November 18, 2024 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Stephen Ambrose shares some stories from his #1 New York Times bestseller, Undaunted Courage.
https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
We have a particular affection for American history stories. And
as always, all of our American History stories are brought
to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. Go
to Hillsdale dot edu to sign up for their free
(00:32):
and terrific online courses. Stephen Ambrose was one of America's
leading biographers and historians. Ambrose passed in two thousand and two,
but his epic storytelling can now be heard here at
Our American Stories thanks to those who run his estate.
Here's Ambrose to share some stories from his number one
(00:52):
New York Times bestseller, Undaunted, Courage, Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson,
and the opening of the America and West.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
The Lewis and Clark Expedition began in the White House on.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
January eighteenth, eighteen o three, when President Thomas Jefferson sent
a special secret message to Congress requesting the appropriation of
two thy five hundred dollars for an exploration west of
the Mississippi River. There was a little bit of cost overrun,
but that goes with the territory in their right center.
Ed just goes to the territory. You know it's going
(01:26):
to be cost overrun. Lewis and his co commander William
Clark discovered hundreds of new plants and animal species, and
saw and described sites that no man had ever seen.
Much of what they saw has been altered in the
past two century, but pristine sites on the trail can
still be seen and appreciated. Some of these localities were
(01:49):
privately owned, others have been protected by law. Our assurance
to our grandchildren and their grandchildren that Americans will always
be able to see some part of the Lewis and
Clark expts that they saw. It's our national epic, our honesty.
(02:10):
The journals of Lewis and Clark are our national poems.
It was our greatest feat of exploration. Thanks to Lewis
and Clark, we unified the continent, created a country that
is democratic, and their stretches from sea to shining Sea,
(02:36):
and we began the process of unifying the American people.
The Corps discovery included Frenchmen, Welshman, Irishmen, Englishmen, Scandinavians, an
African American slave, a teenage Indian woman and her son.
These people came from all across the United States, and
(02:58):
they formed a team. Lewis was the first man ever
to go from Tidewater to Tidewater. No one else had
ever done that.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
He left Washington, d c. And went to Astoria, Oregon.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
In the process, he traveled through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and
West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa,
South Dakota and North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And Oregon, and he brought us all together.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
He was the first American citizen to stand on the
Continental Divide. He explored the Louisiana Purchase, which extended only
to the Continental Divide. The Louisiana Purchase was all that
land drained by the Missouri and Mississippi River.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Lewis got to the.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Headwaters and looked down on the drange of Columbia River,
and thus added that great northwestern empire of Oregon, Idaho,
and Washington to the United States. It was a federal project.
The leaders were captains in the United States Army. The
(04:18):
Corps Discovery consisted of a platoon of sergeants, corporals, and privates.
Congress appropriated the funds for supply. Jefferson never spent federal
money more wisely or better than when he made the
Louisiana purchase. The United States Congress never did better than
(04:42):
it voted the funds to support the expedition. In the
nineteenth century, our best brains went to work on discovery
and description of nature, Lewis and Clark, Charles Darwin, so
many others.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
In the twentieth century, we put our best minds to
work on making better weapons. The drive was to conquer nature.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Henry Ford who put the world on wheels, the Right
Brothers who put us up in the air, and then
on the weapons.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Many many, many, but Enrico Fermi and j.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Robert Oppenheimer who gave us the culmination of the.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Drive to conquer nature in the atomic bomb.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Nowadays, Bill Gates and so many others. When I was
a kid, everybody over fifty years old, maybe even over
forty years old, remembers this. In this country, the phrase
that's history was the worst put down you could give.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
That's history. Who the hell cares that happened? Forget it?
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Well, we've turned to history in this country. I've been
a history teacher all of my life. And I've seen
this go up and down. At the time of the
Vietnam War, it was awfully hard to get students interested
in history. Thomas Jeffson, he was a slaveholder. George Washington,
he was a slaveholder. The United States and World War Two, well,
we dropped the atomic bomb and that was a big mistake,
(06:16):
and suw on. They didn't want to know anything about
American history. And it's not only our older folks, but
it is the kids.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
They want to know, where did we come from? Who
are we?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
How did it happen that we became the richest and
the freest nation that ever was. It happened because of
men like Jefferson and Washington and all of our other heroes.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
And we need to make sure that our kids are aware.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
That indeed, and that is what so much of what
we do is about. It's why we love these history stories.
Where did we come from? How did it all happen?
And my goodness, there's no bigger and better adventure story
than the Lewis and Clark story, and a great federally
funded project. And without the federal funds, this would not
have happened. And what a good use of money. Jefferson
(07:04):
buying all of that land, buying it for a song,
one of the greatest investments of countries ever made in property.
