In search of an American identity

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Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill served 3 terms in the New York Assembly and 13 years in Congress during the administrations of Jefferson and Madison where he played a significant role in the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the embargo crisis, and the War of 1812. His widespread activities in medicine, science, literature, education, agriculture, antislavery, and society were each imbued with a romantic underpinning of nationalism. The breadth and depth of Mitchill's conception of what the American nation might become is the major focus of this study.