19th Century – Sharing History

The Corps of Discovery

May 14, 2024June 15, 202419th CenturyLeave a Comment

On May 14, 1804, The Corps of Discovery set off up the Missouri River from St. Louis. The objective of this expeditionary group was to explore the U.S.’s newly acquired land, observe the Native American villages on that land, and potentially find new customers for the country’s fur trade. This expedition, led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark, is one of the most famous in U.S. history.

In truth, Lewis and Clark’s famous expedition began about one year before they actually set sail up the Missouri River. On May 2, 1803, the United States signed a treaty with France to purchase the Louisiana Territory This was a vast tract of land that included present-day Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and, most importantly to Thomas Jefferson, the port of New Orleans. The U.S. agreed to purchase this land from the French government for approximately $15 million. That would equate to about $352 million today.

Wanting to explore the country’s new expansion, President Thomas Jefferson secured funding from Congress for an expedition. He asked his secretary, Meriwether Lewis to head up the group. Lewis asked his friend William Clark to share the command with him. On May 14, 1804, Lewis and Clark along with about 40 other men making up the Corps of Discovery began sailing up the Missouri River. By August, they’ve made it to Iowa, where they hold a council with the Oto and Missouri tribes. They called this area Council Bluffs. By late October, the Corps reached present-day Bismarck, North Dakota, where they find the villages of Mandan and Hidatsa. It is there they cross paths with a Canadian fur trader named Toussaint Charbonneau and his wife, a young Shoshone girl named Sacagawea. Lewis and Clark know that they will need the Shoshone to help them with their passage through the Rocky Mountains, so they hire a pregnant Sacagawea and her husband to help with the translation. In addition to her political help with the tribes, Sacagawea teaches the group much about surviving in the western wilderness. It is almost a year before they complete the passage over the Rockies.

Map of the travels of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

In November 1805, the expedition finally reaches their goal: the Pacific Ocean. They end up in present-day Washington after sailing along the Columbia River, never finding the mythical Northwestern Passage that many believed would take the travelers over water directly to the Pacific. Once the Corps reached their destination, they turned and began the long trek back to St. Louis. It is September 1806 by the time the group returns to where they started. Two and a half long years later, people thought the men of the Lewis and Clark expedition were dead. However, they did return and brought with them artifacts, animals, and journals that would inspire American interest for centuries.

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Andrew Jackson: Saved By Divine Providence?

January 30, 2024January 29, 2024Uncategorized, US HistoryLeave a Comment

On January 30, 1835, President Andrew Jackson visited the Capitol building in Washington D.C. to attend the funeral of Warren Davis, a member of the House of Representatives. As he exited the building, a man stepped from behind a column, pulled a pistol from his jacket, pointed it at the president, and fired. This was the first assassination attempt of a U.S. President in history.

Luckily for Andrew Jackson, the pistol pulled by Richard Lawrence, his would-be assassin, misfired. Jackson, in a fit of rage, charged Lawrence, hitting him several times with his cane. Lawrence proceeded to pull a second pistol from his jacket and shot at the president. The second gun also misfired. Experts later reported that the chance of both of Lawrence’s pistols misfiring was 1 in 125,000. Many Americans at the time, including President Jackson himself, thought the president must have been saved by divine providence.

However, conspiracy theories also abounded. Jackson was sure that it was his political opposition, headed up by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. While this proved to be untrue, some have suggested that it was Calhoun’s statement to the press several days before that prompted Lawrence to make an attempt on the president’s life. Calhoun said that the president was “a Caesar who ought to have a Brutus.” In any case, during Lawrence’s trial, which interestingly enough was prosecuted by Francis Scott Key of Star-Spangled Banner fame, it became very clear that Lawrence was mentally instable. Lawrence was convinced that he was King Richard III, the rightful monarch of England. He was sentenced not guilty by reason of insanity and was placed in a home for the mentally ill.

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On This Day: April 14

April 14, 2023June 26, 2023Uncategorized, US HistoryLeave a Comment

On April 14, 1865, as the nation celebrated the end of the Civil War, its President, Abraham Lincoln, attended a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. Often considered one of the darkest moments in American history, this night at the theater ended with John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, sneaking into the President’s box and shooting him in the back of the head.

Most Americans know the story of the assassination, including that as John Wilkes Booth jumped down from President Lincoln’s box onto the stage, he yelled “Sic semper tyrannis” (thus always to tyrants). You might not know that the phrase appears in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, after Brutus assassinates Caesar.

As an actor himself, Booth would have been familiar with the phrase as well as its interpretation, meaning that tyrants will always be overthrown. The phrase was also adopted as the motto of the state of Virginia at the dawn of the American Revolution, no doubt a dig at the sovereign King George. Intending to overthrow what he saw as an autocratic government, Booth was the mastermind behind a conspiracy that intended to take out the President as well as Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. He and his co-conspirators hoped they could decapitate the Union government and revive the Confederacy.

Thankfully, Booth’s efforts to upend the government did not succeed, however; after being shot, President Lincoln was carried across the street to a boarding house, where he succumbed to his injuries the following morning.

To read more about this event, start here:

Washington Post: Abraham Lincoln’s assassination: Great joy, then a gunshot