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‘William Clark and the Shaping of the West’

by Landon Y. Jones

Hill and Wang, 394 pp., $25

There are few more revered figures in American history than William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, explorers of the American West. Although Lewis died within three years of his return from the Lewis and Clark expedition, Clark lived a long life in military service to the United States. In “William Clark and the Shaping of the West,” Landon Jones delivers a revealing portrait of Clark’s entire life, not just the famous journey.

Jones, a former managing editor at People magazine and contributor to Life, Time and Money, is on the board of the National Council of the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial. But his fascination for the expedition notwithstanding, Jones’ work is an unflinching and frankly unflattering portrait of a beloved American hero.

Clark was born in 1770 and was raised in a country still struggling with its newfound independence. Joining the American military when he was just 19, Clark served the federal government for several decades, securing outposts in the West, leading men into the wilderness and, above all, fighting the Indians.

Jones’ masterful biography brings to life the gritty and brutal existence of life on the American frontier. Arriving pioneers found fertile land abounded as they pushed westward, but with the land came the Native American tribes who resented the arrival of white settlers, particularly when it was “guaranteed” by earlier treaties that the settlers refrain from further encroachment. The weak national government was unable to control the settlers, who moved far beyond treaty-established boundaries. When the inevitable hostilities arose, it was the Indians who were blamed as “savages” and were attacked by the military – including at times Clark himself – and then guaranteed peace only in exchange for land and resettlement further west.

The story, familiar as it is, is difficult to read without disgust. Jones’ narrative is superb at bringing the conflict to life: American soldiers digging up Indian corpses to scalp or burn them, pregnant Indian women hung and mutilated, and enormous fields of Indian corn burned to starve the tribes into submission (the same tactic used by the British during the Revolutionary War and decried as “barbaric” by the colonies). While Jones does not attribute any of these incidents to Clark himself, Clark plainly was deeply involved in the conflict throughout his military career and could not have been unaware of them. To modern Americans, it seems almost absurd to question that the young United States would bridge the continent. But, from Clark’s perspective, the outcome was far from certain. French, English and Spanish armies maneuvered and manipulated Native American tribes, shifting alliances to balance power in the unsettled West.

Clark was 33 years old when he was invited by Meriwether Lewis to join him on an expedition to explore the Western interior. The Lewis and Clark expedition has been the subject of scores of books, but Jones manages to cover it in a brisk 30 pages, drawing heavily from the expedition’s journals and correspondence.

Upon his return from the expedition, Clark married 15-year-old Julia Hancock, was appointed principal Indian agent for the U.S. government and settled in the former French city of St. Louis. In his remaining years, Clark acted as the federal representative in negotiating countless treaties with vanishing Native American tribes as they were pushed inexorably westward and toward oblivion.

In 1831, a band of Sauks attempted to return to their tribal homeland on the east bank of the Mississippi in what is now Illinois. As the conflict escalated, the Sauks tried to escape back west but, unable to negotiate peace terms because the pursuing Americans had no interpreters, the Sauks “put up little resistance, as most were attempting to find shelter or help the women and children scramble across the river’s mud flats and small islands. … The carnage was terrible; men, women, and children were shot indiscriminately, and their blood-streaked bodies floated downriver.”

The few who escaped were hunted and killed. Clark – at the time the Indian superintendent for the West – was delighted to hear the “glorious news.”

Clark died in 1838 at age 68. He outlived Lewis by more than 29 years. By the time of his death, Clark had personally signed 37 separate Indian treaties, more than anyone in American history, and supervised the removal of 81,282 Indians from the East. As Clark lay dying, the U.S. Army began moving the 17,000 Cherokee Indians west, on a thousand-mile forced march known as the “Trail of Tears.” Four thousand of them died. It was the culmination of a process started, facilitated and enforced by William Clark.

Clark’s many contributions, including the Lewis and Clark expedition itself, will not soon be forgotten. But this thoughtful biography suggests that Clark’s entire life was a more complex, and decidedly less heroic, affair.

