MERIWETHER LEWIS (1774-1809) and WILLIAM CLARK (1770-1838)

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark made their historic journey from May 1804--five months after President Jefferson's decision to purchase the Louisiana territory from France--to September 1806, literally opening the West to American exploration and settlement. The first official account of the journey did not appear in print until eight years after the expedition's return to St. Louis.

Captain Lewis was supposed to have edited the journals for publication, but he met with an untimely death, probably by murder, while traveling through Tennessee in 1809. The task then fell to Clark, who asked the Philadelphia lawyer Nicholas Biddle, to complete the job. Biddle agreed, but soon passed the work on to Paul Allen, a Philadelphia journalist. The journals were finally edited and made ready for publication in 1812, but were not published until February 20, 1814. Originally, an edition of 2,000 was to be printed, but when missing copies were tallied and defective copies weeded out, only 1,417 remained. These sold at six dollars a copy. The Biddle-Allen revision of the Lewis and Clark journals left intact the raw quality of diaries written in the wilderness, retaining their sense of danger and high adventure.

Gift of the University of Delaware Library Associates