Page:The Conquest.djvu/334

 Richmond. The beautiful Theodosia had come to stay with her father at the penitentiary. Lewis always liked Aaron Burr. What was he trying to do? The Mississippi was ours and Louisiana. But even the Ursuline nuns welcomed Burr to New Orleans, and the Creoles quite lost their heads over his winning address. All seemed to confirm the suspicions of Jefferson, who nightly tossed on his couch of worry.

It was necessary for Captain, now Governor, Lewis, to go to Philadelphia, to place his zoölogical and botanical collections in the hands of Dr. Barton. Scarce had the now famous explorer reached the city before he was beset by artists. Charles Willson Peale, who had painted the portraits of the most prominent officers of the Revolution, who had followed Washington and painted him as a Virginia colonel, as commander-in-chief, and as president, who had sat with him at Valley Forge and limned his features, cocked hat and all, on a piece of bed-ticking,—Peale now wanted to paint Lewis and Clark.

Of course such a flattering invitation was not to be resisted, and so, while Peale's assistants were mounting Lewis's antelopes, the first known to naturalists, and preparing for Jefferson the head and horns of a Rocky Mountain ram, Governor Lewis was sitting daily for his portrait.

This detained him in Philadelphia, when suddenly, on the 27th of June, the great upheaval of Europe cast breakers on our shores that made the country rock.

It seemed as if in spite of herself the United States would be drawn into the Napoleonic wars. England needed sailors, she must have sailors, she claimed and demanded them from American ships on the high seas.

"You shall not search my ship," said the Captain of the American frigate Chesapeake off the Virginian capes. Instantly and unexpectedly, the British frigate Leopard rounded to and poured broadsides into the unprepared Chesapeake.

"Never," said Jefferson, "has this country been in such a state of excitement since Lexington."