Sea of Glory

George Colvocoresses, and James Blair. Wilkes’s rebuttal is dated March 3, 1847, and is in 29th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate, No. 217. Reynolds’s complaint to James Pearce about the publication of Wilkes’s rebuttal is from manuscript material in the archives at FMC, as is his seventy-eight-page critique of Wilkes’s Narrative. Wickman discusses Thomas Hart Benton’s claim that the Columbia River offered a safe port, pp. 105-10. Letters from Reynolds and others concerning this topic appear in “Communications” in 29th Congress, 1st Session, Senate, No. 474; Wilkes’s “Statement” is in 29th Congress, 1st Session, Senate, No. 475. Chaffin in The Pathfinder discusses yet another dustup between Wilkes and Benton/Frémont in the spring of 1848, this one concerning the accuracy of Wilkes’s chart of the California coast, pp. 388-89. Wickman has a chapter about the Wilkes-Frémont feud, pp. 131-50, and claims that Wilkes came out the winner.
    In a letter dated February 17, 1841, to Charles Wilkes (at DU), Henry Wilkes says that their sister Eliza and her daughter hope that the memorial to the slain officers will be at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn: “I should think that there will not be any difficulty in having their wishes effected as it is understood that Lieut Underwood though officially of Maine . . . was a resident of this state and considered as belonging to it.” For an account of the memorial that was eventually built at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, see Blanche Linden-Ward’s Silent City on a Hill, pp. 240-41. Wilkes claims that securing the annual appropriation for publication of the Expedition’s reports was “more trouble” than the Expedition itself in ACW, p. 546. The senator’s frustrated reference to “this thing called science” is quoted by Haskell, p. 23. John J. Audubon, on the other hand, immediately recognized the importance of the Expedition’s scientific reports. In the summer of 1842, he wrote young Spencer Baird (destined to become the head of the Smithsonian Institution) that the reports “ought to come to the World of Science at least as brightly as the brightest rays of the Orb of Day during the Mid-summer Solstice. Oh, my dear young friend, that I did possess the wealth of the Emperor of Russia, or of the king of the French; then indeed I would address the Congress of our Country, ask of them to throw open these stores of Natural Curiosities, and Comply with mine every wish to publish, and to Give Away Copies of the invaluable Works thus produced to every Scientific Institution throughout our Country, and throughout the World,” quoted in Haskell, p. 8.
    After the publication of his report, Horatio Hale gave up the study of languages to become a lawyer in Canada. Late in life, he came out of retirement to dispute the findings of Lewis Henry Morgan, whose work with Native Americans and other native cultures had led him to declare that just as biological organisms evolved, so did societies, from the primitive to the more advanced. Hale’s work in the South Pacific and in Oregon had made him realize that Morgan was imposing his own value system on cultures that were neither more nor less advanced than Western societies; they were simply different. Not long after in 1887, Hale met Franz Boas, a German anthropologist who had been working in British Columbia and was destined to become a giant in his field. Hale’s insistence on the importance of fieldwork and language in the study of man resonated with the young scientist, and when Hale died nine years later, Boas wrote, “Ethnology has lost a man who contributed more to our knowledge of the human race than perhaps any other single student.” See Jacob Gruber’s “Horatio Hale and the Development of American Anthropology,” pp. 5-37, and Stanton, pp. 373-76.
    Frederick Bayer in “The Invertebrates of the U.S. Exploring Expedition” in MV quotes Darwin’s praise of Dana’s report, p. 81. Stanton cites Humboldt’s reference to Dana’s “splendid contribution to science,” p. 372. The unrelenting pace Dana sustained after the Expedition’s return finally proved too much for him, and he suffered a nervous breakdown in the late 1850s. Although he would be forced to drastically reduce his output in subsequent years, he still managed to write popular books about coral and volcanoes that drew on his experiences with the Ex. Ex. “If this work gives pleasure to any,” he wrote in the