The critically acclaimed biography Meriwether Lewis, coauthored by Thomas C. Danisi, was praised for its meticulous research and for shedding new light on the adventurous life and controversial death of the great explorer who became famous through the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Now, the author, with some help from contributors, extends his groundbreaking studies of Meriwether Lewis with this compilation of historical essays that offers new findings based on recently discovered docu­ments, tackling such intriguing subjects as: -The court-martial of Meriwether Lewis: Danisi’s discovery of the astonishing never-before published transcript of the entire court-martial proceedings affords him the distinction of being the first historian to mine the document for the many insights it offers into the then-untested twenty-one-year-old officer, who eloquently defended himself and won his case. -Documentation straight from the medical ledgers of Dr. Antoine Saugrain, the physician who treated Governor Lewis, which helps to confirm that Lewis suffered from malaria prior to his celebrated trek to the Pacific Ocean with the Corps of Discovery and continuing through his service as governor of the Louisiana Ter­ritory. Was Lewis’s death, as reported, the result of suicide, or was he merely a victim of this episodic and incurable disease? -Documentation that proves the true nature of the much-discussed Gilbert Russell State­ment given at the court-martial of General James Wilkinson. Some historians have argued that Wilkinson orchestrated Lewis’s murder, but Danisi’s research sets the record straight. -The role of Major James Neelly in Lewis’s last days. This subject has gained much prominence through the History Channel, according to which Neelly supposedly lied to President Thomas Jefferson about his presence at Meriwether Lewis’s burial, but Danisi has evidence to the contrary. The author presents an abundance of additional material to fill in previous historical gaps regarding the mysteries and controversies surrounding Lewis’s life and death. In doing so, he paints a vivid picture of the brilliant rise of an ambitious young man by virtue of courage, talent, and political connections, and the tragic fall of a conscientious public servant under the weight of chronic illness, bureaucratic pettiness, and the political intrigue that was ram­pant throughout America’s Wild West. This superb contribution to Meriwether Lewis research is a must-read for students and scholars of American history and anyone with an interest in one of our nation’s most important explorers and public servants.

For two centuries the question has persisted: Was Meriwether Lewis’s death a suicide, an accident, or a homicide? By His Own Hand? is the first book to carefully analyze the evidence and consider the murder-versus-suicide debate within its full historical context. The historian contributors to this volume follow the format of a postmortem court trial, dissecting the case from different perspectives. A documents section permits readers to examine the key written evidence for themselves and reach their own conclusions.

One of the greatest challenges faced by William Clark and Meriwether Lewis on their 1804?6 Corps of Discovery expedition was that of medical emergencies on the trail. Without an attending physician, even routine ailments and injuries could have tragic consequences for the expedition?s success and the safety of its members. Of these dangers, the most insidious and potentially devastating was the slow, painful, and oftentimes fatal ravage of venereal disease. ø Physician Thomas P. Lowry delves into the world of nineteenth-century medicine, uncovering the expedition?s very real fear of venereal disease. Lewis and Clark knew they were unlikely to prevent their men from forming sexual liaisons on the trail, so they prepared for the consequences of encounters with potentially infected people, as well as the consequences of preexisting disease, by stocking themselves with medicine and the latest scientific knowledge from the best minds in America. Lewis and Clark?s expedition encountered Native peoples who experienced venereal disease as a result of liaisons with French, British, Spanish, and Canadian travelers and had their own methods for curing its victims, or at least for easing the pain it inflicted. ø Lowry?s careful study of the explorers? journals sheds new light on this neglected aspect of the expedition, showing in detail how sex and venereal disease affected the men and their mission, and describes how diverse peoples faced a common threat with the best knowledge and tools at their disposal.

Through a retelling of Lewis's life, from his resourceful youth to the brilliance of his leadership and accomplishments as a man, Patricia Tyson Stroud shows that Jefferson's unsubstantiated claim of his protégé's suicide is the long-held bitter root at the heart of the Meriwether Lewis story.

This provocative work challenges traditional accounts of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition across the continent and back again. Uncovering deeper meanings in the explorers’ journals and lives, Exploring Lewis and Clark exposes their self-perceptions and deceptions, and how they interacted with those who traveled with them, the people they discovered along the way, the animals they hunted, and the land they walked across. The book discovers new heroes and brings old ones into historical focus. Thomas P. Slaughter interrogates the explorers’ dreams, how they wrote and what they aimed to possess, their interactions with animals, Indians, and each other, their sense of themselves as leaders and men, and why they feared that they had failed their nation and President. Slaughter’s Lewis and Clark are more confused, frightened, courageous, and flawed than in previous accounts. They are more human, their expedition more dramatic, and thus their story is more revealing about our own relationships to history and myth.

Instead of focusing exclusively on the Lewis and Clark expedition, the authors concentrate on what Lewis was doing immediately before and after his journey through Western territory. They assess his role as a natural scientist and as governor of the Louisiana Territory.

Marse: A Psychological Portrait of the Southern Slave Masterand His Legacy of White Supremacy focuses on the white men who composed the antebellum southern planter class in the period of 1830-1861. This book is a psychological autopsy of the minds and behaviors of enslavers that helps explain the enduring roots of white supremacy and the hidden wound of racist slavery that continues to affect all Americans today. Marse details and illustrates examples of the psychological mechanisms by which southern slave masters justified owning another human being as property and how they formed a society in which enslavement was morally acceptable. Kirkpatrick uses forensic psychology to analyze the personality formation, defense mechanisms, and psychopathologies of slave masters. Their delusional beliefs and assumptions about Black Africans extended to a forceful cohort of white slaveholding women, as well as how they twisted Christianity to promote slavery as a positive good. He examines the masters’ stresses and fears, and how they coped by developing psychologically fatal, slavery-specific defense mechanisms. Utilizing sources such as the vast treasure trove of slavery historiography, diaries, letters, autobiographies, and sermons, Marse describes the ways in which slaveholders created a delusional worldview that sanctioned cruel instruments of punishment and implemented laws and social policies of domination used to rob Blacks of their human rights. The seismic shift in race relations our nation is experiencing right now make this book timely, as it will advance our understanding of the South’s self-defeating romance with racist slavery and its latent and chronic effects. The parallels between the psychology of antebellum slaveholding and today’s racism are palpable.

Meriwether Lewis commanded the most important exploration mission in United States¿ early history. Clay S. Jenkinson examines Lewis's journal entries and letters to reveal a rich, yet troubled personality with aspirations of heroism. When the American mythology surrounding him is removed, Lewis emerges as a fuller, more human, and endlessly fascinating explorer. Originally published by The Dakota Institute in 2011.

"The Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery is often presented as an exciting adventure story of discovery, friendship, patriotism. However, when viewed through a non-colonial lens, this same period in U.S. History can be understood quite differently. In BEYOND ADVENTURE, the authors provide a conceptual framework, ready-to-use lesson plans, and teaching resources to address oversimplified versions of the Lewis and Clark expedition"--