Grit and GLory — Robert M. Johnson

In every generation, certain people personify the great trends that move the hearts and minds of the population. In 1803, America was still seeking its identity and its President had a vision for the country. Thomas Jefferson, the third American President, saw this new country which he had helped to found and whose declaration he had written, as one country from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, coast to coast! President Jefferson never stepped foot on the lands west of the Mississippi River. But he selected and trained a man to do that for him, that man's name was Meriwether Lewis. For the two years leading up to the expedition of 1803, these two men spent long hours together poring over documents like the one published by the Englishman, Alexander MacKenzie. MacKenzie had written an account of his journey to the Pacific Ocean. The two Americans, spending long hours in the White House in Washington City, pored over maps and documents and first-hand accounts of the wilderness between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Jefferson had a single purpose, but they also had the boundless determination to take this project to completion. Their determination is the very essence of what modern psychology calls, Grit. Setting a goal and pouring energy and effort and activity into its achievement, defines grit. Historians would later call this challenge Manifest Destiny, as though it were the country's duty and destiny to explore and take ownership of all the lands west of the Mississippi. Those who put this movement forward would become the heroes of their generation. Dwelling at the very epicenter of what was happening in the America of their times, they set in motion the great western migration that would see hundreds of thousands of their fellow Americans GO WEST. Meriwether Lewis and his co-captain William Clark, wanted men on their expedition who were committed to this grand vision and had the grit to help them make it happen. This novel, GRIT AND GLORY, is a result of the efforts of the men of the expedition, who wrote down in their journals the day-to-day happenings along the trail to the Pacific. The fictional narrator, Caleb Stuart, is a young Virginian who has been captivated by the spirit of adventure and is here to tell the story.