i think washington said i just can't risk this so he wrote a very clever letter in which is in the book, incinerating been ever coming out because he had no evidence that rogers was a spy. actually he wasn't a spy for the british. ..

>> my read on that, and new evidence has come out that he is the one thattures-and-a-half than -- that captures nathaniel hale. and this new -- this has got another primary source found at the library of congress. tiffany comfort who is -- [inaudible] this whole engagement, and rogers who was, had heard news that this guy was in. the only time he's ever actually been a spy in his entire life when he gets into civilian outfit on long island because he hears there's a spy, some unusual guy coming in, nathaniel hale, and he manages to get over to see him, sits a couple tables

over from him at a tavern, and finally they got chatting. and here's this whole canny robert rogers. nathan yell hale's commander that he had just left had been taught by robert rogers. robert rogers, you know, everybody knew but nobody knew what he looked like. there was no paintings. probably on purpose from his point of view. so anyway, he's sitting at this tavern, and hale comes over. he's this young kid, and rogers goes, yeah, you know, and he starts -- pretty soon hale spills his guts, and they kind of talk about, you know, life and commiserate, and rogers says, why don't you come back to this other tavern tomorrow night, i'll introduce you to some of my friends. because, of course, rogers can't kind of arrest him without some cooperation. so he comes and, you know, and then he, again, spills his -- hale spills his guts to this

assembly of rogers' friends, and you can hear the boots of the red coats momming in, and -- coming in, and they take him away. after that rogers kind of loses faith. i'm not sure he was ever really that, you know, that interested in fighting on the side of the british and this kind of encounter because his home was here, but he kind of, you know, he had kind of burnt his bridges, had that interaction with washington and then went back to london, and then he kind of drinks himself to death. what a story. wow. [laughter] wow. >> well, with that i think we will begin the question and answer period. i'm going to exercise my prerogative and throw the first question to jim which he has the prerogative of not answering because he said he didn't want to talk about the beginning of the book, but would you care to talk briefly about what i'm going to refer to mysteriously as the great smoke?

do you remember that? >> yes -- >> don't give it away. >> all right. >> you don't have to answer. and also following up that governor berkeley actually sent someone looking for the colonists some years later, but the great smoke really caught my eye. >> this is a story of near miss, and part of the tragedy that's in the title reflects on john white, that he made so many efforts to reach them. of course, his daughter and granddaughter and son-in-law were among the colonists, and he just couldn't reach them, couldn't make contact. he ends his days talking about the misfortunes that had beset him. he'd ruined himself, really, trying to get back, but he never came closer than when he returned in 1590. the ship that he's on, as it approaches the outer banks and is working its way along the

outer banks ready to launch the long boats for roanoke island, they see a great smoke arising from, from the south. maybe, maybe 40 or 50 miles south as they pass by, and they keep on their way. i think that was lit by those colonists on the island as he was passing by. he ignored it because he was on his way to roanoke. but that was a common signal that people, that english people and indian peoples would light beacons to attract attention. and the actual fact there is an account from 1609 from a spanish source when a small spanish ship is coasting the outer banks

seeing these great smoke signals rising up. and they're seeing a group of indians who played on instruments, pipes what seemed to be a european tune. which could be, again, some survivors of the lost colony. they turned hostile and started threatening the ship, and the english still had no love for the spanish at that time, so they probably figured it was spanish. but that was the great smoke that they saw off the outer banks. >> well, i will throw it open for questions. does anyone -- yes, sir. does anyone need to get to a microphone? go ahead, john. >> this is for john. you do such a wonderful job of bringing these characters from 250 years ago to life, you know, and i just was curious about your experiences as an adventurer, an adventure writer and how that helps you figure out a character like rogers, you know, and what he's going through and thinking and just

who he is, just how much of you is in there? >> very good question, thank you. i, that's where i did come back from my adventuring that i think really added some insight into this book. i do believe especially in a book like this where geography is such an important part of this, is that to really go over the ground. we kayaked, i kayaked, i walked, i climbed the mountains, i really spent time, and it really gave me a sense of really what, you know, where, you know, where he had been and what it was like. and i wasn't out there in the really deep snow, and i didn't work with moccasins through the spruce bogs like that, but nonetheless, i kind of got a sense of, you know, a, how without maps and without a real sense of the ground his extraordinary ability to really know where things were and how to do it.

