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Freshman Address
Westward Ho!
October 1998
by Richard C. Levin

It is a great pleasure to welcome you, the Class of 2002, to Yale College and to welcome to the Yale family the parents, relatives, and friends who have accompanied you.

Earlier this month, while on a hiking trip, I found myself utterly absorbed by the book I was reading. As much as I enjoyed each day’s trek, I still looked forward to evening when I could return to the unfolding drama. I’m sure you have all had this experience, and I hope you will have it often while you are here, with a library of ten million books available to you.

Reading is an intensely private pleasure, but, for most of us, there is also pleasure in talking about our reading with others. These activities—reading and talking about what you have read—will constitute much of your Yale experience. So I thought it especially appropriate to welcome you to Yale by telling you about the book that I recently found compelling—Stephen Ambrose’s account of the brief, brilliant life of Meriwether Lewis, Undaunted Courage. ¹

The book is not simply a life of Lewis. It retells, vividly, the gripping story of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Northwest, a journey of discovery that resonates richly with the journey you embark upon this weekend. The book also illustrates the genius of Lewis’s extraordinary teacher, sponsor, and surrogate father—Thomas Jefferson.

Let me start by talking about Jefferson, the far-sighted patron of the expedition. Almost alone among the founding fathers of our nation, Jefferson saw both the value and the inevitability of the fledgling republic’s westward expansion. To Jefferson the purpose of westward exploration was not simply to gain commercial advantage over the British in trade with the natives and with the Orient, but ultimately to spread—in his conception, peacefully—the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence across the entire continent.²

Although he emphasized these commercial and political objectives when he sought Congressional support for an expedition to the Pacific in 1803, Jefferson also viewed the westward journey as an opportunity to make substantial advances in scientific knowledge. This ambition is revealed with stunning clarity in Jefferson’s written instructions to Lewis. He requests a precise mapping of the Missouri River basin and the territory to its west, detailed demographic and ethnographic description of the natives, as well as notice of soil conditions, climate, vegetation, minerals, and species of animals—especially those previously unknown. In short, Jefferson sought a thorough account of the natural and social history of the west. Even more remarkable than the breadth of Jefferson’s ambition is this: Lewis and Clark gave him all that he asked.

Now surely it is not lost upon you that you, too, are about to embark upon an ambitious journey. Let me assure you that no one expects you to have Jefferson’s clarity of vision about where your journey will ultimately lead. Indeed, part of your exploration here will be to determine the direction of your future course. We offer ample means to aid you in this quest: a curriculum of over 1,800 courses covering virtually every imaginable subject of human inquiry, extraordinary library and museum collections, and a distinguished and devoted faculty to guide you.

And even if the end point of your journey is unknown at the beginning, I hope that you will not lack Jefferson’s ambition. He sought nothing less than the realization of the young nation’s full potential. I urge you to seek the same for yourselves.

Meriwether Lewis, was only 28 years old when Jefferson chose him to lead the Western expedition, but he had already managed his family’s estate, shown his natural leadership during six years in the military, and explored much of the Ohio Valley. In Jefferson’s words, he had “firmness of constitution and character, prudence, habits adapted to the woods, and a familiarity with the Indian manners and character."³ All he lacked was a rigorous training in the sciences, and this Jefferson, Enlightenment prodigy that he was, set about to provide. Lewis learned from expert acquaintances of Jefferson the Linnean system of plant classification, the technical vocabulary of plant and animal taxonomy, how to preserve and label specimens, and how to determine latitude and longitude. Jefferson and Lewis also spent countless hours planning the logistics of the expedition and determining the supplies that would be needed to sustain the band of explorers.

You come from 48 states of the Union and 43 countries around the globe, from schools large and small, public and private. Yet you have two things in common with each other and with Meriwether Lewis: the natural ability to make a difference in the world and the proven willingness to undertake the hard work that is required. You have worked hard to get here, and, though you are understandably feeling uncertain about this in the presence of so many other talented classmates, you are well prepared for your journey.