When we come back, more of Stephen Ambrose on his
book on Daunted Courage.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Here on Our American.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Story, liehbib here the host of Our American Stories.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Every day on this show, we're bringing.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do
the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go
to Auramerican Stories dot com and give. And we returned
(08:10):
to history in Stephen Ambrose, the author of Undaunted Courage,
as he speaks about the polit surprise winning historian of
the American West, Bernard Devoto. Devoto's editing of the journals
of Lewis and Clark in the nineteen fifties became the
Lewis and Clark flashpoint for Stephen Ambrose as well as
the American public.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Here again is Ambrose.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
This is a man spending eight, ten, twelve hours a
day all alone with the journals of Lewis and Clark,
editing he wrote almost to the day, one hundred and
fifty years after the expedition began. He wrote this on
April fifteenth, nineteen fifty three. He wrote it as generally
(08:57):
agreed that the journals are American classic, and certainly they
are by far the most interesting, as well as the
most important original narrative of North American exploration. Nevertheless, few
people have read them. That was disconcertingly true in nineteen
fifty three, and it was Bernard Devoto who changed that.
(09:24):
As Devoto says, the journals of Lewis and Clark are
one of our national literary treasures. Their exploration of the
western two thirds of the continent was our epic voyage.
Their account of the expedition is our epic poem. Sitting
at the campfire after an exhausting day, using a quill
(09:47):
pin that had to be dipped into the ink well
every other word. Balancing those leather covered journals on their
knees captain's meriwether, Lewis and William Clark managed to write
with prose that is distinguished for its verve, sharp imagery, immediacy,
and tension as they describe the events of the day,
(10:09):
as well as the land and its people and its
flora and fauna. Devoto recognized, it is something that I
have learned, and he practiced it, and I have copied him.
And that is that Reading the journals of Lewis and
Clark puts you in the canoe with them and trekking
(10:32):
over the Lolo Trail and wintering over in North Dakota
and at the mouth of the Columbia, and all that
is in between. You see the country through their eyes.
It unfolds before you the lower Missouri, the great bend
of the river, the junction with the Yellowstone, the White Cliffs,
(10:52):
and the Missouri River breaks, the great Falls, three forks,
LEMI pass the Columbia Gorge and on.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
To the Pacific.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
And they do this they take us with them with
a vividness that is enhanced because you see with the
fresh eyes of the first literate men. To see such
sights throughout surprise is achieved better than in most novels,
in nearly all history books. What they experienced we cannot
(11:26):
because there is no unexplored continent left.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
No matter where we go.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
We know about the country in advance because we have
seen pictures, we have studied the maps, we have read
about it. But it's one of the glories of the
Lewis and Clark journals that we can visit their campgrounds
and see what they saw. It is accessible in a way.
The columbus Is voyage, or Admiral Byrd's flights over the Poles,
or the experience of the other great explorers are not
(11:54):
in the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Hard structures
of the Lewis and Clark Trail are nearly pristine. For Devoto,
there was no greater joy than sitting around the fire
of the Lewis and Clark campsite after a day of
hiking in their footsteps or canoeing in their wake, reading
(12:15):
aloud from their journals the captain's accounts of what had
happened to them on the day they were there on
that spot, and getting the circle around the fire to
lean forward just a bit so as to not miss
a single word. As Devoto notes, the charm of the
writing is increased by their run on sentences. They were
(12:38):
as good at this style as William Faulkner or Gertrude
Stein and of course by their spelling. They lived in
a pre dictionary age when freedom of spelling was the rule.
Cap'n Clark had twenty six different ways to spell the
words sue, not one of them correctly. The combination of
(13:00):
puzzling out what the word is and the run on
sentences can be a bit daunting at first, but when
you stick with it, you get the reward soon enough,
learning how to catch their rhythm and pace so that
you can almost hear them speaking to you, aided by
the spellings, which are as close as the captains can
get to how they said those words, and by the
(13:22):
pace of the action, as the captains move along from
danger to near disaster, to challenges overcome, to moments of triumph,
most of all that marvelous moment when they reached the
coast and William Clark wrote his immortal line ocean in view,
Oh the joy. These entire sentences brought together by a
(13:46):
strong verb at the end. Beyond the immediacy of the writing,
the captains never ever flash forward or flash back, which
is the best way to write history. This immediacy an
attribute that helps make the journals so gripping.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
To Devoto and all of us.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Who have come to these journals through Devoto is their
range and breadth. This includes the colorful cast of characters
and the variety of subjects covered, as well as the
high drama Saka Jouea, the teenage Indian mother and her
infant son, pomp York the slave, John Coulter, the discoverer
of Yellowstone Park and our first mountain Man, and all
(14:29):
the other enlisted men, and George Dryer, the hunter and interpreter,
Sergeant Floyd, the only man to die, and the twenty
eight enlisted men. Each one gets caught in a snapshot
taken by the captains and preserved in the journals. Snapshots
of this little incident or that anecdote that brings the
characters to life, providing portraits and personality clues. The Indian
(14:52):
characters are utterly fascinating. Kamowiett of the Shoshones, Big White
of the Mandans, Komo Wal of the Klatsips, Black Buffal
of the Sioux, Old Toby of the Shoshones, Broken Arm
of the Nezpiers. The captains recorded their conversations, always done
in the sign language, their customs, their dress, their economy,
their politics, and their individual quirks by themselves. The captains
(15:16):
passages on the Native Americans they encountered, some of them,
like the Shoshones and nez Piers, who had never before
seen a white man. These are an invaluable contribution to
our literature and to our ethnography. The principal characters are,
of course, the captains. They fascinated de Voto, as they
do all of us. On virtually every page, the Captains
(15:39):
reveal a bit more of their personalities. Lewis gets angry
and snaps at one of the men. Clark sees Charboneau
strike his wife Saka Joea, and I upbraided him severely.