and that whole idea where he would write about and he'd spend a great deal of time with the indians that he said an indian could go -- and this is speaking to one of the algonquin indians -- could go a place once and then get back there from any different direction again. so what was that? what was the understanding of the topography and the geology, and how did they begin to navigate? and it really did help me, i think, to go out there and talk to people about that and to walk in there and immerse myself, and with the help of my wife and daughter who became the rangerettes and helped me walk on quite a few of these trips as well. [laughter] >> well, right in front of the previous questioner, yes. >> what's the name of the spencer tracy movie that you mentioned? >> northwest passage, and it was a movie, an mgm movie in 1940 made by, made from kenneth

roberts' great novel called northwest passage which is about rogers. >> it seemed like it was a very brutal and uncompromising look at the war, it didn't seem to pretty up the war unless i'm remembering a different movie. >> no. no, this was filled with the indians knew if they were captured by other indians, because it was just not -- rogers was -- this is a very interesting story, too, because and this is also what draws me to this guy is that, you know, there have been, there still to this day are some indians who believe that rogers was a genocidal maniac, and he was out just to kill every indian. well, i kind of looked at that, and that's not where i come out on that. he was the first person who, he raised indians to officers in his rangers' groups, for instance. and that baffled and then extremely irritated the british. who looked down on that.

rogers, think -- i think, felt the indians were part of the topography and so much to learn from them, so rich, and i think he had no intention. but war was war, and so there was, you know, a lot of bloodshed and a lot of scamming and a lot of that -- scalping that, most definitely. >> i saw a hand up here before. sir? >> yes. i grew up reading the northwest passage and roberts. what kind of research, do you know what kind of research he based his book on? >> you know, he had actually -- it's fiction because, of course, he is, he's re-- he has conversations and all that, things i can't do. i have evidence of that. but actually, truth be told, he went back, and he found some really good primary source material, some journals and things like that and some documents that were published

particularly in a court-martial of robert rogers, and it had to do with that french spying charge, and he published it as an appendix. actually, the original -- there are two volumes of that novel. the second volume is an appendix of some primary sources material which was, you know, very useful. he's still kind of caught up in the whole parkman kind of lure of the buckskin, rough and tumble, so rogers comes off as this, you know,al lended -- talented but kind of drunk and all this. and when you start putting things together, i'm sure that did happen yesterday, but on these trips he was definitely not doing a lot of drinking because, you know, you would just not be doing that. >> this fellow here with -- yeah. >> i, i have a question for mr. horn. have you run into any dna evidence that the roanoke island people mixed with the natives? >> there is a dna project

underway, as you might know, and revolves around the group of chandler who was actually with the ralph lane expedition, and they're trying to trace through lines in england. the evidence, i know some dna work has been done with some indian peoples believe the lumby indian peoples, but i'm not clear as to whether anything conclusive has emerged from that. what i can say is i think that there's a pretty good chance that the tuskaurora when they broke up, there is some question that some of them were absorbed by lundy or took the name of lundy. so if there were english there, they might have ended up,

ultimately, as lumbar by indians -- lumbar by indians. >> yes, gentleman right in front of her. >> what other evidence are there for specific survivors? were there sell tons, first or second-person accounts? >> the smoking gun would be the archaeology. and one of the reasons that i think it's important to try and get a better view as to where they might have gone is really to focus in on archaeology to find that kind of evidence. there is an account from 1650 of a great battle that took place near the banks of the roanoke river in which 250 indians were killed by a large force of poe hat tan -- how powhatan coming down from virginia, and the english found a field full of

bones. that was the english name for this place. now, it's a bit of a stretch, but if we could find that place and if some of those remains could be traced to europeans, that would be a pretty conclusive piece of evidence. as it is, we haven't managed to find it so far. >> any other -- on the other side? yes, sir. well, can you wait just for a moment for the microphone to get to you? okay. >> this has to do with the importance that you're giving richard rogers and developing his type of warfare. i'd always read that he adapted this from what he'd seen the indians do. are you saying that he used that as a basis and then changed that, or did he invent something that he didn't see with the indians? >> it was a combination of what he did there had been, for instance, benjamin church had been working with some kind of, of what we would call kind of the hiding behind trees and some

of the kind of general woodlands warfare that the geography, you know, would -- people had been working with that. he was not inventing anything. he, what he did was to codify it and put it together. and as i mentioned, put it in a form that people could get. but that he, what his genius was was dipping into various aspects of -- it's not straight up kind of indian, you know, tactics. it's a little bit of things, you know, kind of long hunter, it's a little bit of, a little bit of the french kind of trapping, you know, and life in the woods. so it's, it's, he cherry picked, and this is what i found so interesting in general was what some, all these pioneers really were doing. they were trying to survive, and they were taking the best of whatever they could do.

