Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/79

Rh the United States than any other one military movement or battle in the war. For without this successful venture of Clark, the British would have held the Mississippi valley until the end of the war, and by the treaty of peace, England would have most surely secured every thing west of the Alleghany mountains. The success of Clark enabled our peace commissioners, Franklin, Jay and Adams, to claim that Clark had driven the British out of the Mississippi valley and successfully held it. So that the boundary line between the American possessions and the English was established on the line of the great lakes west to the headquarters of the Mississippi river, instead of at the Alleghany mountains. By this grand coup in the western wilderness, Clark added to the United States all the territory out of which has been carved and populated the seven great states of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and half of Minnesota. This was the first great advance of the American flag from the inhabited portions of the original colonies, moving westward. And it was wholly and purely a movement to secure more territory, and wholly based on political reasons and not influenced by any commercial motive or interest.

It has been the puzzle of historical writers for more than a century, to account for the attitude of Washington to George Rogers Clark. Washington was personally acquainted with Clark and his family of which none stood higher in old Virginia. Washington must have known, and did know, the splendid military abilities of Clark. No man was a better judge of what other men could accomplish than Washington. With the exception of Greene, Washington had not a single general under his command that equaled George Rogers Clark; and no one of all his major generals, Greene not excepted, accomplished as much for his country as Clark. Then why did Washington keep him in the western wilderness with a mere handful of riflemen to be called out as the desperates straits of defense against Indians or British might require? The only answer to that long unanswered question is, that of all men possible to be sent or kept in the west to hold in check the British and their Indian allies, and hold the valley of the Mississippi for any possible result of the war, George Rogers Clark was the first choice—the man that could be trusted and who was equal to the momentous importance of the position. Clark amply vindicated the confidence of Washington; he discharged the great trust and responsibility imposed on him with "such distinguished ability as to immortalize his name in American history, and in the annals of those who have covered their names with glory in defense of liberty and just laws. And the pity of it all is, that his great services to his country, and to his nation, were never appreciated, recognized, rewarded or honored; and that one of the grandest of our national heroes, and one of the nation's greatest benefactors should have died in poverty and neglect.

On the 4th day of March, 1801, Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated as the third President of the United States. Jefferson had not taken a prominent part in the successful rebellion which had severed the colonies from the mother country. He had not taken a part in making the constitution under which the people were organized into a nation of free men; and he had been anything but a harmonious prime minister of Washington's cabinet. It looked to the historian as if Jefferson's fame would be limited to his leading part in drafting the immortal Declaration of Independence. But there was seething in his active brain, a great idea; the idea of extending the nation's boundaries from ocean to ocean. Having a natural taste for scientific studies, he longed to know what the great unfathomed west of the Rocky mountains might contain. The first opportunity he had to set anything in motion that might bring him any knowledge upon the subject came to him while he was representing the United States at Paris, in 1786. Jefferson gives an account of it in his autobiography as follows: