GETTING LOST, The Real Daniel Boone

"I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.” The words were written by the real Daniel Boone. And if Daniel were to wake up from his current sleep he would be bewildered and angry to find that most of him was back in Kentucky. Because this man who kept moving while alive life to avoid “people” , finally fell, once he was dead, into the clutches of the "people" he hated the most - politicians and their close kin in the real estate business, lawyers.

Daniel Boone was not who you think he was. He never wore a coonskin cap. He was born in Pennsylvania, the sixth child of Quaker parents. As an infant he was a victim of religious intolerance when his parents were forced to sell their land after two of their elder children married outside the “Society of Friends”.  Their fellow friends forced them out of their church.

Daniel reached adulthood in North Carolina. There he showed such natural talent as a hunter, he  dropped out of school to take it up professionally. Most of what he killed was sold in public markets. A sister-in-law taught him to read and write, and other men would later follow him because he could regal them with readings from the “Bible” and “Gulliver’s Travels”. 

When he was 21 years old he married 16 year old Rebecca Bryan. They had ten children - although when they found the time I have no idea, Daniel was away from home so much.

Daniel was a short and shy man, and taciturn except when surrounded by his family. He was not the first white man in Kentucky. He was however one of the first Europeans who managed to walk out of Kentucky alive.  

He was not a great Indian fighter, and in his old age insisted, “I never killed but three”, adding, “I am very sorry to say that I ever killed any, for they have always been kinder to me than the whites.” 

And when he walked back into Kentucky it was as the supervisor of forty lumbermen, hired to cut a trail through the forest. Boonsboro was named after him because he was in charge of the crew who built the fort.  It was not his fort.

In 1799, after being cheated out of his property by Kentucky lawyers, he took his family completely out of the United States, settling in what was then the Spanish territory of Missouri.   He returned to Kentucky only once, in 1810.  Missouri had changed hands twice by then, once to the French and then to the Americans. To placate the Kentucky lawyers who could now harass him, Daniel returned only long enough to pay off his debts. He immediately returned to Missouri.

It was there, surrounded by her children, grandchildren and great-grand children that Rebecca died, in 1813. And it was there that Daniel Boone died in September of 1820, after eating too many sweet potatoes and suffering indigestion. He was 85.

The funeral service was preached by a son-in-law of Daniel’s son, and was held in a barn because so many extended family members wanted to pay homage to a man who had never been wealthy but had always been loved. He was buried in a coffin he built by himself, next to his beloved Rebecca, in a family graveyard on Teuque Creek.

But as was common with frontiersmen and women, the graves (above) were unmarked until the 1830’s.

Then, beginning in the mid-1840’s, as the Boone legend was created by novelists (and with hundreds of trees baring marks supposedly carved by Daniel, which increased the property value) investors in Frankfort, the new capital of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, decided that the late Daniel was just the draw they needed to attract new customers (and investors) to their new municipal cemetery.  

One booster wrote that it was “…fitting that the soil of Kentucky should afford the final resting place for his remains, ….that the generation which was reaping the fruits of his toils (should)…have in their midst…the sepulcher of this Primeval Patriarch whose stout heart would be watched by the cradle of this now powerful Commonwealth.”

Kentucky appealed to Daniel’s only surviving son, Nathaniel, describing their offer of the “Most beautiful cemetery in the west…” and assuring him that “$10,000 will be expended on the grounds and improvements”. But the answer from Nathaniel, who knew how his father felt about Kentucky, was a firm and short “no”.

So Frankfort officials dispatched an aging nephew of Daniel's, who still lived in Kentucky, William Linville Boone, along with two more animated representatives to speak to the family. Jacob Swigert was a longtime country court Judge in Frankfort, and Clerk for the Kentucky Court of Appeals for the last twenty years. Thomas L. Crittenden (above) was the 26 year old son of the American Secretary of State, and was being groomed to join the power structure in Kentucky. .

Unfortunately (or fortunately) the trio arrived in Missouri while Nathaniel was away on militia duty. So the trio descended upon Harriet Boone Barber and Panthea Boone Boggs, granddaughters of Daniel, through his deceased son Jesse. Whatever the two women told the Kentuckians, the trio decided it meant they had agreed to the Daniel’s removal to the Commonwealth.