President Clinton visited Seattle a couple of years ago after leaving the White House, and he addressed an overflow lunch crowd jamming the Westin Ballroom. As he surveyed the world’s troubles and how America should respond, the contrast between his approach and that of the new Bush administration could not have been more stark. Reading former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s just-published memoirs, “Madam Secretary” (Miramax, $27.95), brings much the same thought to mind – how far we’ve traveled from working with NATO and the U.N. to address Bosnia and Kosovo, to working around our closest NATO allies and the U.N. to address Iraq.
Madeleine Albright’s life could hardly have been more interesting. Her father was a Czech diplomat and, when the Nazis invaded, Albright’s family escaped on a night train out of Prague. Her father worked in London with exiled Czech President Edvard Bene{scaron}, and then in Prague after the war, until the Communists ousted the democratically-elected leadership. Albright’s father secured a posting to the United Nations in New York, representing Czechoslovakia, but worked behind the scenes to secure refugee status.

After leaving government service, Albright’s father took up teaching, and the family resettled into suburban American life. Madeleine met her future husband, Joe Albright, at Wellesley College, and her marriage brought her wealth (his uncle was Harry Guggenheim) and powerful family connections. Albright became an American citizen, raised three children and simultaneously secured her Ph.D. from Columbia University’s prestigious Russian Institute.

With her degree, Albright worked for U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie and was later invited to join the staff of the National Security Council by her former college professor Zbigniew Brzezinski (who had been selected to be President Carter’s national security adviser). With President Carter’s defeat in 1980, Albright returned to academia and worked on successive presidential campaigns.

When President Clinton was elected, Albright served first as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and, in the second term, as secretary of state. Shortly after her confirmation, news stories surfaced revealing Albright’s Jewish ancestry. Albright achingly writes of her heartbreak at discovering the fate of three of her grandparents in Nazi concentration camps, their names etched in the wall of a synagogue in Prague that she had visited.

Albright’s writing is smooth, captivating and thoughtful. The book provides a sweeping overview of foreign crises during the entire eight-year term of the Clinton presidency, with fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpses into personal encounters with world leaders from across the globe. From Iraq to Bosnia, the tangle of Middle East politics, the slaughter in Kosovo, her management of the relationships with NATO allies, and her visit to North Korea, her story is a short course in near-term world history. Much of it is familiar, but it’s refreshing to review how differently America responded to international challenges just a few short years ago: Albright sought to contain the Iraqi threat with international sanctions and inspections rather than outright war. She responded to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions with containment and engagement. And she used NATO air strikes – working with then-NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark – to bring Slobodan Milosevic to justice when many said that air strikes alone would never resolve the issue.

But far more interesting are Albright’s personal reflections on her appointment as the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in the U.S. government. Her insights into the unique challenges posed to a woman serving in a largely male environment are entertaining. At the end of one dinner, for example, she realized that she had spilled some salad dressing on her skirt – a spill that would never have been noticed on a man’s dark suit. For the after-dinner group photo, she turned the skirt around to conceal the stain. She dryly comments: “Not a move with which Henry Kissinger could have gotten away.”

But, for all its thoughtful discussion of foreign relations and international intrigue, the book is surprisingly silent about the single most defining event of the Clinton presidency: his impeachment and trial before the Senate. Albright devotes a handful of paragraphs to the scandal and mentions in passing the president’s apology to his cabinet for misleading them. But future historians will be left wondering about the impact of the impeachment and trial of a sitting president on the foreign relations of the country.

Even with this rather dramatic omission, Albright’s memoirs are a fascinating review of recent American history, a compelling insight into foreign relations up close and personal, and a stirring reminder of the power of diplomacy in achieving peace in a troubled world.

‘Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas’

by Bruce Allen Murphy

Random House, $35

William O. Douglas served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 36 years, longer than any other justice in American history. He wrote the most opinions for the court, issued the most dissents, wrote more books, married more women, endured more divorces and was threatened with impeachment more often than any other justice before or since. Douglas left a legacy that is difficult to imagine, let alone catalog.