The Sioux challenged the expedition, and Clark feels himself grow
warm with indignation and determination not to be bullied. Lewis
sees the Rocky mountains and is overjoyed. These and countless
(16:01):
other vignettes make the captains appealing and approachable, to the
point that you feel they are old friends. They complimented
each other on the expedition. Lewis was the better botanist,
Clark the better boatman. Lewis the better zoologist, Clark the
better cartographer, And they compliment each other as writers, Clark
(16:24):
could be lyrical, but as Devoto points out, more often
he was a stick to the point, no wasted words
kind of a writer. Lewis was more introspective, more likely
to share his worries and hopes. The single word that
stands out in these journals is sharing through them. You
(16:44):
cross the continent by canoe, by horseback, by foot, with Lewis.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
And Clark as your guides.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
You are with them when they discover a new animal,
a new plant, a new fish, a new Indian tribe,
another feature.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Whatever your hobby or.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Interest, there is something in there for you. For bird watchers,
you get the first description ever written of dozens of
new species, the first attempt to ever put down on
paper what the song of the western meadow lark sounds like.
For hunters, you're present for the greatest hunting experience anyone
ever had, better even than the Indians, because the men
(17:20):
of the expedition had rifles. When Lewis at the Great
Falls wrote that he had just seen the biggest buffalo
herd he had ever seen, that meant it was likely
the biggest heard any white man ever saw.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
And you're listening to Stephen Ambrose talking about the remarkable
memoirs of Lewis and Clark, as he called it, their
epic poem, and indeed it is America's epic poem. It
is the odyssey, it is our odyssey. More of this
remarkable story, the story of Lewis and Clark, told by
the best there is in the business, Stephen Ambrose. Here
(17:56):
on our American stories. And we continue with our American
stories in Steven Ambrose talking about Undaunted Courage is terrific,
(18:16):
number one New York Times bestseller about Lewis.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
And Clark and their expedition.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
And he spent quite a bit of time in the
last segment talking about Bernard Devoto and the importance of
his editing of the Lewis and Clark memoirs. Let's return
to Stephen Ambrose.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
For botanists, for zoologists, for cartographers or ethnologists, for scholars
of the military, for medical historians. There's something here for everyone. Now,
I goush, and I know it, you think, I gosh,
where do you read Devoto's introduction to the Journals of
Lewis and Clark? Now, why was it that for all
(18:59):
of these years, earned fifty years after the expedition, the
American people who knew the outlines of the story had
not read the journals. That's a story in itself. For
one hundred years after they were written, the journals remained unpublished.
The only account available of the expedition was a paraphrase.
This was Meriwether Lewis's fault. After returning to Washington in
(19:23):
November eighteen oh six, he promised Thomas Jefferson, almost a
father to him, and William Clark, the best friend a
man ever had, that he would get to work to
prepare the journals for a printer. But then he suffered
from what has to be described as the all time
case of writer's block. He just didn't get anything done.
(19:44):
He always found a way to put off the work.
A fortune was awaiting him with publication, so high was
the interest in the United States and in Europe about
his discoveries. But when he died of his own hand
in eighteen oh nine, Meriwether Lewis had not prepared a
single line for the printer, and he had actually lied
to both Jefferson and Clark about it, assuring them that
(20:07):
he was getting on with the work. With Lewis's death,
Clark asked Jefferson to prepare the journals for publication, and
surely he was the ideal man to do it, but
Jefferson demurred. He had retired and was devoting his time
to Monticello in the University of Virginia. Clark felt diffident
(20:27):
about his own skills and sought an editor for the work.
