Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West
Stephen E. Ambrose, 1996
Simon & Schuster
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780684826974
Summary
In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back.
Lewis was the perfect choice. He endured incredible hardships and saw incredible sights, including vast herds of buffalo and Indian tribes that had had no previous contact with white men. He and his partner, Captain William Clark, made the first map of the trans-Mississippi West, provided invaluable scientific data on the flora and fauna of the Louisiana Purchase territory, and established the American claim to Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
Ambrose has pieced together previously unknown information about weather, terrain, and medical knowledge at the time to provide a colorful and realistic backdrop for the expedition. Lewis saw the North American continent before any other white man; Ambrose describes in detail native peoples, weather, landscape, science, everything the expedition encountered along the way, through Lewis's eyes.
Lewis is supported by a rich variety of colorful characters, first of all Jefferson himself, whose interest in exploring and acquiring the American West went back thirty years. Next comes Clark, a rugged frontiersman whose love for Lewis matched Jefferson's. There are numerous Indian chiefs, and Sacagawea, the Indian girl who accompanied the expedition, along with the French-Indian hunter Drouillard, the great naturalists of Philadelphia, the French and Spanish fur traders of St. Louis, John Quincy Adams, and many more leading political, scientific, and military figures of the turn of the century.
This is a book about a hero. This is a book about national unity. But it is also a tragedy. When Lewis returned to Washington in the fall of 1806, he was a national hero. But for Lewis, the expedition was a failure.
Jefferson had hoped to find an all-water route to the Pacific with a short hop over the Rockies-Lewis discovered there was no such passage. Jefferson hoped the Louisiana Purchase would provide endless land to support farming-but Lewis discovered that the Great Plains were too dry. Jefferson hoped there was a river flowing from Canada into the Missouri—but Lewis reported there was no such river, and thus no U.S. claim to the Canadian prairie. Lewis discovered the Plains Indians were hostile and would block settlement and trade up the Missouri. Lewis took to drink, engaged in land speculation, piled up debts he could not pay, made jealous political enemies, and suffered severe depression.
High adventure, high politics, suspense, drama, and diplomacy combine with high romance and personal tragedy to make this outstanding work of scholarship as readable as a novel. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 10, 1936
• Raised—Whitewater, Wisconsin, USA
• Death—October 13, 2002
• Where—Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
• Education—B.A., Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A., Louisiana State University
• Awards—(see below)
Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American history, including Undauntd Courage (1996).
Early years
Ambrose was born to Rosepha Trippe Ambrose and Stephen Hedges Ambrose. His father was a physician who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Ambrose was raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Whitewater High School. His family also owned a farm in Lovington, Illinois and vacation property in Marinette County, Wisconsin. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was a member of Chi Psi Fraternity and played on the University of Wisconsin football team for three years.
Ambrose originally wanted to major in pre-medicine, but changed his major to history after hearing the first lecture in a U.S. history class entitled "Representative Americans" in his sophomore year. The course was taught by William B. Hesseltine, whom Ambrose credits with fundamentally shaping his writing and igniting his interest in history.
While at Wisconsin, Ambrose was a member of the Navy and Army ROTC. He graduated with a B.A. in 1957. He also married his first wife, Judith Dorlester, in 1957, and they had two children, Stephenie and Barry. According to Ambrose, Judith died at age 27, when he was 29. A year or two later he married his second wife, Moira Buckley, and adopted her three children, Hugh, Grace, and Andrew. Ambrose received a master's degree in history from Louisiana State University in 1958, studying under T. Harry Williams. Ambrose then went on to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963, under William B. Hesseltine.
Writing
Ambrose's earliest works concerned the Civil War. He wrote biographies of the generals Emory Upton and Henry Halleck, the first of which was based on his dissertation.
