THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603210588
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY TIM WARREN
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
UNDAUNTED COURAGE
Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West
STEPHEN E. AMBROSE
Simon & Schuster. 511 pp. $27.50
As works of history go, this is a ``hero book,'' in which the author attempts to convince us of the exceptional qualities of the subject. Sometimes, the aim of such books is resuscitation of the subject's reputation, or correcting what are perceived to be errors in evaluation. Other times, as with Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West, the subject is argued to be even greater than has been established.
Historian Stephen E. Ambrose, author of several excellent 20th century works (on Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and D-Day), here turns to an earlier time, to a man who, he confesses in his introduction, has fascinated him for more than two decades. Understandably so. By leading with William Clark the famous expedition of 1804-06 into the American West, Meriwether Lewis helped open up that area to expansion - and changed the nation's course irrevocably.
Ambrose writes that Lewis was ``the greatest of American explorers, and in the top rank of world explorers,'' and this volume persuasively makes his case. Drawing on earlier work by Lewis historian Donald Jackson and on the recently published Lewis journals edited by Gary Moulton, Undaunted Courage is a lively, perceptive account of an extraordinary mission and the extraordinary man who led it.
Lewis was born in 1774 in Albemarle County, Va., the son of a well-off planter. He grew up to be a skilled woodsman, then a capable and courageous soldier.
``From the time he was able to sit astride a horse, Meriwether Lewis was a fine, fearless rider,'' Ambrose writes, adding that Lewis ``became a great hiker, with feet as tough as his butt.''
His father also was a friend of another Virginian gentleman farmer, Thomas Jefferson. When Jefferson became president in 1801, he named Lewis his private secretary. In addition to seeking Lewis' assistance in day-to-day matters, Jefferson already was thinking about an ambitious exploration of the American West.
In 1804, Lewis was on his way west with Clark, whom he had befriended in the Army, and a group of tough frontiersmen. Their task, Ambrose writes, was ``to explore newly acquired territory (the Louisiana Purchase), to find the water route to the Pacific, to extend commerce, to collect specimens of science, and to establish an American claim on the Oregon country.'' They were also to establish America's sovereignty over numerous Indian tribes.
It was almost a superhuman enterprise, but Lewis accomplished it as well as could be expected. He and Clark provided some of the first maps of the area, collected hundreds of animal and mineral specimens and sent them back to Jefferson (even a live prairie dog), and negotiated their way through an astonishingly fertile American West - and often an unfriendly one, due to understandably suspicious Indians and a brutal northern winter.
Ambrose draws frequently from Lewis' journal in giving us a vivid account of these heroic but entirely human participants. (Drunkenness in the company was common, as was contracting venereal disease.)
The presence of dust-jacket blurbs from non-historians Ken Burns and Hugh Sidey signals that Undaunted Courage is aiming for a wide audience. Fortunately, Ambrose has done his homework, and this is not one of those popular histories with scanty research and much padding, though the book's tone may irritate those who don't need their history sugar-coated.
In all, Undaunted Courage is quite well done. Ambrose, while an admirer of Lewis, is not a worshiper. He establishes that the explorer was an alcoholic, often hot-headed and prone to manic depression, which, he speculates, might have led to his suicide in 1809. Lewis may not have needed another advocate, but he has done well with Ambrose. MEMO: Tim Warren is a writer who lives in Silver Spring, Md. by CNB