Eventually he found Nicholas Biddle of Philadelphia, who agreed to
take on the task. Biddle was in the happy position
of having married the wealthiest woman in America, so he
could well afford to take a couple of years off
and work on this most interesting project. In eighteen fifteen,
(20:49):
Biddle published a narrative account of the expedition, based on
the journals and completely true to the original, but still
a paraphrase of the captain's writings. It was not until
nineteen four that a complete edition of the journals has
written by the captains appeared. It was edited by Reuben
gold Thwaites of the Wisconsin State Historical Society and published
(21:12):
by Dodd, Mead and Company in eight volumes. For the
first time, the world got to see what the captains
had written. But eight volumes is a staggering site to
any reader other than a Lewis and Clark scholar. It
was not until nineteen fifty three, a century and a
half after they were written, that the journals became available
(21:36):
to the public. That year, Houghton Mifflin Company brought out
Bernard Devoto's one volume condensation of the Journals of Lewis
and Clark. Since that year it has been continuously in
print and read by hundreds of thousands. The success of
(21:57):
this edition, edited by Burne Devoto, is well earned because
he did a superb piece of work. Devoto it was
one of the literary lions of his day, at the
top rank among all American writers. As an essayist, a novelist,
a curmudgeon, a pundit, a reviewer, an editor, a mark
(22:18):
Train scholar, and so much more. He was beloved by
a remarkable range of fellow authors. Wallace Stegner was a
friend and fan who wrote Devoto's biography and edited an
edition of his letters. Catherine Drinker Bowen, Edith Merriless, Arthur
(22:39):
Slessinger Junior, and Wallace Stegner combined to do a volume
of tribute to Devoto shortly after his death. For any
writer of history or Americana that is as great a
tribute as could be imagined. Born in Agen in eighteen
ninety seven, he came east to Boston, where he spoke
(23:00):
for his native West through his column The Easy Care
for Harper's Magazine.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
He had been a.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Soldier in World War One. During World War II, he
devoted himself almost completely to the history of the West.
His trilogy The Year of Decision eighteen forty six, Across
the Wide Missouri and the Course of Empire, is magnificent
in its sweep and scope, and is still read today.
I was an undergraduate when Devoto was turning out this
(23:27):
great trilogy, and I can remember the eager anticipation that
we had when we knew another book was coming from
the typewriter of Bernard Devoto. Devoto's account of early nineteenth
century America and its westward movement is triumphant, full of
hubris and genuine accomplishment.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Bold, forward looking, dynamic on the march.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Devoto's work has a moral certainty to it that was
appropriate to the generation that had overcome the depression, defeated Hitler,
defeated Mussolini, defeated Tojo, held back the communist Chinese in Korea,
held back the Soviet Union, along the banks of the
Albi River. In Devoto's long narrative of the Lewis and
(24:14):
Clark expedition and the Course of Empire, he uses words
that come spring directly out of that World War Two experience.
For example, the captains never appease any potential enemies.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
They know better.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
They faced them down. After completing the narrative of the
Course of Empire, Devoto turned his attention full time to
editing the journals. It is his great work. He opens
with a disclaimer, this condensation of the Lewis and Clark
Journals cannot be used instead of the original edition for
(24:49):
the purposes of scholarship. He has that one right, But
he was even more right when he added it has
been edited for the general reader. In the Journals is
published by Dodd Meade. The original eight volumes, editor of
Reuben gold Thwaites, included everything the captains wrote, much of
which was repetitious. Clark often copied Lewis's journal. Much of
(25:13):
the original journal is too detailed for anyone other than
a professional naturalist. Long descriptions of birds, plants, animals. What
you get from Devoto is the heart of the story,
without sacrificing any of the narrative or very much of
the natural history. Bernard Devoto is no cloistered scholar. He
(25:34):
got out on the trail. He canoed in the wake
of Lewis and Clark. He walked in their footsteps over
the Lolo Trail. He followed them on horseback through Idaho.
He traveled where the captains did, saw what they saw,
to some degree, experienced what they had experienced. One of
(25:55):
his favorite sites was on the Lolo Trail in Idaho,
just over the Continental Divide at Lolo Pass along today's
US Highway twelve, there is a magnificent grove of gigantic
cedars standing beside the fast flowing and incredibly beautiful Locksa River.
(26:15):
There Devoto liked to pitch his tent and read the
journals and think about the captains, and there his ashes
were scattered. The site today is marked by the state
of Idaho as the Bernard Devoto Grove, and it has
maintained as it was when Lewis and Clark came through.
This is an altogether fitting tribute to this great America.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Thank you, and you've been listening to Steven Ambrose saluting
another historian, and that man is Bernard Devoto, without whose
work undaunted courage would not have been possible. Taking what
only research scholars could have pourred through, and poured through
it himself, lived the trail himself, and ended up writing
(27:01):
well the book that would prompt Ambrose's undaunted courage. Stephen
Ambrose on Lewis and Clark, and also on a great historian,
Bernard de Voto. All of these stories here on our
American Story
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
We have a particular affection for American history stories. And
as always, all of our American History stories are brought
to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. Go
to Hillsdale dot edu to sign up for their free
(00:32):
and terrific online courses. Stephen Ambrose was one of America's
leading biographers and historians. Ambrose passed in two thousand and two,
but his epic storytelling can now be heard here at
Our American Stories thanks to those who run his estate.
