Frances Hunter
blog of the author To the Ends of the Earth
Frances Hunter's Journal
September 2005
September 30, 2005: Early American Trails
One of the many challenges in researching Ends was the problem of logistics--how to get the characters moved around to where we needed them to be. At some points in the novel we have all the major characters in motion separately from one another over large portions of the country.
It turns out that both transportation and communication were still extremely difficult in 1809. Most roads and trails in the early days were just crude footpaths originally blazed by Indians or buffalo. The idea of building good roads was in its infancy. People who were unencumbered -- traveling on foot or horseback -- pretty much just traveled wherever they wanted to. Only people who needed to move a lot of stuff--settlers with wagons or the Army--needed to blaze a road.
Evidently, a good rider could make pretty decent time on these old trails. For example, Meriwether Lewis's traveling companion, Major James Neelly, later claimed that he and Lewis made 50 miles a day on the Natchez Trace. This over a difficult road with a sick man and a great deal of luggage. We had to evaluate Neelly's claim and try to figure out where Lewis was on any given day. Lewis's itinerary became the framework on which we hung the journeys of the other major characters.
To figure out the travel aspect of the book, we found ourselves busy with big maps and oversize calendars, plotting where each person needed to be and whether it was physically possible for them to be there on that date. The best source of information on the early roads comes from genealogists, who try to determine the immigration routes their ancestors took into the country.
Just to recount one of many challenges we had to work through: when Clark learns that Lewis is in trouble, thus setting his journey in motion, it's because he receives a letter from Lewis from Fort Pickering (present-day Memphis). This is a plot device taken from a real-life letter that Lewis mailed Clark from New Madrid, Missouri (and which seems to have been lost, its contents now unknown). There are about 283 miles between St. Louis and Memphis. We needed Clark to get the message as soon as possible, which made a river journey unacceptable. In this pre-steam era, it took many days to travel upstream on the Mississippi between the two outposts.
But taking the rate of 50 miles a day, a good rider could make St. Louis in 5 1/2 days. We created a character who could do this--he eventually evolved into Sergeant John Thomas, an important supporting character and one of the only purely fictional characters in the book. As far as we could determine, there was no wagon road between Memphis and St. Louis as of this date. Sergeant Thomas must have traveled via old Indian trails. Good thing he was an experienced woodsman!
September 28, 2005: Lewis & Clark CSI
One of the key scenes in Ends involves the discovery of the body of Meriwether Lewis. In writing this scene, we had to decide how graphic we were going to be. I spent some time reading up on forensic pathology to learn what the condition of Lewis's body may have been by the time of its discovery in the novel. If you're so inclined, here are some interesting links on the subject:
In the end, we decided to go fairly easy on the details. I remember certain books, such as Angela's Ashes, in which sickening details of human life and death were so graphic that sometimes the rest of the author's message was lost. We didn't want that to happen here: after all, we're not trying to write Lewis & Clark: CSI. At the same time, we realized that the reader had to be convinced that it was really Lewis in the grave and that he was really dead.
It was surprising to test the book with people who didn't already know that Lewis died on the Natchez Trace. To a person they were floored by the plot development, even though Lewis's personal jeopardy had been hammered home repeatedly from the opening page of the novel. One reader said he didn't know how the story could possibly go on. Another woman kept writing in the margins "I don't believe it" and "No." Both said that they thought that it would turn out to be someone else in the grave.
Thus, the scene in which Clark discovers the body and reacts to what he sees turned out to be absolutely critical to setting up the rest of the novel. If we pulled our punches then the reader might never really accept Lewis's death, and might not want to follow Clark on the rest of his journey to learn the truth about what happened. Along with Clark, the reader had to be in denial, then be hit across the face with the terrible reality of what had happened.