Bruce Allen Murphy’s magnificent new biography, “Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas,” rises to the formidable challenge posed to anyone who would attempt the task. Fifteen years in the making, it is the first truly comprehensive biography of the justice – and one well worth waiting for.

Douglas’ life, as he told it, was a stirring victory against the odds. According to Douglas, he suffered polio as a child and regained his ability to walk only through the dedication of his mother and his own steel-eyed grit in hiking the Yakima foothills. He claimed to have been raised in a poor family, to have ridden the rails east to law school at Yale, to have served in World War I, and to have graduated second in his class from law school.

Unfortunately, much of the story isn’t exactly accurate, as Murphy’s biography points out, backed up by hundreds of interviews and a close review of voluminous papers only recently made public.

Douglas did suffer a mysterious illness as a child, but it was never diagnosed as polio then or later. Douglas’ early years in Yakima were challenging, but his widowed mother was hardly destitute. He did ride a “sheep train” to law school, but it was a comfortable passage and hardly counts as riding the rails. Douglas served his country well and long on the court, but he never served in the military, apart from a few weeks of volunteer service in the Students’ Army Training Corps. And, brilliant as he was, he was not second in his class at Yale Law School.

And the sad part is this: None of this myth-making is necessary to recognize Douglas’ extraordinary achievements. Douglas was plainly a brilliant man who succeeded against daunting odds, rising from an obscure (if not entirely poor) upbringing in Yakima. He gained fame teaching at Yale Law School and was appointed by then-President Franklin Roosevelt to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Widely praised by New Deal liberals for his dramatic work in challenging securities fraud, he became an FDR favorite, playing a regular game of poker with the president. Twice he was nearly nominated for the vice presidency. His record hardly needs exaggeration.

He was barely more than 40 years old when he was appointed to the Supreme Court. His service on the court was remarkable by any measure, and his opinions and dissents identified issues that even today continue to resonate – the right to privacy (and later abortion) was founded almost entirely on Douglas’ reasoning in early cases. He broke ground in environmental cases, in free-speech cases, and in search-and-seizure cases. But he chaffed on the court, never entirely happy to be so far from the fray, and frustrated that his hidden presidential ambitions had never been satisfied.

Although Douglas gained fame on the East Coast, he always considered Yakima his true home. He spent his summers at his Goose Prairie cabin, roaming far and wide among his beloved Cascade Mountains. Douglas held hearings in the Yakima County courthouse and once even heard out lawyers with an emergency petition beside a campfire at a high-mountain camp (making them return the following day for the ruling). His spirit still roams the Cascades, with his name often inscribed in trail registers by hikers as an informal tribute to “The Judge.”

Despite his remarkable professional achievements, Douglas’ personal life was a disaster. Douglas had two children to whom he was a cold and distant father. Worse, he relentlessly cheated on his wife and chased women constantly, which ultimately led to his first divorce. He married and divorced two other women before his fourth, and last, marriage to Cathy Douglas. She was 23 and he was 67, leading one Goose Prairie observer to comment that the justice just might have “overstocked his pasture this time.” He was also brutal on his office staff, famous for his harsh criticism of their work.

Douglas was threatened with impeachment four times, most seriously by President Nixon. Informed by the attorney general of the impending impeachment effort, Douglas responded: “Well, Mr. Attorney General, you’d better saddle your horses.” Both efforts ended in failure.

Even trimmed down to a more historically accurate portrait, William O. Douglas’ accomplishments were staggering. “Wild Bill” is an outstanding review of Douglas’ life, legacy, and legend. It’s likely to remain the definitive Douglas biography for years to come and is, indeed, a fitting tribute to Washington’s most famous son.

‘Benjamin Franklin’

by Edmund S. Morgan

Yale University Press, $24.95

Benjamin Franklin is perhaps the best known, and least understood, of the American founding fathers.

