The Seekers (26 page)

Breathing normally again, he resumed reading.

The President is likewise grateful for your restraint in withholding an account of his special and confidential message to the Congress of January eighteenth last, even though he is well aware that certain details of that message reached you promptly as a result of your wide acquaintance with the legislators of your state. By now you surely know that the President’s request for the sum of two thousand, five hundred dollars to fund an expedition into the remote Western reaches of the continent has been approved by the Congress. The purpose of the expedition is twofold—to expand our national commerce, and to perpetuate friendly relations with the Indian tribes.

That amused Gilbert. The piqued Massachusetts conservatives from whom he’d heard about the January request complained they were being asked to indulge Jefferson’s “literary pursuits”—and his desire to increase scientific knowledge of the vast land mass west of the Mississippi. Gilbert had assumed there was more to it, and still did.

Gazing at the letter, he wondered who had recopied it for the author. Jefferson’s aide was known to be a wretched speller, only able to approximate the sound of certain words. An ironical failing for one who held the title of secretary, Gilbert thought.

Now, sir, it is my privilege to report that my letter is undoubtedly the last you shall receive from me in my present post, as the President has signally honored me by naming me commandant of the aforementioned expedition. Together with my fellow officer, Mr. Wm. Clark of Virginia, whom I chose for his courage and intelligence as well as for his remarkable skills in drawing and map making, I have plans to embark with a small party of explorers from the settlement of St. Louis in the spring of next year. Our route will take us to the headwaters of the great river Missouri, and thence to the Pacific. Hopefully, we shall complete this last stage of our journey by means of the Northwest River Passage long rumored to exist.

I shall be leaving my present duties within a very few days to seek my companions, who must be good hunters, stout, healthy, unmarried men, accustomed to the woods and capable of bearing bodily fatigue in pretty considerable degree. I will also be making divers stops at the Federal arsenal for military equipment, at Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etcetera for good calico shirts, looking glasses, jewelry, beads, scissors and other items to be presented to the various tribal chieftains in the most friendly and concilatory manner.

It is no longer possible to keep a venture of this magnitude entirely secret. However, a certain prudence is still necessary in view of the Nation’s recent acquisitions in the approximate geographic area to be traversed by our Corps of Discovery. Your cooperation in referring to said Corps as a purely scientific body will be most deeply appreciated.

With kindest good wishes for your continued prosperity, and humble thanks for your many editorial expressions of support for the Administration, I trust I have the honor of remaining

Your obdt. friend,

Meriwether Lewis (Capt.),

Secretary to the President

With a delicious shiver of excitement, Gilbert reread the closing passages of the letter, then smiled. The Federalist newspapers had exercised no restraint at all concerning Jefferson’s secret message, growling about “frivolous and costly intellectual endeavors”—which proved they were exactly as confused as the president meant them to be. Some of Captain Meriwether Lewis’ oblique phrasing, however, invested the undertaking with a significance—a purpose—Gilbert believed he understood.

He laid the letter aside, turned in his chair to regard his expensive beaver hat. Such hats were increasingly popular; here too it was the Englishman, Beau Brummel, who set the fashion. If Brummel adopted a beaver hat, every gentleman must have a beaver hat! Gentlewomen too—with suitable alterations in design, of course.

Gilbert’s thoughts turned to the source of the fur which the hatters brushed and worked into such soft, lustrous nap. Montreal and the straits of Michilimackinac were already major gateways through which fur gathered around the lakes reached the European fur markets.

Most sought after were
castor gras d’hiver
—the winter skins of the beavers. The winter pelts were premium priced because only they yielded the superlative felt for the hats such as Gilbert wore. But other, less choice furs and skins were in demand as the growing middle and lower classes developed an appetite for small touches of luxury. From elk and deer came the leather for gloves. Muskrat and raccoon and the hide of the fabled bison could be turned into modestly priced coats, coat linings and collar trim.

