Meriwether Lewis: The Assassination of an American Hero and the Silver Mines of Mexico by Kira Gale, and: The Unknown Travels and Dubious Pursuits of William Clark by Jo Ann Trogdon (review)

These two works join the extensive bibliography on Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and the great journey of discovery to the shores of the Pacific Ocean during the Thomas Jefferson administration. The writers represent the growing interest in local history and the emergence of amateur historians with a laser-sharp focus on specific events and historical figures that impacted their neighborhoods. Conspiracy theories are common elements of the two books, but the methodology is diverse and tailored to the interests of the two writers.

In 2006 Kira Gale published Lewis and Clark Road Trips: Exploring the Trail Across America (Omaha, Neb., 2006), describing some eight hundred tourist destinations along the trail, which she traveled. Her next work, written with James E. Starrs, a forensic law professor at George Washington University, was The Death of Meriwether Lewis: A Historic Crime Scene Investigation (Omaha, Neb., 2009).

Gale’s new study includes General James Wilkinson as a principal player because of his support for the idea in 1800 to capture Spanish Louisiana (providing access to the silver mines of Mexico) in the event that France attacked the United States. Wilkinson is portrayed as the conspirator par excellence who supported Aaron Burr’s effort to take the presidency in the disputed election of 1800, believing it would enable the invasion (see Norman W. Caldwell, “Cantonment Wilkinsonville,” Mid-America, 31 [January 1949], 3–28). But for the invitation from Thomas Jefferson to serve as his private secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis might well have been part of Wilkinson’s private army. While in Philadelphia, Lewis made “preparations to lead an army expedition called ‘The Corps of Volunteers for North Western Discovery’” (p. 157). After 125 pages of a detailed account of the journey, Gale introduces the Burr-Wilkinson conspiracy. When Wilkinson arrived in Kentucky in 1783, he was in the westernmost part of the United States, where the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers met. To the south was Spanish territory in West Florida and the parishes of Spanish Louisiana that extended from Baton Rouge to Mobile.

General James Wilkinson was a veteran of the Revolutionary War who continued to serve in the military for a number of years thereafter. Jefferson appointed him to be the governor of the Louisiana Territory. Philip Nolan traveled to Mexico on Wilkinson’s behalf, where he accepted Spanish silver dollars. Nolan was later killed by the Spanish because of his 1801 expedition to Texas to attempt to gain land and wealth there. The relationship of Burr and Wilkinson was a marriage of convenience that Wilkinson exploited to gain land as well as support from the Spanish who were trying to maintain the function of what Herbert Eugene Bolton has called the “borderlands” to protect their holdings south of the United States. Gale describes Wilkinson as “an instigator and a collaborator” (p. 342). After attending the trial of Aaron Burr at Jefferson’s order, Lewis became the governor of the Louisiana Territory.

Gale is convinced that Lewis did not commit suicide but was murdered by agents seeking to prevent the disclosure of Wilkinson’s involvement with Burr. The strength of the work, however, is the account of the expedition and not the redemption of Lewis. The book is well documented, and there is an extensive bibliography, as well as a functional index.

Jo Ann Trogdon is an attorney who lives in Columbia, Missouri, where she found the 1798–1801 journal of William Clark in the State Historical Society of Missouri. She has previously published articles in Arizona Highways and in...