so, you know, you get these guys, they're referring to -- there's a wonderful notation of a french word, and i can't remember it at this second, but a raised blind that you could hide in. so he picked up that from some french trappers, and then there were kind of indian ways of reading certain aspects of the land that he picked up. so this was kind of a just a melding and all that that he gave shape to and then put into useful form. >> yes, the woman right -- you're over there. take the gentleman many the back. he had his hand up, sorry. >> jim, on one of the first maps you showed, showed the american southwest pretty well drawn in over there and then the sows sea coming in. south sea coming in. at that time had the spanish not gone all the way up the west coast? >> there were various theories

as to -- they hadn't gone all the way up the west coast, and the prevailing theory was that there was this great arm of the, of the south sea that came in. and that was actually a theory that remained around for some time. spanish believed it, the french did too, and clearly reilly did. so it was a generally-accepted view of the possible geography. but you will see, you'll see maps from the same period that don't buy into that. so i guess rather along the same lines as john was saying, this is terror incognito, and europeans just didn't know what was in the interior. they, i think, couldn't believe that the north american continent wouldn't ultimately produce the same kind of reaches that the south american continent had. so i think, you know, they were predisposed to keep searching. >> and then the woman here had a

question? >> yes. mr. ross, you said that robert rogers collected his men on the basis -- selected his men on the basis of merit. what attributes, what criteria would he use, do you think? >> well, that's a very interesting question because, of course, he didn't write that down. [laughter] but kind of looking around the borders of it, it was people who could, you know, people who could keep at it. people who would take orders, because it had to be a combination of that, but who were adapt bl and who would learn, but also, i think, who he felt -- and i felt this in some of the expeditions i've taken -- reading people who when things kind of get tough are going to kind of keep it together. and that's a kind of a leadership thing that is, you know, common to a lot of people in that situation. but this is under kind of very

extreme situations. and, you know, so he had some former slaves in his group, he had, you know, certainly just hard-scramble yankee farmers. you know, it was just -- and he'd give people a shot. i mean, if they had been drunks and a mess, you know, he was very clear, you know, if you can keep up and do this, you know, i'm not going to count that against you. so he -- and, again, i can only work around the edges of it, but he had a knack at getting it right. along with incredible training, too, because he just trained these guys. >> anyone else? well, we have two great books, two wonderful stories, and the books are on sale at the back. thank you, jim, thank you, john. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> david stewart, in your view should andrew johnson have been impeached? >> guest: i think so. sadly, though, not for what he was accused of. >> host: what was he accused of? >> guest: he was accused of violating the tenure of office act when he fired edward stanton, secretary of war. it was a constitutionally shaky statute and was ultimately found unconstitutional, and it might not even have applied to what he was trying to do. so that particular accusation wouldn't have moved me a lot. i think he could properly have been removed from office, and it might have been a very good thing if he had been for undermining the congressional program of reconstruction and, frankly, refusing to enforce laws that were the laws of the land about the most important issue that was then facing the united states. but because high crimes and misdemeanors is such an elusive standard, there was a feeling in congress which we still have

that there has to be a crime and not enforcing the law the way you're supposed to didn't feel enough like a crime. so that's how it ended up being the tenure of office act. >> host: as a lawyer, do you support the phrase high crimes and misdemeanors? >> guest: well, as a lawyer, you know, i'm stuck with it. [laughter] >> host: but it can also work work to your advantage as a lawyer. >> guest: well, it can. it's quite unclear when the framers of the constitution adopted it in 1787, they weren't quite sure what it meant. it had dates from 14th century english law. it was an archaic in the 18th century. people didn't have a real understanding of it, and we don't know. the senate have has been very dedicated to not saying what it means. so it is an unfortunate phrase

in some respects, but then again it gives different senators a certain amount of freedom when they are approaching impeachment. you see, impeachment is a combination of a political process and a judicial process, particularly with the president. high crimes and misdemeanors feels like it has to be a court case. it has to be, you know, a crime. there's the word. but, in fact, you're decapitating one branch of the government. it's a big deal. and that's a political decision. you know, 54 senators voted on andrew johnson's case, and 54 of them voted for political reasons. and so high crimes and misdemeanors is a bit of a blind. it's sort of a distraction at some level. but it's what we have. [laughter] so we, we do the best we can with it. >> host: how did the charges against andrew johnson originate? who pushed them, and how did

