Winter Camp at Wood River, IL U.S. Army Captain Amos Stoddard, acting as the representative of France, declares Upper Louisiana as belonging to the United States. The French flag, flying for only one day, is lowered and the American flag raised.
Transfer of Northern Louisiana—1804
St. Louis Pageant Series—No. 5
Postcard from the original by F. L. Stoddard. Courtesy Missouri Historical Society, mohistory.org/collections/item/N01206.
Stoddard’s Advice
Admitted as you are into the embraces of a wise and magnanimous nation, patriotism will gradually warm your breasts, and stamp its features on your future action. To be useful it must be enlightened; not the effect of passion, local prejudices or blind impulse. Happy the people who possess invaluable rights, and know how to exercise them to the best advantage; wretched are those who do not think and act freely. It is a sure test of wisdom to honor and support the government under which you live, and to acquiesce in the decisions of the public will, when they may be constitutionally expressed. Confide, therefore, in the justice and integrity of our federal President; he is the faithful guardian of the laws; he entertains the most beneficent views relative to the glory and happiness of this territory and the merit derived from the acquisition of Louisiana, without any other, will perpetuate his fame to posterity. Place equal confidence in all other constituted authority of the Union. They will protect your rights, and indeed your feelings, and all the tender felicities and sympathies, pacific policy will enable you to view them in their proper light. I flatter myself that you will give their measures a fair trial, and not precipitate yourselves into conclusions, which you may afterwards see cause to retract. The first official acts of my present station, authorized by high authority, will confirm these remarks.
—Capt. Amos Stoddard
Weather Diary
Therm at rise
weather wind Therm at 4 Oclk weather wind River 14 above 0 cloudy & fair N W 32 above 0 fair N W rise 2 ½ in —Meriwether Lewis and William Clark[1]To assist the reader, the editor of this web page has omitted the date column, merged the “River” columns, and spelled out some abbreviations.
Winter Camp at Wood River (Camp Dubois) is a High Potential Historic Site along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail managed by the U.S. National Park Service. The site, near Hartford, Illinois, is managed as Lewis and Clark State Historic Site and is open to the public.
In present St. Louis, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial “commemorates Thomas Jefferson’s vision of the continental expansion of the United States” and is a High Potential Historic Site along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail managed by the U.S. National Park Service.
Notes
| ↑1 | To assist the reader, the editor of this web page has omitted the date column, merged the “River” columns, and spelled out some abbreviations. |
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