Sea of Glory

Maury said that Poinsett “froze up in disgust . . . and gave Wilkes the command, and so I was the gainer, for I preserved my integrity.” Rather than a question of integrity, it may have been a lack of personal courage. Maury was even farther down the list than Wilkes, and his appointment would have inspired an even greater uproar—if indeed Poinsett was seriously considering him for the command. Later in his career, Maury would prove just as politically opportunistic, if not more so, than Wilkes. See Frances Williams’s Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist of the Sea, pp. 114-20.
    In volume one of William Hudson’s official journal of the Expedition (at the American Museum of Natural History, New York), Hudson was careful to include a copy of Poinsett’s June 5, 1838, letter insisting that the Expedition was “purely civil.” James Natland’s comments about James Dana’s religious conversion prior to the departure of the Expedition appear in his “At Vulcan’s Shoulder: James Dwight Dana and the Beginning of Planetary Volcanology,” pp. 312-39. In an April 3, 1838, diary entry, Secretary of the Navy Dickerson writes, “Mr. Poinsett considered as dying” (The New Jersey Historical Society). An April 7, 1838, letter from Hudson to Wilkes (at Duke University [DU]) reveals that it was Hudson’s idea to replace the ships’ iron water tanks with casks.
    Reynolds’s description of how he and May assisted Wilkes in his observations is in a June 17, 1838, letter to Lydia. Wilkes requested the acting lieutenant appointments in a July 11, 1838, letter to Paulding, LRWEE; on the back of the letter Paulding notes the appointments as going to Carr, Walker, Johnson, Hartstene, Alden, Case, Emmons, Perry, Underwood, and Dale. The reference to “refractory and evil spirits” resulting from “senior officers contending among themselves” is from Matthew Fontaine Maury’s “Scraps from the Lucky Bag,” published anonymously in the Southern Literary Messenger, April 1840, p. 235. For an excellent analysis of the issue of rank in the nineteenth-century U.S. Navy, see Donald Chisholm’s Waiting for Dead Men’s Shoes: Origins and Development of the U.S. Navy’s Officer Personnel System, 1793-1941, especially Chapter 8, “Movement Toward Rationalization, 1837-44,” pp. 167-94; my thanks to John Hattendorf for bringing this source to my attention. In a June 11, 1838, letter to his uncle (at DU), Wilkes’s nephew Wilkes Henry writes that “From Mr. Waldron [the purser of the Vincennes ] I heard that Mr. H. would hereafter be Captn Hudson. It must give you a great deal of pleasure.” Wilkes refers to Poinsett’s change of heart after his illness in ACW, p. 372; elsewhere in ACW Wilkes describes how Poinsett “left the impression on my mind that it was the intention of the Govt to do it [give him and Hudson acting appointments] just before the departure of the Expedition and I was gulled into the belief it would be done and from day to day anticipated receiving Acg Commissions, but none came,” p. 371. Wilkes also claimed that after the Expedition had been concluded Poinsett “admitted to me that it had been a great omission on the part of the Government to have entrusted me with such an important Command without conferring on me the Mantle of a nominal rank,” ACW, p. 371. Wilkes’s half-joking reference to having Jane come along as his “assistant” was written in July 1838 from Norfolk and is at DU; unless otherwise indicated, all letters between Wilkes and Jane are located at Duke University. Wilkes’s July 19, 1838, letter to Poinsett about the acting captain appointments for himself and Hudson is in LRWEE.
    In A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession, Christopher McKee provides a detailed description of the preparation of a naval vessel for a presidential visit, p. 123. Edgar Allan Poe’s tribute to Jeremiah Reynolds’s role in instigating the Expedition is included in his review of a pamphlet about the Exploring Expedition in Graham’s Magazine, September 1843, pp. 164-65. Jeremiah Reynolds’s reference to Wilkes as a “cunning little Jacob” is taken from an anonymous article written by Matthew Maury, in Reynolds’s Pacific and Indian Oceans, p. 464. William Reynolds’s enthusiastic letter to Lydia about the final preparations for the Expedition is dated August 12, 1838. Wilkes’s sorrowful letter to Jane about leaving her and the children was written August 11, 1838. The description of