they get to an actual vote in the senate? >> guest: they really came out of a tremendous discontent among the northern republicans who dominated congress at the time. the south was not represented in congress at the time. who wanted effective reconstruction, wanted real aid to the freed slaves and wanted to keep the confederates, former confederates out of power in the south. johnson didn't share any of those goals. he was indifferent to the freed save slaves, he thought the states could have whoever they wanted in the charge of them and really undermined the congressional policy every chance he had. the result was you had a tremendous faceoff, a lot of legislation vetoes, legislation vetoes and, ultimately, it broke down into this impeachment crisis. in many ways you can see this as sort of a tremendous aftershock of the civil war. i mean, it really was still fighting over those same issues,

and, you know, who's going to have power in the south? you know, give this -- did winning the war mean anything? the northerners were asking that, why did we win the war if these people are still going to run their governments, still going to treat black people the way they always have? and those were tough questions that didn't bother andrew johnson at all, and that's really where the conflict came from, and it had to be channeled into this argument over secretary of war stanton. >> host: who were his political allies and his political enemies? >> guest: well, he had a real problem. he had been elected on a republican ticket as abraham lincoln's running mate -- >> host: from tennessee. >> guest: from tennessee, and lincoln wanted him as a war democrat as somebody who would appeal to southern democrats or democrats. but he was a southern democrat, so he had this republican sponsorship, but he didn't agree with any of the people whose team he was supposedly on.

and then congress excluded all the southern democrats from congress, so his natural allies were not there by and large. so his, his adversaries were the former abolitionists, people like thaddeus stevens who was a wonderful figure, congressman from pennsylvania. and his allies were the democrats who weren't there. one thing i you have to understd this period you just have to do a mind shift that the republicans were the liberals, and the democrats were the conservatives, and it's changed since then, but in is 1860s -- in the 1860s, that's the way it was. >> host: why did you write another book on andrew johnson and his impeachment? >> guest: well, there's only a couple, and i thought they didn't tell the story in a way that it ought to be told, in it full context. and i was attracted to this story a lot personally because i

defended an impeachment case myself, a judge who got impeached 20 years ago, so i've always found it a fascinating story. it's a bit of a train we can in history. i -- wreck in history. he's acquitted by a single vote, everybody's unhappy. there's a lot of evidence that historians have ignored that there was bribery in the final vote and that senators were bribed to vote for johnson's acquittal. >> host: by who? >> guest: by johnson's cabinet members. they raised a bribery fund of $150,000 and entered into negotiations with a variety of senators and their agents. >> host: that's a huge amount of money back then, wasn't it? >> guest: it was a lot of money, and there were people walking around washington with just wads of greenbacks. we didn't have electronic controls and anti-money laundering rules then. people had cash, and they passedded it around. it was a very corrupt time, to be blunt, and the corruption really infected the impeachment, so there's a lot in this story

that is pretty compelling. >> host: how'd you do your research? >> guest: i spent a lot of time at the library of congress. it's a tremendous resource. of course, the trial itself is, you know, the transcripts are all available, but, you know, you have to get a feel for what people were saying to each other about it. you want to go to correspondence and original sources and the newspapers which were very partisan at that time, so, again, you'd get some insight into what people were saying about the figures, the issues at the time. >> host: was the american public at that time engaged in this impeachment process? >> guest: totally. there was a tremendous fear that went across the country when he was impeached that we were on the verge of a second civil war, that johnson was leading a coup d'etat and congress was usurping the presidency. and there were headlines in the paper, 20,000 cayennes going to march on washington, 10,000 pennsylvania soldiers, boys in blue are ready to march

tomorrow. so there was a real feeling that there would be bloodshed and, you know, we'd been killing each other just three years before in the bloodiest war we ever had, so these were people who didn't shy away from extreme solutions. so it was a, it was a galvanizing experience, and one of the things about the impeachment process that, i think, very positive was it slowed everybody down. you know, the lawyers got into it and, you know, lawyers slow things down. and it gave people a chance to step back and say, you know, johnson's term ends in eight months. why are we doing this? and i think for a couple of the senators who voted to acquit him, that was one of the reasons they did was, you know, this is a big thing to do with a guy who we can vote out of office anyway. so some parts of the process, i think, were pretty positive. >> host: how long was johnson the president, how long did this process take, and could he have gotten elected in his own right?