Clark moved swiftly to the other end and yanked away the rope. Then, he began to unfold the blanket from around the body. He wanted to flinch, to run away, but this was his duty, his obligation, he had to see--
Lord, it was bad. Weak sunshine had burned away the mist and now cast soft light upon the decaying corpse of a man, naked except for a shirt. Clark heard York stumble away into the nearby woods, choking. His servant was either heaving or crying--or, most likely, both. Clark wanted to do the same.
But he couldn't. Not now. Not yet. He forced his eyes to travel over the body. For a moment, he allowed himself to think that this could not be his friend. Though tall, this man was thin, not strapping like Lewis. This man was bearded; except on the most strenuous portions of the Expedition, Lewis was meticulous about shaving. Lewis could handle himself in any fight; this man was covered with cuts and bruises--
Breathing shallowly through his mouth, Clark made himself look into the face. The eyes were filmed over, the skin darkened, the features cruelly distorted by death. But even so--even so--
God, there was no use denying it! Lewis's deep-set eyes, his hawkish nose, his strong chin were as familiar to him as his own face. This was the ruin of Meriwether Lewis.
September 26, 2005: Andrew Jackson and the Indians
Just got back from an awesome trip to Portland and the Columbia and Snake Rivers. We'll post about the trip soon. In the meantime, I wanted to share some further reflections on Andrew Jackson, inspired by my recent reading of the chapter on Indian removal in the second volume of Robert V. Remini's flagship Jackson biography, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832. Whole books have been written about Andrew Jackson and the Indians, so there are undoubtedly many nuances here that Remini couldn't capture in a brief overview. Nonetheless it was informative.
Jackson was elected president in 1828 with a promise to reform the government and make it more responsible to the people and representative of their views. He viewed Indian removal as a keystone of his reform program. But more importantly, the former general viewed Indian removal as crucial to national security. Strong and independent Indian tribes still existed in the southeastern United States. Jackson believed that the United States would never be secure as long as these nations operated as separate and uncontrollable entities within U.S. borders. Historically, these Indians had not only attacked settlers on their own, but formed alliances with foreign powers (Britain and Spain) to harass the U.S.
Jackson began his program with Mississippi. Though he went in person to negotiate with the Choctaws and Chickasaws, what he really offered was an ultimatum: assimiliate or get out. If individual Indians wanted to stay in Mississippi and abide by state and federal law, they were welcome to do so. But if they wanted to retain their tribal identity, they were required to move to a new territory that had been selected for them beyond the Mississippi in present-day Oklahoma. Jackson viewed this as a humane alternative for the tribes. If they remained in Mississippi, war would continue between whites and Indians until the Indians were exterminated, as had already happened in the Northeast. (Jackson didn't have any patience with northeastern "bleeding hearts" who counseled co-existence with the Indians years after they had slaughtered or driven out the Indians in their part of the country.)
But Jackson's main concern was not Indian well-being but military and national security. With the Choctaws and Chickasaws gone, Mississippi would be virtually emptied of Indians, thus tightening the nation's grip on the lower Mississippi River valley and increasing America's security against foreign invasion from the south--something Jackson knew all about from his decades of frontier warfare with the British and Spanish.
After some hesitation, the Indians agreed, since they really didn't have a choice. Unfortunately, the actual process of removal became one of the horror stories of American history. Beginning with the Choctaws it decimated whole tribes. A truly staggering loss was inflicted on the Indians not only in terms of lives, but also culture, language, and customs. Jackson was callous about the suffering of the Indians and was unmoved by the unfolding calamity. The sad thing is that he was a moderate in the context of his times. Some people thought he was too easy on the Indians.
The important thing to remember about Jackson and his Indian policy is that he did not view the Indians as Americans. In fact, Indians were not considered to be American citizens until well into the 20th century. They were not members of the American body politic with rights and protections under the U.S. Constitution (as the Cherokees unsuccessfully argued in court).
Instead, Jackson viewed the Indian tribes as sub-national entities (in modern terms, something akin to terrorist organizations) that presented an external threat. In terms of presidential power, he was not enforcing civil law when he removed them; he was exercising his national defense powers to remove hostile foreigners without constitutional rights. His concern was defeating the enemy and thus preserving liberty for Americans.
