J.M.: Are there any other parts of the journals, that in your mind, were intended strictly for Jefferson's eyes only? Were military intelligence? Such as that section in which he lists the number of men needed to establish trading posts at about a dozen different places along the trail, some of which he hadn't even been to? S.A.: That's right. And the expedition was very good about that. Fort Union, at the junction of the Yellowstone and the Missouri, was first suggested by the captains. When they got down to Three Forks, Montana, Meriwether Lewis said this would be a great site for a fort. But, I don't think this was intended only for Jefferson't eyes. It obviously was a report from serving officers and in that sense everything in the journals was only for Thomas Jefferson, and he could do with it as he saw fit. And, it was a major objective to describe not simply the flora and the fauna, and the Indians, but to look at this country from the point of view of... we're going to get our military out here, we're going to establish posts out here, we're going to have trade with these Indians, we're going to keep the British out.  Whether they intended some part of the journals that only Jefferson would see, I don't know, it didn't ever seem to come up. Jefferson told Lewis to go ahead and publish those journals. Now Lewis didn't get that done, for a lot of reasons, and he then wanted William Clark to put them in shape for publication after Lewis's death. But Clark didn't do that either, Clark was very diffident about his writing ability. Now eventually, Biddle, in Philadelphia, did come out with a more or less a paraphrase of the journals. And it wasn't until a hundred years after the expedition that Reuben Gold Thwaites, at the University of Wisconsin, brought out the first complete, or almost complete, edition of the journals of Lewis and Clark. I think that the captains thought they were going to get rich off of this. That is, they knew how much everybody in the scientific world and the political world, the diplomatic world, every American citizen, wanted to know what's out there. So there was an enormous market, by early 19th century standards, waiting for the journals of Lewis and Clark. And that isn't necessarily what they had in mind as they sat there through those long, long days at Fort Clasop, or those long winter nights at Fort Mandan, writing in their journals. On the other hand, they weren't writing, it doesn't seem to me, just for themselves, or just for themselves and Mr. Jefferson, they were writing it for the American people. Close Window From Discovering Lewis & Clark®, © 2004 VIAs, Inc.