>> guest: that's great questions. he served almost a full term. lincoln was assassinated just five weeks into his second term, so he was very close to a full term. he very much wanted to run for re-election, and he wanted, of course, to be the democratic candidate. he certainly couldn't be the republican candidate. and when the democrats met in their convention in new york city in the summer of 1868, on the first ballot he came in second. so he was a serious contender. they, ultimately, went off on a dark horse, a fellow named ho ratio sue mower -- seymour from new york. eight of the 11 southern states were able to participate in that presidential election, so there was a base for this, for his appeal. he might have been a better candidate than seymour was.

he might also have been a more polarizing candidate, and that may have been a good reason not to choose him. in the final vote, ewe lis seize grant won with 53% of the vote. it was a close election. >> host: the second half of the subtitle of your book is, "and the fight for lincoln's legacy." what does that mean? >> guest: well, lincoln always said at the end, towards the end of the war that when you beat a man, you let him up easy. and he intended to leave it, leave the south a lot of freedom to reconstitute itself, to reconstruct itself, that's the, why the term reconstruction became popular. and johnson implemented those initial plans. and what happened then was the southerners restored the confederates to power. it's not a startling event. and johnson took a totally hands-off approach to that.

he just believed states could do what they wanted. and he took the position, i'm just doing what president lincoln wanted to do. and his opponent said, well, wait a second. lincoln would have started down the road that way, but he never would have put up for the sort of denial of rights to black people that are happening, to the oppression that's going on and would never have allowed these former confederate leaders to get back into power. and in many ways this was the fight for who would win the war. and, you know, it's a truism about the civil war that the north won the war and the south won the peace. reconstruction is at, is a tough time in this, our country's history. you know, we had troops occupying the south for 11 years. and, ultimately, the south won a good bit of the peace, and

andrew johnson was an important part of that. >> host: david stewart, tell us about your law practice and the impeachment trial that you worked on. >> guest: well, i did a lot of constitutional work over the years. >> host: are you still a practicing lawyer? >> guest: i do still practice a bit. >> host: a bit? >> guest: a bit. mostly i write. my law firm would want me to say that. but i do a few matters. and, you know, the impeachment case was just fascinating. it was a tough case, my case was tough because my client had been convicted in a court, and he was -- >> host: who was it? >> guest: his name's walter nixon jr. from mississippi. and he was actually in scale at the -- jail at the time of the trial, so you're sort of starting on low ground, and we knew that. but we thought it was a bad conviction and that he really should not be convicted. he was looking for vindication.

and i thought it was a solid case. we really, i think, persuaded some people that we did have a good case. we actually, you know, they do this the, these days judges don't get tried before the full senate, they get tried before the committee. and before the committee that heard our evidence we made some headway, and we actually defeated two of the articles, there were three, and on the third one it was 9-3. in the full senate, we did much worse because those senators didn't know the facts, they're just voting on the politics. so i actually challenged that procedure, a case that went with up to the supreme court. so it was a fascinating exercise in trying to use all the levers of government. ultimately, we didn't do too well, but it was a real insight into the process which i hoped i could bring to this book. >> host: well, you've written about 1787, you've written about 1868. why -- do you pick events?

>> guest: it has been events for the first two, and the project i'm working on now which i hope will come out in the spring is on the conspiracy, next spring of 2011, will be, is on the western conspiracy of aaron burr when he attempted to essentially overthrow the government out west and invade mexico. it's an extraordinary story. and i, i generally find, you know, if you have to write a whole biography of somebody, you have to write about their dull years, too, so i'd much rather pick a period when something terrific happened that's really fascinating and dig into that. >> host: david stewart is the author of "impeached: the trial of president andrew johnson and the fight for lincoln's legacy," simon & schuster publisher. >> host: this is booktv's coverage of the virginia festival from charlottesville,

virginia. coming up next is an author who is talking about early american history. the book is "the passage to cosmos: alexander von humboldt and the shaping of america." the author, laura wahl. >> now, as all of you already know, the program this morning is titled alexander von humboldt and the shaping of america. von humboldt, scientist, explorer and diplomat, is often called the father of modern geography and was one of mr. jefferson's most enlightened correspondents. he was also a correspondent of abraham alfonse albert -- jefferson's secretary of treasury and future president james madison. the seeds for von humboldt's great work, "cosmos," were set during his travels to latin america between 1799 and 1804, and his influences were wide ranging and not confined to the sciences, but also included literary figures such as ralph waldo emerson, edgar allan poe,

henry david thorough and painters. it is a sincere pressure for me to welcome laura wahl to charlottesville and the virginia festival of the book. she is currently the john h. bennett chair of southern letters at the university of south carolina. she received her bachelor's and master's degree in english from washington university and her ph.d. in american literature from indiana university. she has just been named the recipient of the merle curty award for the best book in american history by the organization of american historians, specifically for passage to cosmos and is due to receive the award next month. so, please, welcome professor wahl and, also, please turn off your cell phones. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much and thank

