A Go Ahead Man
The trans-Mississippi West of the mid-nineteenth century was a stage on which personal ambition let loose and where wealth, fame and glory were available, at least in imagination, to those willing to act. Isaac Ingalls Stevens (1818–1862) was one such man.
Born into a prominent family in Andover, Massachusetts, Stevens was a bright and gifted student at an early age. A mild form of dwarfism stunted his growth, but not his ambition or energy. First in his class at West Point, he was a respected commander in the Army Corps of Engineers, and a distinguished veteran of the Mexican-American War. In 1849 Stevens was named assistant to the director of the United States Coast Survey. The appointment in Washington City, as the nation’s capital was referred to at the time, brought him into contact with influential politicians and scientists, awakening within the young major ambitions that extended beyond the Army.[1]
During the presidential election of 1852, Stevens took a risky step for an active-duty Army man when he campaigned for Democrat Franklin Pierce, running against Stevens’s former commander and Whig presidential candidate Winfield Scott. Pierce’s supporters “were ecstatic that a military man of Stevens’ credentials would step forward,” offering a counterbalance to Scott’s prestige. Once Pierce was elected, Stevens demonstrated his political adroitness, securing three important simultaneous appointments. He was named the first governor of the newly created Washington Territory as well as leader of the Pacific Railroad survey between the 47th and 49th latitudes (essentially following the path Asa Whitney had promoted) from St. Paul to Puget Sound. His third appointment, as Indian Agent for the Territory, gave Stevens, as both Territorial Governor and head of a military expedition unusual authority to also negotiate treaties as he moved west. Governor Stevens would first set foot in the territory of his new office as the head of the survey party.
Tasked with exploring paths suitable for a railroad along the northernmost route, Stevens faced three major challenges of mountain geography. He needed to find a pass with acceptable grade across the continental divide, a path across the northern flank of the Bitterroot Mountains in present-day Montana and Idaho, and he needed to determine how deep the snows were through the Cascades. In addition to completing these tasks, Stevens was determined to build on the legacy of the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s scientific contributions through the same territory, exploring the breadth of the entire corridor between the 47th and 49th parallels.
A meticulous and thorough planner, Stevens had a reputation as a controlling commander who both delegated and interfered. As soon as he received his appointment, Stevens aggressively set about organizing and outfitting the expedition. His experience and contacts in the capital gave him a head start over other expedition leaders, all active-duty Army men posted outside of Washington when they received their appointments. With the help and encouragement of Joseph Henry, head of the newly established Smithsonian Institution and Henry’s assistant Spencer F. Baird, Stevens recruited trained naturalists to fulfill his scientific ambitions for the expedition. He also persuaded the well-known western landscape artist and illustrator John Mix Stanley to accompany the expedition. Using his contacts from previous service in the Army Corp of Engineers and U.S. Coast Survey, he was able to secure available engineering talent as well as surveying and meteorological instruments, made scarce because of the Perry expedition to Japan and several Arctic expeditions also underway at the time. And he succeeded in “bluffing the army” into outfitting his expedition with a scarce allocation of the newest Sharps rifle.
[1] Stevens’s preparations and plan of exploration are described in Kent D. Richards, Isaac I. Stevens: Young Man in a Hurry (1979; reprinted, Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1993). And in RES, Vol. 1, Part 2, pp