While many people might not agree today with what Jackson did, and certainly not with the way it was done, it's interesting to think about the context of his actions and how it echoes many of the issues we still debate today.
September 9, 2005: Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom
The premier Andrew Jackson scholar is Robert V. Remini, and I'm now two-thirds done with his great trilogy on the life of Jackson. Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 begins with Jackson's return home from Florida, where he served as military governor, and goes through his first term as president.
There are many interesting aspects to Jackson's life covered in this volume, particularly his devotion to his wife Rachel and his devastating grief when she died a few weeks after he was elected president. But the part that I found the most interesting was how Jackson revived the American political system. In many ways he was the founder of the system we still use today.
The 1820s are often mistakenly referred to as "The Era of Good Feeling." James Monroe was president, and there wasn't really any organized opposition. As Remini documents, there was very little good feeling involved except for those officials who were lining their pockets at the expense of the public. The strong ideological parties that had emerged from the early Republic (Federalists, founded by Alexander Hamilton, and Republicans, founded by Thomas Jefferson) had deteriorated into personal factions. The Federalists had all but disappeared entirely, and the Republicans no longer stood for much of anything except graft.
Needless to say, there were many people who were upset and alarmed by the corruption and saw it as a real threat to the American republic (remember, it was only about 50 years since the Declaration of Independence and less than 40 years since the Constitution had been written). These Republicans wanted to restore the two-party system, reconstituting their party along the old Jeffersonian doctrines. They soon hit upon the idea of recruiting the most popular man in the country, retired General Andrew Jackson, to run for president against establishment candidate John Quincy Adams. Jackson was a military hero, but he was much more than a figurehead candidate. A self-made man, Jackson had a unique personal style. In his lifetime, he had been both a rough and violent frontiersman and a dignified Southern planter, and he knew when and how to project each side of his personality. Jackson was also a brilliant instinctive politician and a strong, capable executive. Most importantly, he was deeply committed to the idea of restoring the ideals of the Revolution to the White House. Jackson was the first man from humble beginnings to seek the presidency, and he was the first candidate to go directly to the people for support, bypassing the elites.
In 1824, Adams defeated Jackson in an election that was thrown into the House of Representatives. The so-called "corrupt bargain" with Henry Clay that handed "Q" the White House also sealed his political death warrant. At last the rot at the heart of Washington politics was laid bare in front of the people. A rematch was inevitable, and Q operated under a cloud for his entire four years in office.
Naturally, the politicians, newspaper editors, and ordinary citizens who coalesced around Jackson in 1828 wanted to defeat Q and see Jackson triumph. But the rise of Jackson was about more than the candidacy of one man. The purpose, in Jackson's own mind as well as many others, was to connect Jackson's popularity with something large and more meaningful--the restoration of the republican principles of the Founding Fathers and a constitutional form of government that adequately protected the liberties of the people. Basically, Jackson's victory and his immediate reform campaign constituted a conservative revolution, restoring the government to something closer to what had been envisioned years earlier.
Jackson built a party organization around himself that soon became the Democratic Party, the direct ancestor of the party that still exists today. Not unlike FDR and Reagan, Jackson was a master at going over the heads of Congress to appeal directly to the people for support for his programs. He was the first to understand the changes in the electorate caused by greater suffrage rights and increased literacy, and founded a newspaper that pushed his message out to smaller publications all over the country. In 1832, when he ran for reelection, he held a national convention of delegates to put forth the nominations for him and his vice-president (Van Buren), again demonstrating that he drew his power from the people rather than the elites. By doing these things, Jackson forced others to play on the same field. Politics would never be the same.