you, joel, for that introduction and debbie as well for your wonderful hospitality here during my visit in this absolutely beautiful part of the nation. i've always wanted to come here, and here i am. it's a delight. i also want to thank the virginia book festival and the virginia institute for humanities, was it? foundation for humanities. these events are crucial for keeping culture alive in our country, especially, again, in the times of tough funding and the opportunity all around is deeply appreciated. my interest in humboldt, there are long stories there, and i will not go into them. i've got an eye on the clock. i can go on on humboldt for days if you let me. my interest started when i was working on henry david thorough as a graduate student, and i was curious how he had found a model

for the work he was doing in natural sciences, and it seemed to me that contemporary scholarship didn't have the answer to that. i was taking a seminar in the works of charles darwin. the professor dropped a heavy tome on our laps and said, read this. darwin did. and i did. it was alexander von humboldt's personal narrative. and i thought, my gosh, this is it. it has to be humboldt, and so that was the start of a very, very long quest that's still going on today into understanding humboldt's impact and influence in the united states which was quite broad. that turned out to be astonishing because every time i talk to people about humboldt, i got that glazed look. humboldt who? [laughter] and so part of my mission has been to, well, to explain something about humboldt who, how wonderful and important he was. so just a very, very quick thumbnail introduction to him here.

joel also gave some useful information. i love this photograph because he looks so warm and approachable, and this was the man that i have heard described. he was, he was just exactly as warm and lively as he looks in this photo taken just a few months before his death in 1859 which was then a few months before the origin of species was published which was, would have been kind of a nice speculation to imagine had he read the origin of species. well, counterfactual history. anyway, he was worn in berlin -- born in berlin. some people know the humboldt name also through his brother born just a couple years earlier, the famous linguist, philosopher, founder of the university of berlin. alexander von humboldt is probably most famous for his american travels.

1799-1804. when i say american, we're speaking north and south america. i'll be putting up a map in a moment. may and june of 1804 he finished off his american travels with visits in philadelphia, washington, d.c. and land lanca, pennsylvania. returned to europe to live in berlin until 1827 where many americans came to visit him. excuse me, lived in paris until 1827 and then moved to berlin. first thing he did when he got to berlin was try to shake up german science by delivering a series of lectures under the title "cosmos." he was urged to publish them which he eventually did from 1845-'62 in a greatly expanded version that was never completed. so cosmos was the culmination of a long career, and you will be hearing more about cosmos at the end. so what i'll be doing is moving through, reading some of my favorite passages and making

sure to say a few things about jefferson given the context here. [laughter] and it is onee surprises and one fascinating aspects of humboldt was his friendship with thomas jefferson. so here's humboldt, the romantic portrait of humboldt in his explorations to south america. so we've moved from the young, the old humboldt to the young humboldt. it seems fitting that he launched from spain for there is a certain quixotic quality to his venture. his cheerful sidekick tilting at the windmills of spanish ignorance and colonialism on their endless travels. for in a sense, humboldt's travels never really did end. even when he wasn't on the road, he was always in motion, in transit, planning the next trip.

he abandoned national loyalties to become the cosmopolitan. at home everywhere and nowhere, always passing through. a merchant of knowledge with a bag full of notions. in a time of closed courts, armed borders, gun boats and pirate ships, he alone passed freely slipping through with a smile and a story like marnu. shielded by his royal letters of passport, he talked, and he listened. friendly, sociable, charismatic, passing from huts to plantations to palaces, bobbing like a cork on turbulent seas. not for him the fate of forester trapped and consumed between france and germany or shot in the revolution or ambushed in a border war. no, unlike his friends who succumbed to the rising forces

of nationalism, humboldt the nomad stayed afloat in a world of political and natural turbulence learning to skate well, as emerson said, on thin ice. to be always in passage. humboldt traveled not from country to country but through a planetary field of geological, historical and environmental forces. his coordinates were not political, but bioregional. rivers, mountain passes, coastlines, trails and roads. it's so unclear exactly what country he's in as he sits and compares moving up, down and across both spatial and temporal scale levels, continents and' ons. on the alert for harmonies and resonances that he can test to see if they might justifiably be called laws. to assume he's another enlightenment universeal rising

