First national memorial service for Meriwether Lewis

On October 7, 2009, Meriwether Lewis, the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, will be honored for the first time with a national memorial service. In commemoration of the bicentennial of Lewis’ death and to respect his memory, Hohenwald, Tenn. will pay tribute to Meriwether Lewis with a ceremony worthy of this true American hero.  

The commemorative event will begin at 2:30 p.m. at the Meriwether Lewis grave and monument at milepost 385.9 on the Natchez Trace Parkway and just off Tennessee Hwy. 20 in Hohenwald. The Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, headquartered in Montana, will host the bicentennial commemoration through its Tennessee Meriwether Lewis chapter. The ceremony will be part of the Foundation’s annual meeting.   

Descendants of both Lewis and Clark, government officials, tribal chiefs, representatives from Monticello, re-enactors from the Lewis and Clark Expedition bicentennial and people from across the country will assemble at Meriwether Lewis’ grave to mourn the tragedy of his short life and to honor his achievements. Representatives from states associated with the Lewis and Clark expedition will carry flags flown over the capitol buildings of the states as part of a formal procession to his grave. William Clark’s direct descendant Peyton “Bud” Clark will speak of Lewis and Clark’s enduring friendship and Howell Bowen, Lewis’ collateral descendant, will describe Lewis as a man who sacrificed for his country and died while in its service.

Additional events surrounding the commemoration include the unveiling of a new Harry Weber sculpture of the explorer, plants from 14 states (the Louisiana Territory Lewis governed) will be laid on the explorer’s grave,  the 101st Airborne Infantry Band and a drum and fife corps will perform. One of many other events taking place in Hohenwald that week is Amber Falls Winery and Cellars’ release of the  limited edition reserve Meriwether Lewis Label for the 200th commemoration.

Although significant regional events have been held at Lewis’ grave, the October ceremony will be the first that is national in scope. The goal of the commemoration is to tell Lewis’ story as a real man who personally sacrificed for his country and who accomplished much for the young nation. The event will recognize Lewis with eulogies, the type that would have been given him at a memorial in 1809. The event will not settle the question of how Lewis died, but it is hoped that it will complete some matters left undone since his premature death at age 35, and give the national hero’s entire life story the recognition it is due.  

For more information visit www.lewisandclark.org. For information on the specific details of the ceremony, contact Tony Turnbow at tonyturnbow@bellsouth.net.  

Background: 

When Meriwether Lewis was hastily buried near present-day Hohenwald, Tennessee in 1809, his grave was marked by rough fence rails. Although Lewis was Governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory at the time of his death, he was not afforded the honor of a funeral. Only one contemporary friend was recorded to have visited his grave to mourn him. Other than appointing his successor, the federal government did not acknowledge Lewis’ death until 1925 when it declared his grave a national monument.

After leading the expedition across the American continent from 1803 to 1806, Lewis was appointed governor of the vast territory the nation acquired through the Louisiana Purchase north of Louisiana. Lewis was given the task of removing supporters of Aaron Burr from offices in the territory, after representing President Jefferson at Burr’s trial for treason. Lewis faced political infighting. The territory refused to reimburse him for an assistant’s printing of the first laws in the territory. The cost was almost a year’s salary as governor.   

The War Department also questioned some of his expedition expenses, only to pay them in full three years after his death. Facing a financial hardship caused by the government’s refusal to reimburse his payments on its behalf, Lewis was traveling to Washington to meet with the President and War Department, when he died from two gun shots wounds at an inn along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee on October 10, 1809.

A debate has raged for two centuries over whether Lewis committed suicide, as was first reported, or whether an assassin killed him, as a Tennessee state commission determined in 1843. Historians who believe Lewis killed himself suggest that fever from malaria or another illness he suffered on the expedition caused him to lose his senses and take his own life or that the pressures of his new office and financial ruin caused by the government overcame him. Those who think Lewis was murdered suspect the primary federal territorial agent James Wilkinson, who was in charge of the West Tennessee territory at the time. Jefferson had given Lewis Wilkinson’s job as governor of the Louisiana Territory.  

In the early 1900's, documents uncovered in Spain proved that Wilkinson was a paid spy for the Spanish government, an American enemy at the time. Other suspects include Burr, who had previously killed Alexander Hamilton. Whatever the cause of Lewis’ death, he was not afforded treatment as a national hero in his final days or soon after his death.

Letters show that rather than holding a memorial service for Lewis, his enemies gloated and began spreading negative stories about him they did not publish while he was alive to defend himself. Although the state of Tennessee erected a monument over his grave in 1848, for most of the 19th century, Lewis’ grave was described as abandoned and overgrown. A group of Tennesseans encouraged President Coolidge to designate the grave the fifth national monument in the south in 1925 and it came under the control of the National Park Service.  In 1961, President Kennedy made it part of the Natchez Trace Parkway, which generally follows the old Trace from Natchez to Nashville.The grave site draws visitors from around the world.