Here's Ambrose to share some stories from his number one
(00:52):
New York Times bestseller, Undaunted, Courage, Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson,
and the opening of the America and West.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
The Lewis and Clark Expedition began in the White House on.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
January eighteenth, eighteen o three, when President Thomas Jefferson sent
a special secret message to Congress requesting the appropriation of
two thy five hundred dollars for an exploration west of
the Mississippi River. There was a little bit of cost overrun,
but that goes with the territory in their right center.
Ed just goes to the territory. You know it's going
(01:26):
to be cost overrun. Lewis and his co commander William
Clark discovered hundreds of new plants and animal species, and
saw and described sites that no man had ever seen.
Much of what they saw has been altered in the
past two century, but pristine sites on the trail can
still be seen and appreciated. Some of these localities were
(01:49):
privately owned, others have been protected by law. Our assurance
to our grandchildren and their grandchildren that Americans will always
be able to see some part of the Lewis and
Clark expts that they saw. It's our national epic, our honesty.
(02:10):
The journals of Lewis and Clark are our national poems.
It was our greatest feat of exploration. Thanks to Lewis
and Clark, we unified the continent, created a country that
is democratic, and their stretches from sea to shining Sea,
(02:36):
and we began the process of unifying the American people.
The Corps discovery included Frenchmen, Welshman, Irishmen, Englishmen, Scandinavians, an
African American slave, a teenage Indian woman and her son.
These people came from all across the United States, and
(02:58):
they formed a team. Lewis was the first man ever
to go from Tidewater to Tidewater. No one else had
ever done that.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
He left Washington, d c. And went to Astoria, Oregon.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
In the process, he traveled through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and
West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa,
South Dakota and North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And Oregon, and he brought us all together.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
He was the first American citizen to stand on the
Continental Divide. He explored the Louisiana Purchase, which extended only
to the Continental Divide. The Louisiana Purchase was all that
land drained by the Missouri and Mississippi River.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Lewis got to the.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Headwaters and looked down on the drange of Columbia River,
and thus added that great northwestern empire of Oregon, Idaho,
and Washington to the United States. It was a federal project.
The leaders were captains in the United States Army. The
(04:18):
Corps Discovery consisted of a platoon of sergeants, corporals, and privates.
Congress appropriated the funds for supply. Jefferson never spent federal
money more wisely or better than when he made the
Louisiana purchase. The United States Congress never did better than
(04:42):
it voted the funds to support the expedition. In the
nineteenth century, our best brains went to work on discovery
and description of nature, Lewis and Clark, Charles Darwin, so
many others.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
In the twentieth century, we put our best minds to
work on making better weapons. The drive was to conquer nature.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Henry Ford who put the world on wheels, the Right
Brothers who put us up in the air, and then
on the weapons.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Many many, many, but Enrico Fermi and j.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Robert Oppenheimer who gave us the culmination of the.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Drive to conquer nature in the atomic bomb.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Nowadays, Bill Gates and so many others. When I was
a kid, everybody over fifty years old, maybe even over
forty years old, remembers this. In this country, the phrase
that's history was the worst put down you could give.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
That's history. Who the hell cares that happened? Forget it?
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Well, we've turned to history in this country. I've been
a history teacher all of my life. And I've seen
this go up and down. At the time of the
Vietnam War, it was awfully hard to get students interested
in history. Thomas Jeffson, he was a slaveholder. George Washington,
he was a slaveholder. The United States and World War Two, well,
we dropped the atomic bomb and that was a big mistake,
(06:16):
and suw on. They didn't want to know anything about
American history. And it's not only our older folks, but
it is the kids.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
They want to know, where did we come from? Who
are we?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
How did it happen that we became the richest and
the freest nation that ever was. It happened because of
men like Jefferson and Washington and all of our other heroes.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
And we need to make sure that our kids are aware.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
That indeed, and that is what so much of what
we do is about. It's why we love these history stories.
Where did we come from? How did it all happen?
And my goodness, there's no bigger and better adventure story
than the Lewis and Clark story, and a great federally
funded project. And without the federal funds, this would not
have happened. And what a good use of money. Jefferson
(07:04):
buying all of that land, buying it for a song,
one of the greatest investments of countries ever made in property.