As president, Jackson discovered that the nation had changed greatly in the years since he was a boy soldier in the Revolution, and he adapted his ideas accordingly. He had campaigned as something of a libertarian, promising to limit federal power. But he became president of an America that had become a sprawling land with an expanding population and a dynamic and complex economy in which industry was increasingly important. Instead of limiting power, Jackson instead changed the nature of power, shifting it (permanantly, as it turned out), from Congress to the presidency.
Before Jackson, "freedom" meant the right of the individual to enjoy the fruits of his labor without interference by government. During his presidency, freedom came to mean majority rule. A free society was one that conformed to the will of the masses. Since Jackson represented the people (something of a new concept), it followed that his program constituted their sovereign command--what we would today call a "mandate."
This book goes into many interesting details about Jackson' life and presidency. One of the most controversial aspects, Indian removal, has gotten most of the notice in recent years and has affected Jackson's historical standing. I'll share some of what I learned and my own thoughts on that subject in a later post.
Posting on this site will resume on September 26.
September 7, 2005: Irony
While more than half of New Orleans still lies drowned under the floodwaters, a prolonged drought has reduced the water levels in Midwestern rivers to historically low levels. As the New York Times (registration required) relates, parts of the Ohio River and Mississippi have become virtual sandbars, stranding barges and towboats and even floating casinos, delaying shipments of much-needed goods and threatening to make Midwestern corn and other products more expensive this year. USA Today reports that the wreck of a steamboat lost on the Missouri River near St. Charles in 1884 has emerged from the dry river like a dinosaur skeleton.
Lewis and Clark didn't have to contend with any hurricanes, but they encountered the identical situation with low water on the Ohio River at the very beginning of their journey. Lewis left Pittsburgh with his specially constructed 55-foot keelboat on August 31, 1804 to rendezvous with Clark in Louisville, Kentucky. He was already a month behind schedule due to delays and cost overruns by the contractor building the keelboat. Lewis vowed to proceed on even if he was able to make only a boatlength of progress each day. And it was almost that bad. By September 4, he had made only thirty miles downstream. Repeatedly the keelboat, along with a pirogue and one or more canoes, had to be hauled past sandbars and dug out of gravel. Sometimes Lewis had to hire horses or oxen from local farmers to get the keelboat back into navigable water. He finally arrived in Louisville on October 14.
Despite the hardships, the journey was still luxury compared to a road trip of that era, where terrible conditions were accepted as a matter of course. By 1804, the danger of Indian attack on the Ohio had passed, and Lewis could enjoy the sight of the "great river shut in by its glorious hills." The river was full of fish, and bear and venison were plentiful for the hunters. Lewis writes of the many squirrels caught by his dog Seaman and enjoyed by the party, and of stuffing himself with a feast of watermelon somewhere along the way.
Another description I read of travel along the Ohio on one of William Henry Harrison's trips included a menu of beef, boiled fish, bear steaks, roast venison, succotash, salads, cranberry sauce, grog, and wine. Low water may have sometimes been a problem on the Ohio but hunger was not.
There's a good article about this portion of Lewis's journey by James Holmberg over at the Discovering Lewis & Clark site.
September 2, 2005: Pity and Terror
Watching the news coverage of the horrific events in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast over the past few days, I am reminded of this passage from Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels. In this scene, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain is walking out over the blighted battlefield on the evening following the last great charge at Gettysburg:
He moved out across the blasted stone wall and down the long littered slope until he found a bare rock where he could sit and look out across the battlefield at dusk. It was like the gray floor of hell. Parties moved with yellow lights through blowing smoke under a low gray sky, moving from black lump to black lump while papers fluttered and blew and fragments of cloth and cartridge and canteen tumbled and floated across the gray and steaming ground. He remembered with awe the clean green fields of morning, the splendid yellow wheat. This was another world ...
... He thought of Aristotle: pity and terror. So this is tragedy. Yes. He nodded. In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible field of that last, enormous, unanswerable question.
May God have mercy on the dead and those who are still struggling to survive in New Orleans, that once beautiful and now blighted city.