agent is precisely wrong for there's no global in this most planetary of thinkers. only the local at every point generating the patterns and harmonies that combine to a collective whole. his view is not an eeg el's -- eagle's flight to god vision but hovers down lower darting like a bee from point to point where everything can be seen, touched and connected. collecting nectar for the hive and cross-pollinating as he goes. this requires hard work, constant motion and an astonishing memory. each passage in humboldt is a series of crossings person to person, speech to text, chaotic jungle to labeled specimen. crossing in turn overland to a port and across the ocean to a scientific center to be retranslated by someone on his burgeoning team. botanists, physicists, agnat

mists, astronomers, engravers, colorists, every crossing was a transformation, a creative act that invented as much as it transmitted. as his text traveled passing from reader to reader, readers in turn performed their own acts of reinvention deploying humboldt for their own needs. from darwin on the beagle to thor row or susan cooper in new york and beyond to europe, africa, india, australia. this network of passages is universal only as train tracks may be said to cover the world. yes, while they reach from coast to coast they are easily interrupted at any point. the king or the corporation refuses access. the mule falls. the ship wrecks.

the shipment is confiscated. the botanist abandons his work to take up gardening instead. the publisher goes bankrupt, key books go untranslated creating blind spots otherwise inexplicable. humboldt generated small islands of order interlinking them in a widening chain until he'd built an archipelago of knowledge that reached across the planet. for humboldt's cosmos uses the earth, not god, to orient the self. passages are made in small craft that leak and large ones that dodge blockades. along ocean currents and in storms, down roads and up rivers guarded by indians with arrows. across bridges and canals, natural built and imaginary. ever guided by those instruments

of science, compass and chronometer, the sign posts of space and time that allow humboldt and us to navigate through the confusion of young les and -- jungles and mountains and politics. our true north ever before us in the perilous passage to come -- cosmos. this next is a part from the chapter titled manifest destinies and the quotation in the opening is from a letter from humboldt to thomas jefferson. humboldt wrote jefferson in his letter of introduction, i could not resist the moral obligation to see the united states and enjoy the consoling aspects of a people who understand the precious request gift of -- precious gift of liberty. in five years humboldt had woven

his name into the history of latin america, and i love this montage photograph, especially humboldt on the wheelbarrow. i don't know quite what that's doing there, but anyway, yes, he is very much a folk hero and a presence in latin america even today. beyond the moral and just over five weeks, i'm sorry, he would do the same in the united states. beyond the moral obligation he felt to see the world's lone functioning republic, there was every reason to avoid the detour. humboldt was desperate to get himself, his friends and his collection safely home to paris. he was done exploring. his scientific instruments were wearing out and new ones were not to be had this side of the atlantic. in five years he feared science had progressed so far as to leave him in the dust. and in all that time he'd barely heard from his family, and for all he knew, they hadn't heard from him.

the fate of his letters home, or worse, of the manuscripts and collections which they had entrusted to the tender mercies of war, piracy and ship wreck were unknown. heading north risked lose everything they had with them to the british blockades, then, of united states ports. assuming his ship was spared by the notorious atlantic storms. but what was all this compared with a chance to meet thomas jefferson and dwhrims the free republic -- glimpse the free republic he had helped build? back in havana, their last stop, the american counsel who knew exactly what humboldt had to offer the united states convinced humboldt that america's welcome was worth the risk. so he decided to make the pilgrimage. while gray posted letters of introduction to his boss, secretary of state james madison, humboldt, his friends and their massive collections

all shipped to philadelphia on the spanish trig gate, conceps krone. they did manage to evade the british but not the hurricanes. on the terrible morning of the 9th of may, humboldt thought his worst fears were coming true. he wrote, i felt very much stirred up to see myself perish on the eve of so many joys, to watch all the fruits of my labors going to pieces, to cause the death of my two companions, to perish during a voyage to philadelphia which seemed by no means necessary. oh. the storm raged for a week, but finally the seas calmed, and soon they were sailing up the delaware river. as soon as he stepped ashore in philadelphia, hum bottom posted a -- humboldt posted a letter to thomas jefferson in his third year as president of the united states. humboldt knew jefferson's work

from his studies at humborg, so his first words to the president weren't entirely flattering. quote, your writings, your actions and the liberalism of your ideas have inspired me from my earliest youth. his letter was carefully calculated to beer resisten. -- irresistible. an author must ring bells in order to get attention, so he rang every bell he had. his arrival not from cuba, but from mexico, new spain. the country most on jefferson's mind after the louisiana purchase. the presence of his friend representing the french revolution that jefferson had so famously supported.

