievably strange fashion? The Indians sometimes made long journeys, their war parties traveled far, and their captives also; but in all the history of the tribes there is no record of a journey made by any Indian woman equal to that of Sacajawea. Why did she make it? What hand pointed out the way for her?

A statue to her? She should have a thousand memorials along the old trail! Her name should be known familiarly by every school child in America!

[6] The import of the visit of Governor Lewis and Mrs. Alston to the court-room during the Burr trial is better conveyed if there be held in mind the personality of that eccentric and extraordinary man, so prominent in the history of America and the traditions of Virginia—John Randolph of Roanoke. Irascible, high-voiced, high-headed, truculent, insolent, vitriolic—yet gallant, courteous, kind, just, and fair; the enemy and the friend in turn of almost every public man of his day; truckling to none, defiant of all, sure to do what could not be predicted of any other man—it was always certain that John Randolph of Roanoke would do what he liked, and do what—for that present time—he fancied to be just.

Now the ardent adherent, again the bitter caluminator of Jefferson, it would be held probable that John Randolph of Roanoke would do what he fancied Thomas Jefferson had not asked him to do, or had asked him not to do. But the shrewd old man at Washington spoke advisedly when he said that John Randolph of Roanoke would try the Burr case in the jury-room, and himself preside as judge, counsel, and jury all in one!