Three years after Meriwether Lewis laid him down to sleep in the forest, a ship put out from Charleston wharf. It was bound for the city of New York, where at that time there was living a broken, homeless, forsaken man named Aaron Burr--a man execrated at home, discredited abroad, but who now, after years of exile, had crept home to the country which had cast him out.
A passenger on that ship was Theodosia Alston, the daughter of Aaron Burr. That much is known. The ship sailed. It never came to port. No more is known.
To this day none knows what was the fate of Aaron Burr's daughter, one of the most appealing figures of her day, a woman made for happiness, but continually in close touch with tragedy. Wherever her body may lie, she has her wish. The sound of the eternal waters is the continuous requiem in her ears. Her secret, if she had one, is washed away long ere this, and is one with the eternal secrets of the sea. As to her sin, she had none. Above her memory, since she has no grave, there might best be inscribed the words she wrote at a time of her own despair: "I hope to be happy in the next world, for I have not been bad in this."
Did the little brook in Tennessee ever find its way down to the sea? Did it carry a scattered drop of a man's lifeblood, little by little thinning, thinning on its long journey? Did ever a wandering flake of ashes, melting, rest on its bosom for so great a journey as that toward the sea?
Did the sound of a voice in the wilderness, passing across the unknown leagues, ever reach an ear that heard? Who can tell? Perhaps in the great ten thousand years such things may be--perhaps deep calls to deep, and there are no longer sins nor tears.
A million hearth-fires mark the camp-fire trail of Meriwether Lewis. We own the country which he found, and for which he paid. He sleeps. Above him stands the monument which his chief assigned to him--his country. It rises now in glory and splendor, the perfected vision which he saw.
That is the happy ending of his story--his country! It is ours. As its title came to us in honor, it is for us to love it honorably, to use it honorably, and to defend it honorably. None may withstand us while we hold to his ambitions--while our sons measure to the stature of such a man.