The British in Canada dominated the fur trade on the lakes and in the country along the Missouri. Hired Frenchmen wintered on the distant reaches of that unmapped river, trapping or trading for pelts. In the spring they took their bundles to Michilimackinac or to posts of the Hudson’s Bay Company north of there. Though Michilimackinac now belonged to the United States, commercial licenses issued to the Canadians permitted them to use the island as a headquarters.

But a few of the French winterers—the men whose fathers and grandfathers had pioneered the trade years earlier—disliked all Englishmen, and journeyed down to St. Louis on the Mississippi to sell their catches to Americans trying to gain a foothold in the lucrative industry. Gilbert didn’t doubt that one of the objectives of Jefferson’s western expedition was the discovery of new routes to help American traders capture a larger share of the fur business. Because national rivalries were involved, a purpose like that would, of necessity, be kept secret until it was accomplished—

As would other details of the mission, simply because the president’s monumental purchase—which some New Englanders called totally illegal—was sketchy on certain questions of boundaries. By exploring, Captain Lewis might help settle future disputes. Possession, as the old saying claimed, was still nine points of the law.

Establishment of territorial rights would blunt the thrust of Canadian expansion too, balk the fur entrepreneurs already pushing their trapping parties west and south—

The Louisiana acquisition had made it all possible. It had also come as a stunning surprise to the country.

Minister Plenipotentiary Monroe had sailed to France the preceding January to investigate the possibility of buying the port of New Orleans, and perhaps some additional territory in the West Floridas, for no more than two million dollars. On arrival, Monroe was offered not merely the requested territory, but all of the Louisiana lands west of the Mississippi and north of the Gulf!

The turnabout in French policy—marking the abandonment of Bonaparte’s vision of an empire in the western hemisphere—had two causes: the failure of the French military to suppress a decade-long slave revolt on the island of Haiti, and, closer to home, the threat of renewed hostilities with Britain.

More than eight hundred and thirty thousand square miles were involved in the offer. Astonishingly, Jefferson quickly accepted it—and the price of sixty million francs, or about fifteen million in dollars. The sum included the payment of some American war debts. By Gilbert’s reckoning, the purchase itself amounted to something like three pennies per acre—which had to be one of the most remarkable real estate bargains of recorded history.

Gilbert had already read an edited text of the treaty of cession. For safety’s sake, three copies of the full document had been rushed to the United States by three different couriers aboard three fast packets. The Senate had yet to ratify the treaty, however. And in the inevitable debate, old positions were being turned topsy-turvy.

The president, known to favor strict interpretation of the Constitution, adopted a somewhat broader view where the purchase was concerned. He argued that constitutional power to govern territory implied the right to acquire it. The majority of New England Federalists, normally loose constructionists, had likewise reversed themselves, insisting that nowhere in the Constitution was the president authorized to buy new land. Gilbert suspected Jefferson had made a pragmatic decision, bending principle to accommodate his conviction that the purchase would enrich the country in everything from minerals and timber—and fur-bearing animals—to much-needed land for settlement and agricultural cultivation.

From reading the edited text, Gilbert was well aware that the boundaries of the ceded land were vague, especially in the north and far west, where a vast mountain chain separated the inland prairies from the Pacific coastal region which a Boston skipper had explored in 1792. Discovering a great river that poured down out of the mountains—the western end of the legendary Northwest Passage, perhaps?—the skipper had christened it with the popular name “Columbia.”

Gilbert admired Jefferson’s labyrinthine thinking. With one stroke—the expedition—he could solidify the nation’s claim to new territory
and
aid an increasingly important sector of the economy.

Suddenly he sat upright. Snatched Lewis’ letter and scanned it.

He blinked several times. A smile slowly lifted the corners of his mouth. He just might have stumbled onto something—!

He rose quickly, tucked the letter into the pocket of his coat which lay neatly folded over another chair. He paced back and forth for a minute. Then he sat down. He tented his fingers and tilted his chair back, soothed by the faint and rhythmic
thump-thump
of the book presses churning out pages on the first floor. Despite his youth, he resembled nothing so much as a frail old man cogitating.