Early in his career, Ambrose was mentored by World War II historian Forrest Pogue. In 1964, Ambrose took a position at Johns Hopkins as the Associate Editor of the Eisenhower Papers, a project aimed at organizing, cataloging and publishing Eisenhower's principal papers. From this work and discussions with Eisenhower emerged an article critical of Cornelius Ryan’s The Last Battle, which had depicted Eisenhower as politically naive, when at the end of World War II he allowed Soviet forces to take Berlin, thus shaping the Cold War that followed. Ambrose expanded this into a book, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe.
In 1964 Ambrose was commissioned to write the official biography of the former president and five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. This resulted in a book on Eisenhower's war years (published 1970) and a two-volume full biography (published 1983 and 1984), which are considered "the standard" on the subject. Ambrose also wrote a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon. Although Ambrose was a strong critic of Nixon, the biography is considered fair and just regarding Nixon's presidency.
His books, Band of Brothers (1992) and D-Day (1994), presented from the view points of individual soldiers in World War II, brought his works into mainstream American culture. His Citizen Soldiers (1997) and The Victors (1998) became bestsellers. He also wrote the popular book, The Wild Blue (2001), that looked at World War II aviation.
His other major works include Undaunted Courage (1996) about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Nothing Like It in the World (2000) about the construction of the Pacific Railroad. His final book, This Vast Land (2003), a historical novel about the Lewis & Clark expedition written for young readers, was published posthumously.
Ambrose was also a frequent contributor to magazines such as American Heritage.
Television, film, and other activities
Ambrose appeared as a historian in the 1974 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II. The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. He was also the military adviser for the movie Saving Private Ryan. In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns.
In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. He was a founder of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Awards
Ambrose was the recipient on numerous awards:
- 1998—The National Humanities Medal.
- 2000—The Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award the Department of Defense offers to civilians.
- 2001—The Theodore Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Service from the Theodore Roosevelt Association.
- 2002—an Emmy Award as one of the producers for the mini-series Band of Brothers.
- He also received the George Marshall Award, the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award, the Bob Hope Award from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and the Will Rogers Memorial Award.
Final years
After retiring, Ambrose maintained homes in Helena, Montana, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. A longtime smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2002. His health deteriorated rapidly and seven months after the diagnosis he died, at the age of 66.
Controversy
• Plagarism
In 2002, Ambrose was accused by Tulane Law Professor Sally Richardson and others of plagiarizing several passages in his book, The Wild Blue. Fred Barnes reported in the Weekly Standard that Ambrose had taken passages from Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II, by Thomas Childers, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Ambrose had footnoted sources—but not enclosed in quotation marks—numerous passages from Childers' book.
Ambrose asserted that only a few sentences in all his numerous books were the work of other authors. He offered this defense:
I tell stories. I don't discuss my documents. I discuss the story. It almost gets to the point where, how much is the reader going to take? I am not writing a Ph.D. dissertation.
I wish I had put the quotation marks in, but I didn't. I am not out there stealing other people's writings. If I am writing up a passage and it is a story I went to tell and this story fits and a part of it is from other people's writing, I just type it up that way and put it in a footnote. I just want to know where the hell it came from.
A Forbes investigation of his work found cases of plagiarism involving passages in at least six books, with a similar pattern going all the way back to his doctoral dissertation. The History News Network lists seven of Ambrose's works—The Wild Blue, Undaunted Courage, Nothing Like It In the World, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, Citizen Soldiers, The Supreme Commander, and Crazy Horse and Custer—containing content copied from twelve authors.
• Factual errors and disputed characterizations
In the 1973 ITV television series, The World at War, episode 25, "From War to Peace," Ambrose made basic factual errors. He underestimated the military US manpower as a percentage of the population and miscounted the population, as well.
In Nothing Like It in the World, about the building of the Pacific Railroad, three Western US railroad historians listed more than 60 inaccuracies and madeup quotes. Others found mislabeled maps, inaccurate dates, and geographical errors.
In the introduction to his biography of Eisenhower he claims that former president approached him to write his biography. But the Deputy Director of the Eisenhower Presidential Center revealed a letter from Ambrose to Eisenhower revealing that it was Ambrose who made first approach.