When we come back, more of Stephen Ambrose on his
book on Daunted Courage.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Here on Our American.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Story, liehbib here the host of Our American Stories.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Every day on this show, we're bringing.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do
the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go
to Auramerican Stories dot com and give. And we returned
(08:10):
to history in Stephen Ambrose, the author of Undaunted Courage,
as he speaks about the polit surprise winning historian of
the American West, Bernard Devoto. Devoto's editing of the journals
of Lewis and Clark in the nineteen fifties became the
Lewis and Clark flashpoint for Stephen Ambrose as well as
the American public.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Here again is Ambrose.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
This is a man spending eight, ten, twelve hours a
day all alone with the journals of Lewis and Clark,
editing he wrote almost to the day, one hundred and
fifty years after the expedition began. He wrote this on
April fifteenth, nineteen fifty three. He wrote it as generally
(08:57):
agreed that the journals are American classic, and certainly they
are by far the most interesting, as well as the
most important original narrative of North American exploration. Nevertheless, few
people have read them. That was disconcertingly true in nineteen
fifty three, and it was Bernard Devoto who changed that.
(09:24):
As Devoto says, the journals of Lewis and Clark are
one of our national literary treasures. Their exploration of the
western two thirds of the continent was our epic voyage.
Their account of the expedition is our epic poem. Sitting
at the campfire after an exhausting day, using a quill
(09:47):
pin that had to be dipped into the ink well
every other word. Balancing those leather covered journals on their
knees captain's meriwether, Lewis and William Clark managed to write
with prose that is distinguished for its verve, sharp imagery, immediacy,
and tension as they describe the events of the day,
(10:09):
as well as the land and its people and its
flora and fauna. Devoto recognized, it is something that I
have learned, and he practiced it, and I have copied him.
And that is that Reading the journals of Lewis and
Clark puts you in the canoe with them and trekking
(10:32):
over the Lolo Trail and wintering over in North Dakota
and at the mouth of the Columbia, and all that
is in between. You see the country through their eyes.
It unfolds before you the lower Missouri, the great bend
of the river, the junction with the Yellowstone, the White Cliffs,
(10:52):
and the Missouri River breaks, the great Falls, three forks,
LEMI pass the Columbia Gorge and on.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
To the Pacific.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
And they do this they take us with them with
a vividness that is enhanced because you see with the
fresh eyes of the first literate men. To see such
sights throughout surprise is achieved better than in most novels,
in nearly all history books. What they experienced we cannot
(11:26):
because there is no unexplored continent left.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
No matter where we go.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
We know about the country in advance because we have
seen pictures, we have studied the maps, we have read
about it. But it's one of the glories of the
Lewis and Clark journals that we can visit their campgrounds
and see what they saw. It is accessible in a way.
The columbus Is voyage, or Admiral Byrd's flights over the Poles,
or the experience of the other great explorers are not
(11:54):
in the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Hard structures
of the Lewis and Clark Trail are nearly pristine. For Devoto,
there was no greater joy than sitting around the fire
of the Lewis and Clark campsite after a day of
hiking in their footsteps or canoeing in their wake, reading
(12:15):
aloud from their journals the captain's accounts of what had
happened to them on the day they were there on
that spot, and getting the circle around the fire to
lean forward just a bit so as to not miss
a single word. As Devoto notes, the charm of the
writing is increased by their run on sentences. They were
(12:38):
as good at this style as William Faulkner or Gertrude
Stein and of course by their spelling. They lived in
a pre dictionary age when freedom of spelling was the rule.
Cap'n Clark had twenty six different ways to spell the
words sue, not one of them correctly. The combination of
(13:00):
puzzling out what the word is and the run on
sentences can be a bit daunting at first, but when
you stick with it, you get the reward soon enough,
learning how to catch their rhythm and pace so that
you can almost hear them speaking to you, aided by
the spellings, which are as close as the captains can
get to how they said those words, and by the
(13:22):
pace of the action, as the captains move along from
danger to near disaster, to challenges overcome, to moments of triumph,
most of all that marvelous moment when they reached the
coast and William Clark wrote his immortal line ocean in view,
Oh the joy. These entire sentences brought together by a
(13:46):
strong verb at the end. Beyond the immediacy of the writing,
the captains never ever flash forward or flash back, which
is the best way to write history. This immediacy an
attribute that helps make the journals so gripping.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
To Devoto and all of us.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Who have come to these journals through Devoto is their
range and breadth. This includes the colorful cast of characters
and the variety of subjects covered, as well as the
high drama Saka Jouea, the teenage Indian mother and her
infant son, pomp York the slave, John Coulter, the discoverer
of Yellowstone Park and our first mountain Man, and all
(14:29):
the other enlisted men, and George Dryer, the hunter and interpreter,
Sergeant Floyd, the only man to die, and the twenty
eight enlisted men. Each one gets caught in a snapshot
taken by the captains and preserved in the journals. Snapshots
of this little incident or that anecdote that brings the
characters to life, providing portraits and personality clues. The Indian
(14:52):
characters are utterly fascinating. Kamowiett of the Shoshones, Big White
of the Mandans, Komo Wal of the Klatsips, Black Buffal
of the Sioux, Old Toby of the Shoshones, Broken Arm
of the Nezpiers. The captains recorded their conversations, always done
in the sign language, their customs, their dress, their economy,
their politics, and their individual quirks by themselves. The captains
(15:16):
passages on the Native Americans they encountered, some of them,
like the Shoshones and nez Piers, who had never before
seen a white man. These are an invaluable contribution to
our literature and to our ethnography. The principal characters are,
of course, the captains. They fascinated de Voto, as they
do all of us. On virtually every page, the Captains
(15:39):
reveal a bit more of their personalities. Lewis gets angry
and snaps at one of the men. Clark sees Charboneau
strike his wife Saka Joea, and I upbraided him severely.