To the popular imagination, Franklin is remembered as a portly man who shook the world with a novel electrical experiment and authored numerous witty aphorisms. But his contributions to the political, social and scientific history of America can scarcely be overstated.

Franklin played a pivotal role in our nation’s birth – he represented the colonies in London in the stormy years leading to the American Revolution. He returned to America to sign the Declaration of Independence. He negotiated a critical alliance with the French, and even negotiated the terms of American independence.

Edmund S. Morgan brings Franklin’s larger accomplishments alive in his new biography, “Benjamin Franklin,” a thoughtful and imaginative volume that vividly recounts Franklin’s astonishing achievements.

Morgan, who was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2000, is chairman of the voluminous Franklin Papers. He describes the book as “a character sketch that got out of control.”

It’s an apt description. Unlike the popular recent biographies of Lyndon Johnson or John Adams, Morgan doesn’t comprehensively catalogue Franklin’s life. He omits almost entirely any examination of Franklin’s personal life, mentioning only in passing Franklin’s illegitimate son (whose mother has never been identified) and his wife who stayed behind in Pennsylvania during the long years that Franklin spent abroad.

Rather, Morgan draws almost entirely from Franklin’s own writings to weave a comparatively brief (314 pages) essay on his most important contributions to his city, nation and world. It’s a refreshing focus on Franklin’s larger contributions. Morgan’s writing, fluid and thoughtful, narrates Franklin’s life in the present tense, which brings a compelling immediacy to the text.

Franklin was a printer by trade. His immense curiosity led him to constantly experiment on the world around him. He experimented with the effect of oil on water, demonstrated how the temperature of the Atlantic revealed the course of the Gulf Stream, mapped the movement of storms and redesigned common stoves.

Franklin’s experiments with electricity, conducted from 1748-50, were his most famous. Begun at age 40, the experiments explained the fundamental nature of lightning and electricity to a world that barely understood it. He proposed an experiment to demonstrate that lightning was actually an electrical charge, similar to static electricity (the only kind known at the time). This one experiment alone brought Franklin worldwide fame.

Sent to England to represent Pennsylvania in 1757, he was later appointed by other colonies and served, for practical purposes, as the “American” ambassador. In London, he earned fast friends, enormous respect and severe British approbation as the point of contact between restless colonies yearning for freedom and an angry imperial government determined to teach the colonials a lesson. Franklin sarcastically published in response a pamphlet entitled “Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One.”

Franklin was convinced that American growth would lead to power and wealth. A reluctant revolutionary, he argued that the colonies should be allowed to legislate for themselves as a co-equal to the British Parliament, both subject to one sovereign. British Parliamentary rule was futile, in his view, and would lead only to alienation and, ultimately, to the exclusion of England from America’s unlimited potential. But as the tension inexorably ratcheted both countries toward war, Franklin was unable to persuade an unyielding Parliament to compromise.

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1775. Resigned to the necessity for war, he signed a Declaration of Independence drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, and was appointed to negotiate a critical alliance with the French. He playfully wrote to an English friend early in the war to consider that “Britain, at the expense of three million pounds, has killed 150 Yankies this campaign, which is 20,000 a head; and at Bunker’s Hill she gained a mile of ground. … During the same time, 60,000 children have been born in America. From these data [you] will easily calculate the time and expence necessary to kill us all, and conquer our whole territory.”

In October 1776, Franklin, now 69, returned to the Continent to represent the new American government in France, borrow money and purchase supplies for General Washington’s army. He was treated with awe and respect by the French, courted by intellectuals, royalty and a seemingly endless supply of beautiful French women.

In 1782, Franklin helped negotiate the end of a war. He returned to Philadelphia in 1785, sat in the 1787 convention that framed the U.S. Constitution (replacing the Articles of Confederation), and died three years later in 1790.

From start to finish, he played one of the most central roles in creating modern America of any of the founding fathers. As Morgan concludes “We can know what many of his contemporaries came to recognize, that he did as much as any man ever has to shape the world he and they lived in. We can also know what they must have known, that the world was not quite what he would have liked.