Gilbert knew what his critics said of him. That he had an almost driven desire to succeed—to be a good steward of the assets left by Philip Kent’s passing. As a result, he sometimes behaved like a man three times his years. He never let it trouble him. Thinking without the passion of youth could be an advantage.

It proved so now, as he looked at Abraham’s problems in an objective way.

He believed the problems sprang from three interrelated sources. The first was Abraham’s obvious guilt about being responsible for his wife’s death.

The second, perhaps as deep and fundamental as the first—although Abraham had never even mentioned it to Gilbert—was the rift between father and son when Abraham and his bride set out for the west. Philip’s death during Abraham’s absence had effectively prevented any healing of the wounds of either party.

The third source of the problems was Abraham himself.

Looking back to his own boyhood, Gilbert could recall very nearly worshiping his half brother. His precipitous entry into the world of adult affairs had purified his thinking on many subjects, burned away old illusions. He could make a more accurate appraisal now: Abraham was a man of weaker character than their father.

Gilbert didn’t consider it callous to form such judgments of the living and the dead. In all things, he tried to be rational. He knew it would have been difficult indeed for almost any young man, himself included, to have matched Philip Kent’s mental and physical toughness.

To offset his limp, Philip had kept himself in perfect condition. He had constantly educated himself—a process made easier by his professional involvement with books and journalism. Gilbert, sickly as a child, had never faced the necessity of competing with his father on both fronts. Physically he was no match. That gave him leave to devote himself to keeping up with Philip’s mind as best he could.

Abraham, sadly, had lived completely in Philip’s shadow—and suffered by comparison. When Abraham married Elizabeth, stirring the so-called Fletcher temperament into the brew, no wonder explosions resulted.

Against that background, Gilbert analyzed the idea that had popped into his mind a few minutes ago. A mad idea, some would say—perhaps even Abraham himself! Yet Gilbert embraced it because he could no longer permit Abraham’s behavior to go unchecked. Not only was his half brother destroying himself with his drinking and troublemaking, he was harming his son. Perhaps irreparably.

As Gilbert sat and pondered, beams of slanting sunshine turned his cheeks to the color of warm ivory. His mind roved over tales told by fur factors who had made the difficult trip to the country’s western outposts, St. Louis and Michilimackinac, there to bargain with the trappers whose wanderings had taken them into the country Lewis proposed to cross and map. The factors brought back astonishing, almost fanciful accounts of a sea of grass stretching west toward the mountain rampart. They spoke of gigantic herds of the bison like those the Kentucky settlers had slain and eaten for years.

Out there, it was said, the red tribes were different from Indians of the east. They raised and rode horses, acquiring a dangerous mobility lacked by nations such as the Shawnee.

And now Mr. Meriwether Lewis was captaining an expedition to that very land. Abraham had soldiered with Lewis under General Wayne. Yes, and with the other one—the younger brother of George Rogers Clark. By God, it was perfect!

Even though the solution carried an element of risk, Gilbert didn’t shrink from it. In the two years since he’d taken charge of Kent and Son, he had proved over and over that risk-taking could pay off handsomely. The only difference now was in the nature of what was at stake. Not money, but a man’s life and sanity.

The question, then, was whether to consult Abraham first or present him with an accomplished fact. Thinking a few minutes more, Gilbert decided on the latter course. Abraham must have no excuse to back out, no more latitude in which to indulge his excesses. The press room was nearing the point of mutiny.

His mind raced. Much remained to be done before he went home for the evening. And much remained after that. He’d have to speak to Abraham as soon as his half brother returned from whatever den he’d crawled into after the fight.

Beyond that, he needed to gain his wife Harriet’s consent to her role in the plan. She had disliked Abraham and Jared—but particularly Abraham—since the day the two had come home after Elizabeth’s death. The fact that Harriet was now in her eighth month of her first pregnancy wouldn’t make Gilbert’s job any easier. It would require extra effort on his part to make sure dinner this evening was composed and cordial—an appropriate forum for him to share his plan with his spouse before broaching it to Abraham.