The Sioux challenged the expedition, and Clark feels himself grow
warm with indignation and determination not to be bullied. Lewis
sees the Rocky mountains and is overjoyed. These and countless
(16:01):
other vignettes make the captains appealing and approachable, to the
point that you feel they are old friends. They complimented
each other on the expedition. Lewis was the better botanist,
Clark the better boatman. Lewis the better zoologist, Clark the
better cartographer, And they compliment each other as writers, Clark
(16:24):
could be lyrical, but as Devoto points out, more often
he was a stick to the point, no wasted words
kind of a writer. Lewis was more introspective, more likely
to share his worries and hopes. The single word that
stands out in these journals is sharing through them. You
(16:44):
cross the continent by canoe, by horseback, by foot, with Lewis.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
And Clark as your guides.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
You are with them when they discover a new animal,
a new plant, a new fish, a new Indian tribe,
another feature.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Whatever your hobby or.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Interest, there is something in there for you. For bird watchers,
you get the first description ever written of dozens of
new species, the first attempt to ever put down on
paper what the song of the western meadow lark sounds like.
For hunters, you're present for the greatest hunting experience anyone
ever had, better even than the Indians, because the men
(17:20):
of the expedition had rifles. When Lewis at the Great
Falls wrote that he had just seen the biggest buffalo
herd he had ever seen, that meant it was likely
the biggest heard any white man ever saw.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
And you're listening to Stephen Ambrose talking about the remarkable
memoirs of Lewis and Clark, as he called it, their
epic poem, and indeed it is America's epic poem. It
is the odyssey, it is our odyssey. More of this
remarkable story, the story of Lewis and Clark, told by
the best there is in the business, Stephen Ambrose. Here
(17:56):
on our American stories. And we continue with our American
stories in Steven Ambrose talking about Undaunted Courage is terrific,
(18:16):
number one New York Times bestseller about Lewis.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
And Clark and their expedition.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
And he spent quite a bit of time in the
last segment talking about Bernard Devoto and the importance of
his editing of the Lewis and Clark memoirs. Let's return
to Stephen Ambrose.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
For botanists, for zoologists, for cartographers or ethnologists, for scholars
of the military, for medical historians. There's something here for everyone. Now,
I goush, and I know it, you think, I gosh,
where do you read Devoto's introduction to the Journals of
Lewis and Clark? Now, why was it that for all
(18:59):
of these years, earned fifty years after the expedition, the
American people who knew the outlines of the story had
not read the journals. That's a story in itself. For
one hundred years after they were written, the journals remained unpublished.
The only account available of the expedition was a paraphrase.
This was Meriwether Lewis's fault. After returning to Washington in
(19:23):
November eighteen oh six, he promised Thomas Jefferson, almost a
father to him, and William Clark, the best friend a
man ever had, that he would get to work to
prepare the journals for a printer. But then he suffered
from what has to be described as the all time
case of writer's block. He just didn't get anything done.
(19:44):
He always found a way to put off the work.
A fortune was awaiting him with publication, so high was
the interest in the United States and in Europe about
his discoveries. But when he died of his own hand
in eighteen oh nine, Meriwether Lewis had not prepared a
single line for the printer, and he had actually lied
to both Jefferson and Clark about it, assuring them that
(20:07):
he was getting on with the work. With Lewis's death,
Clark asked Jefferson to prepare the journals for publication, and
surely he was the ideal man to do it, but
Jefferson demurred. He had retired and was devoting his time
to Monticello in the University of Virginia. Clark felt diffident
(20:27):
about his own skills and sought an editor for the work.
