The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985 Page: 9
476 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Ecology of the Red River in r8o6
Ellicott, which resulted in his dismissal from the survey of the bounda-
ry between Spanish Florida and the United States in 1798, he had
well-placed friends in such people as Alexander Hamilton and Gen-
eral James Wilkinson. From the standpoint of performing scientific
tasks, Freeman was a much better-trained exploration leader than
either Meriwether Lewis or Zebulon Montgomery Pike.'s
The appointment of Freeman, with his geographic expertise, liber-
ated Jefferson to search for a pure naturalist with similarly high cre-
dentials to accompany the expedition. At the close of 1804 Jefferson
had received a letter that must have encouraged him and, perhaps,
firmed his resolve to find such a person. The letter was an inquiry
from the brilliant, but already erratic, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque,
then only twenty-one.1' Rafinesque proposed:
If it ever seems worthwhile to you, to send a Botanist in Company with
the parties you propose to make visit the A[r]kansas or other Rivers, I can-
not forbear Mentioning that I would think myself highly honored with
the choice of in [sic] being selected . . .20
Despite his youth, Rafinesque was already well along on a remarkable
career, and Jefferson at first tentatively offered the post to him. By the
time the letter was mailed, however, Rafinesque had already returned
to Italy.21
With Rafinesque out of the picture, Jefferson turned to United
18The letter proferring the appointment to Freeman has not survived but seems to
have been mailed soon after Freeman's thought-provoking reply of July 13, 1805, to an
earlier Jefferson letter concerning longitude work without a chronometer. See Freeman to
Jefferson, July 13, 18o5, TJP, first series. Finding a second Meriwether Lewis had not been
easy; at least half-a-dozen candidates had been considered and rejected before Freeman
was approached. See Flores (ed.), Jefferson and Southwestern Exploration, 35-42, 46-48.
The other candidates included Peter Walker, James Gillespie, Stephen Minor, Seth Pease,
George Davis, and a Mr. Wiley. Details of Thomas Freeman's interesting career are
only now being assembled. The most thorough treatments are in Jackson, Thomas
Jefferson and the Stony Mountazns, 226-227, 237-238, and Floles (ed.), Jefferson and
Southwestern Exploraton, 48-54, 313-316. On the survey of the boundary between
Florida and the United States, see "Andrew Ellicott," in Johnson and Malone (eds.),
Dictionary of American Biography, VI, go.
19C. S. Rafinesque to Jefferson, Nov. 27, 18o4, Jackson (ed.), Letters of the Lewis and
Clark Expedition, I, 217-218; Jefferson to Rafinesque, Dec. 15, 1804, TJP; C. S. Rafines-
que, Florula Ludoviciana; or, A Flora of the State of Louisiana, intro. Joseph Ewan
(1817; facsimile reprint, New York, 1967), iv.
20Raffinesque to Jefferson, Nov. 27, 1804, Jackson (ed.), Letters of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition, I, 217-2 8. Inexplicably, Rafinesque writes in his autobiography that, al-
though he knew Alexander Wilson had applied as "Ornithologist or Hunter" for Jef-
ferson's expeditions, "I did not apply." See C. S. Rafinesque, "A Life of Travels,"
Chronica Botanica: An International Collection of Studies in the Method and History
of Biology and Agriculture, VII (Spring, 1944), 305 (footnote quotation).
21Rafinesque, Florula Ludoviciana. iii-iv
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985, periodical, 1984/1985; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101210/m1/31/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.