4 he had no right, as a truthful chronicler of history, to mislead the reader by his highly ornate dedicatory: "Jefferson gave you the country, Lewis and Clarke showed you the way."
President Jefferson was much more of a seer and statesman than were his compeers. The Louisiana purchase, to him, was much more than gaining possession of the State at the mouth of the Mississippi River, with its rich acres for the use of slave-owners of the South. In his later years he said: "I looked forward with gratification to the time when the descendants of the settlers of Oregon would spread themselves through the whole length of the coast, covering it with free, independent Americans, unconnected with us but by the ties of blood and interest, and enjoying, like us, the rights of self-government."
If the old statesman could view the scene and the condition now, how much grander would be the view! It would be unjust to question the interest of President Jefferson in the Northwest Territory; the great misfortune was, that the statesmen of his day were almost wholly oblivious to his appeals. The report made by the Lewis and Clarke expedition was stuffed into a pigeon hole, and was not even published until eight years after the exploration, and after one of the explorers was dead. It was not received with a single ripple of enthusiasm by Congress or the people of