Eventually he found Nicholas Biddle of Philadelphia, who agreed to
take on the task. Biddle was in the happy position
of having married the wealthiest woman in America, so he
could well afford to take a couple of years off
and work on this most interesting project. In eighteen fifteen,
(20:49):
Biddle published a narrative account of the expedition, based on
the journals and completely true to the original, but still
a paraphrase of the captain's writings. It was not until
nineteen four that a complete edition of the journals has
written by the captains appeared. It was edited by Reuben
gold Thwaites of the Wisconsin State Historical Society and published
(21:12):
by Dodd, Mead and Company in eight volumes. For the
first time, the world got to see what the captains
had written. But eight volumes is a staggering site to
any reader other than a Lewis and Clark scholar. It
was not until nineteen fifty three, a century and a
half after they were written, that the journals became available
(21:36):
to the public. That year, Houghton Mifflin Company brought out
Bernard Devoto's one volume condensation of the Journals of Lewis
and Clark. Since that year it has been continuously in
print and read by hundreds of thousands. The success of
(21:57):
this edition, edited by Burne Devoto, is well earned because
he did a superb piece of work. Devoto it was
one of the literary lions of his day, at the
top rank among all American writers. As an essayist, a novelist,
a curmudgeon, a pundit, a reviewer, an editor, a mark
(22:18):
Train scholar, and so much more. He was beloved by
a remarkable range of fellow authors. Wallace Stegner was a
friend and fan who wrote Devoto's biography and edited an
edition of his letters. Catherine Drinker Bowen, Edith Merriless, Arthur
(22:39):
Slessinger Junior, and Wallace Stegner combined to do a volume
of tribute to Devoto shortly after his death. For any
writer of history or Americana that is as great a
tribute as could be imagined. Born in Agen in eighteen
ninety seven, he came east to Boston, where he spoke
(23:00):
for his native West through his column The Easy Care
for Harper's Magazine.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
He had been a.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Soldier in World War One. During World War II, he
devoted himself almost completely to the history of the West.
His trilogy The Year of Decision eighteen forty six, Across
the Wide Missouri and the Course of Empire, is magnificent
in its sweep and scope, and is still read today.
I was an undergraduate when Devoto was turning out this
(23:27):
great trilogy, and I can remember the eager anticipation that
we had when we knew another book was coming from
the typewriter of Bernard Devoto. Devoto's account of early nineteenth
century America and its westward movement is triumphant, full of
hubris and genuine accomplishment.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Bold, forward looking, dynamic on the march.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Devoto's work has a moral certainty to it that was
appropriate to the generation that had overcome the depression, defeated Hitler,
defeated Mussolini, defeated Tojo, held back the communist Chinese in Korea,
held back the Soviet Union, along the banks of the
Albi River. In Devoto's long narrative of the Lewis and
(24:14):
Clark expedition and the Course of Empire, he uses words
that come spring directly out of that World War Two experience.
For example, the captains never appease any potential enemies.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
They know better.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
They faced them down. After completing the narrative of the
Course of Empire, Devoto turned his attention full time to
editing the journals. It is his great work. He opens
with a disclaimer, this condensation of the Lewis and Clark
Journals cannot be used instead of the original edition for
(24:49):
the purposes of scholarship. He has that one right, But
he was even more right when he added it has
been edited for the general reader. In the Journals is
published by Dodd Meade. The original eight volumes, editor of
Reuben gold Thwaites, included everything the captains wrote, much of
which was repetitious. Clark often copied Lewis's journal. Much of
(25:13):
the original journal is too detailed for anyone other than
a professional naturalist. Long descriptions of birds, plants, animals. What
you get from Devoto is the heart of the story,
without sacrificing any of the narrative or very much of
the natural history. Bernard Devoto is no cloistered scholar. He
(25:34):
got out on the trail. He canoed in the wake
of Lewis and Clark. He walked in their footsteps over
the Lolo Trail. He followed them on horseback through Idaho.
He traveled where the captains did, saw what they saw,
to some degree, experienced what they had experienced. One of
(25:55):
his favorite sites was on the Lolo Trail in Idaho,
just over the Continental Divide at Lolo Pass along today's
US Highway twelve, there is a magnificent grove of gigantic
cedars standing beside the fast flowing and incredibly beautiful Locksa River.
(26:15):
There Devoto liked to pitch his tent and read the
journals and think about the captains, and there his ashes
were scattered. The site today is marked by the state
of Idaho as the Bernard Devoto Grove, and it has
maintained as it was when Lewis and Clark came through.
This is an altogether fitting tribute to this great America.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Thank you, and you've been listening to Steven Ambrose saluting
another historian, and that man is Bernard Devoto, without whose
work undaunted courage would not have been possible. Taking what
only research scholars could have pourred through, and poured through
it himself, lived the trail himself, and ended up writing
(27:01):
well the book that would prompt Ambrose's undaunted courage. Stephen
Ambrose on Lewis and Clark, and also on a great historian,
Bernard de Voto. All of these stories here on our
American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.