the mysterious petroinglies, higher than any human being before it as if all that weren't enough, he added, i would love to talk with you about a subject you've treated so engeniusly on your work on virginia, the teeth of the mammoth which we discovered in the andes. well, humboldt knew that finding mammoth near the equator would enflame the curiousty of the man that had written mammoth remains had never been found further south than tennessee. as a final touch, humboldt signed himself member of the berlin academy of science, a title he virtually never used and an affiliation which technically he could not yet claim. [laughter] well, jefferson took the bait and wrote back immediately promising a warm welcome in the nation's capital.

well, humboldt waited for jefferson's reply, the elite of philadelphia -- itself the u.s. capital until only four years before and still the center of american science and intellectual culture in the nation -- seen as a world model of democracy, the elites swept him up and showed him the town. charles wilson peel took charge of the trip to washington. peel made the arrangements and served as guide along the way. he hoped, success friday as it -- successfully as it turned out, that humboldt would extract a pledge from jefferson that the federal government would purchase peel's museum and move it to washington. peel, humboldt, and the two traveling companions were joined

by two of the american thrill soft call society's more prominent members, dr. anthony fathergill, a retired english physician. peel kept a very careful diary of the trip which he, in which he recorded that they set off at 9:50 a.m. on 29, may, by the mail stage at a cost of $8 apiece. they rode through the day and on through the night, humboldt entertaining them nonstop in his speech. they reached baltimore in time to breakfast with peel's daughter, angelica. peel's son, rembrandt, showed them around and plied humboldt with's requests about mammoths in the andes. on the first of june they set out for washington. peel complained bitterly of the rot ten roads. the next morning they waited on the president in the unfinished white house. since jefferson's reply had not yet reached humboldt, they must

have been relieved to find him home and pleased to invite them all to a state dinner the next day. in 1804 america's capital city still existed mostly in the eyes of its boosters, and humboldt no doubt endeared himself to his hosts when he was shown the view from capitol hill and instead o complaining about the unbuilt buildings and what others had called the vast bog before him declared that, quote, never had he beheld a more beautiful panorama. well, the weather had turned unbearably hot and muggy. humboldt alone so used to the tropics that ever after he liked to heat his rooms nearly to 80 degrees, he was comfortable. he spent most of his time in washington visiting with jefferson in the white house. there the two engaged in what kent matthewson aptly calls an

open-ended seminar on a wide range of questions and topics. the legend persists -- and i hate to say this -- the legend persists that they met at monticello, but there wasn't nearly enough time for so long an excursion over such bad roads, so i hate to say there is no way that humboldt and jefferson were together at monticello, they were in the white house. the guest list for the first presidential dinner included madison and thornton, and it was peel recorded, a very elegant affair. he was pleased to note that no toasts were drunk and that the table talk avoided politics, turning instead to such agreeable topics as natural history, improvements of the convenience of life and the manners of various nations. the next day, however, the discussion grew serious as humboldt spread his maps and papers before thomas jefferson, madison, the secretary of state

and albert, the secretary of the treasury. the three men who were in henry adams' words, the true government of the united states. gallatin wrote his wife of the exquisite intellectual treat he received that day from humboldt whose breadth of knowledge was astonishing and whom we all consider as a very extraordinary man. i was really delighted, he continued, and swallowed more information of various kinds in less than two hours than i had for two years past in all i had read or heard. humboldt and gallatin went op to become very good friends in europe. humboldt spoke, gallatin continued, surrounded with maps, statements, etc., all new to me and several which he has permitted us to transcribe. although humboldt had been traveling -- and this is interesting -- in an embargoed

kingdom under the exclusive permission of king carlos iv, humboldt freely shared his findings with new spain's ambitious northern neighbor including a copy of a lengthy statistical summary on mexico which was a trove of information and the most expensive, accurate and detailed map yet made of the region. this is that map in its redrawn and finished version in the political essay of the kingdom of new spain. humboldt leapt the map for g -- lent the map for copying, and nobody knew at the time he was just then plotting with aaron burr to overthrow the country, invade mexico and establish an independent kingdom. seems to have made an illicit copy for his own use, much to humboldt's annoyance, plagiarized versions of the map appeared in the united states well before he published it in

1811. well, the dinner guests may have avoided politics, but humboldt had, in fact, arrived at a politically-charged moment. just the year before napoleon had -- i'm sorry, napoleon had been planning to move french forces up the mississippi, and -- sorry, until the wholly unforeseen success of the haitian revolution destroyed his army. without warning, napoleon offered the entire territory of louisiana which spain had just three years before retrocreeded to france to the united states for $15 million. spain was furious. england was alarmed, especially when it learned the sale was financing napoleon's war on them. overnight the size of the united states doubled even as humboldt and jefferson were meeting jefferson's hand-picked team of