I won’t attempt to describe in detail the many hardships and hazards encountered by Lewis and Clark as they traveled to the mouth of the Columbia River and back. Suffice it to say that there were harrowing experiences with white water, treacherous terrain, grizzlies, and gastrointestinal disease. There were some tense moments with the natives as well, though most interaction was peaceful. Through it all, the perseverance of the explorers was remarkable. Lewis was seeking an all-water route to the Pacific, and Jefferson had expected that the portage from the headwaters of the eastward-flowing Missouri to the westward-flowing Columbia would pose little difficulty. Neither anticipated that the Rocky Mountains were four times higher than the Appalachians, that many western rivers moved too swiftly and fell too steeply to be navigable, and that the overland portion of the journey was hundreds, not tens, of miles through mountains passable only from mid-summer to early fall. Still, the explorers persisted in their mission. On the arduous return passage through the Bitterroot Mountains, with his men nearly starving, Lewis took time to record in his journal detailed descriptions of six species of birds and three plants previously unknown to science.

It goes without saying that you, too, must persevere on your journey. Not every turn of the river will be easy, but you will have caring teachers, advisers, counselors, and classmates to help you find your way through the occasionally rough waters. You will not be immune to intellectual crisis and emotional hardship during these next four years, though I trust you will avoid grizzlies and gastrointestinal disease.

As you strive to complete your journey, I hope that you, like Lewis, will be driven forward by your curiosity. On the trip up the Missouri, Lewis explored tributaries flowing into the main river to see where they led and whether they revealed any new species of animal or plant life. On the return east, he split the party into five separate groups to explore, among other things, alternative routes across the Continental Divide. Wherever Lewis went, he took note of what he saw and heard. He identified and described 178 new species of plants and 122 species or subspecies of animals, and he recorded all that he could learn about scores of native tribes.

To get the most from your personal journey, give free rein to curiosity. Open your minds, question everything, gather data thoroughly, and weigh arguments carefully. And if you don’t understand something, please don’t be embarrassed to ask for help. It is far better to look ignorant for a minute than to remain ignorant forever.

The fruits of exploration—the reward for being ambitious, prepared, persevering, and curious—is ultimately the joy of discovery. And few explorers have captured the excitement of discovery so brilliantly and movingly as Meriwether Lewis. Reading his rhapsodic accounts of the fertile plains, the astonishing variety of life, the White Cliffs, and the Great Falls of the Missouri, we are swept away.

I hope you will approach your Yale journey with the same sense of wonder. It is so easy to take things for granted here. But, I assure you, not every pipe organ in the world sounds like the great Newberry organ that announced our entry this morning. There aren’t many courtyard spaces more beautiful than the newly re-landscaped Old Campus, nor classroom buildings more impressive than the newly restored Linsly-Chittenden Hall. There aren’t many, I am tempted to say any, university art museums with collections to rival ours. And there are only a handful of universities around the world with a complement of comparably distinguished scholars on their faculties. This place is filled with extraordinary treasures; they are here for you to explore and enjoy.

A distinctive feature of this place is that all who come here participate in its making. What Yale College is over the next four years will depend in substantial part upon what you make it. And because you will be so involved in shaping it, Yale College will be forever yours. Your sense of ownership, your sense that Yale is your place, will persist for a lifetime.

In closing, let me read to you a portion of Jefferson’s most eloquent description of Meriwether Lewis, written four years after his tragic death:

Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness and perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from its direction,… honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves, with all these qualifications as if selected and implanted by nature in one body for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprise to him.⁴

Ambitious, prepared, persevering, and curious women and men of the Class of 2002: Welcome to Yale College. Without hesitation, we confide the enterprise to you.

Footnotes

1: Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York: Touchstone Books, 1997.

2: As early as 1783 Jefferson encouraged General George Rogers Clark, the older brother of Lewis’s traveling companion, to lead an expedition to explore the territory west of the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean. That same year, he drafted a report to Congress proposing that new states should be added to the Union, not as colonies or subordinate possessions, but with status fully equivalent to those of the original thirteen. With Jefferson’s leadership, this principle was ratified in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

3: Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Smith Barton, February 27, 1803, in Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents: 1783–1854. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962, p. 17.

4: Thomas Jefferson to Paul Allen, August 18, 1813, in Jackson, ed., op. cit., pp. 589–590.

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