After Eisenhower's death in 1969, Ambrose made repeated claims to have been with Eisenhower "on a daily basis for a couple years" before his death "doing interviews and talking about his life." However, the former president's diary and telephone records show that the pair met only three times, for a total of less than five hours.
For a fuller account (with references) see Wikipedia under "Stephen Ambrose." (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/17/2014.)
Book Reviews
Meriwether Lewis, as secretary to Thomas Jefferson and living in the White House for two years, got his education by being apprenticed to a great man. Their friendship is at the center of this account. Jefferson hand-picked Lewis for the great cross-country trek, and Lewis in turn picked William Clark to accompany him. ... Without adding a great deal to existing accounts, Ambrose uses his skill with detail and atmosphere to dust off an icon and put him back on the trail west.
Publishers Weekly
Ambrose...uses the journals and documents...as well as the traditional sources, to craft a careful and detailed biography of Lewis that will stand as the standard account for some time to come. Ambrose not only recounts the expedition Lewis led with Clark but also explains how Lewis came to head it.... [G]eneral readers will also be enthralled by Ambrose's well-written account. —Stephen H. Peters, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette
Library Journal
Though principally a biography of Meriwether Lewis, this narrative also provides fascinating portraits of Thomas Jefferson and William Clark, Sacagawea, and other members of the group of explorers who journeyed from the Ohio River to the Pacific Ocean in the years 1803-1806. While scholarly and well documented, this account is at the same time a great adventure story, and Ambrose generates a sense of excitement and anticipation.... An eminently readable resource. Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In Undaunted Courage, Ambrose gives us an unbiased account of Meriwether Lewis. He presents Lewis as both a hero and a flawed man. How does Ambrose reconcile these two sides of Lewis's character?
2. Discuss the ways in which Undaunted Courage shares a reading experience with that of a novel. Yet how is reading history unlike reading fiction?
3. Compare and contrast the social conventions of Lewis's time with those of our own—in particular the social standing and treatment of women, blacks, and Indians. How much did the harsh physical environment that people endured affect the attitudes of the time in the arena of racial and sexual equality?
4. What small but significant role did women play in the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition?
5. Discuss the way in which Ambrose clearly depicts the difficulty and confusion that faced both the Americans and the Indians when their paths began to cross. They were different peoples with different ways, and their inability to fully comprehend the other was mutual. Does Ambrose give us a sense of the inevitability of American expansion at the expense of the Indians, or does he suggest and/or imply that there might have been another way?
6. Ambrose brings to life the diversity of Indians in America in the early 1800s. Now, however, there is little trace of the many tribes that Ambrose described. We often consider what the Indians themselves lost, but what does the world lose when a whole culture of people becomes extinct'. Do you think the Indians gained anything from their assimilation?
7. At the end of the book, Lewis commits suicide. What does Lewis's suicide leave the living—both in his own time and ours?Discuss the apparent irony of a man who has endured the hardships, terrors, and rigors of a cross-country expedition, returning a hero, only to commit suicide later?
8. There were many firsts in Undaunted Courage. Lewis was the first white man to explore territory west of the Rockies. York was the first black man these Indians had ever seen. It was the first scientific discovery of many of the floral and fauna specimens Lewis came across during the expedition. What are some other firsts this book reveals?
9. Discuss the importance of Lewis's expedition. Speculate as to why the story of Lewis and Clark has previously been treated rather superficially? Has Undaunted Courage altered your perspective on American history? Why was Ambrose so tempted to go back and reexamine Meriwether Lewis?
10. Beyond its historical significance, Undaunted Courage is a story of a great and exciting adventure. Discuss the various hardships that the expedition endured, as well as the truly wondrous and spectacular sights they encountered. Speculate as to what would be encountered now if one were to follow the same voyage as Lewis and Clark.
(Questions issued by publisher.)