The next morning, 17 July, 1845, the determined delegation appeared at the front door of Harvey Griswold, who now owned the graveyard. Harvey argued, but the lawyers from Kentucky answered every protest, promising to erect a monument to replace the missing relics of Daniel and Rebecca. And with the "approval" of the two grand daughters, it appeared the law was on the Kentucky side. Three local black men had been hired to disinter the graves; King Bryan, Henry Augbert, and Jeff Callaway. Jeff had been a slave for the Callaway family, and now as a free man he was digging up the father of his one time owner, Mrs. Flander Boone Callaway.

The work attracted a crowd of thirty to forty people, most of them related to Daniel and Rebecca. As the three men worked and the crowd grew angry, Thomas Crittenden distracted the crowd, assuring them that all was being done legally and properly (it was not) and that Kentucky was going to erect a memorial to the great man on this spot. They never did. Meanwhile the three black men continued to dig. The coffins had long since rotted into the soil, but the workers did not realize this until they struck bone and shrouds.

Wrote a St. Louis newspaper, “Some bones crumbled when hands tried to lift them, but the three black men put what they could in pine boxes.” Another observer noted that the bones were handled “as carelessly as if they belonged to an ordinary mortal.” The St. Louis reporter observed that “A number of local people picked up teeth and bits of bone…” and kept them as personal mementos, along with the silver cuff links from Daniel’s best shirt. The next day landowner Harvey Griswold found a jaw bone laying on the ground. It is hard not to describe what the officials from Kentucky achieved as less of a removal, and more of a hurried desecration.

On Friday, 12 September, 1845, the “remains” of Daniel and Rebecca Boone laid in state in the (old) State House. That night, the skeletons were arraigned on a table to be examined as if they were paleontology exhibits. Daniel’s skull, minus his jaw, was passed around, examined even by eight year old John Mason Brown. When the skull had finally been examined by a phrenologist, all the bones were reloaded into two elaborate coffins and finally allowed a measure of peace.

On Saturday, 13 September,  a grand procession of bands and marchers followed the hearses, each pulled by four white horses up the hill to the cemetery on a bluff overlooking the Kentucky Ri  ver. Speeches were made, and prayers were said, and then a brisk business was made selling burial plots near the now sacred site where Daniel Boone’s bones now rested.

But the cemetery never allotted money to build the promised monument, and it was not until 1860 that the state of Kentucky approved $2,000 to build one. Once it was, it was not well cared for. And it was not until after years of damage by souvenir hunters that the Daughters of the American Revolution convinced the state legislature to repair the monument and erect a fence around it. What a shock; the politicians had lied to Daniel, even after he'd been dead for 25 years.

Needless to say, Kentucky never allotted money to erect the promised monument on the original grave site in Missouri. And in July of 2008, a thief stole the bronze plaque bolted to a boulder which had been placed there in 1915 (again by the D.A.R.) to mark the humble spot where Daniel had wanted to rest in peace. It is estimated it would cost the state of Missouri $10,000 to replace that plaque. It does not seem likely any modern politicians, who see no advantage in investing in America’s future, will be willing to invest that amount of cash in our past.

It puts a lie to one of the most insightful things that the self educated hunter Daniel Boone ever said, “Curiosity," he wrote, "is natural to the soul of man, and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections”.  Evidently, Daniel, that is true only if there is money to be made out of those objects, and then, everything is for sale, even the soil feed by our earthly remains.

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THE NIGHT I PLAYED McBETH

"…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Macbeth; Act V, scene v

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I wonder if there has ever been a good reason for a riot?  The “Zip to Zap” riot of 1969 remains the only public disorder in the history of the state of North Dakota, but the primary violation there seems to have been ‘group vomiting in public’. The Sydney Cricket riot of 1879 took less than 20 minutes from start to finish. And the English “Calendar Riots” of 1751 are the answer to the question, “What if they held a riot and nobody came?” But of all the stupid reasons to have a riot, the stupidest, the dumbest has to be because you found an actor’s rendition of Macbeth was “too English”.

"I bear a charmed life".

Macbeth: Act V, scene viii *****************************************************************************
This stupidity began in 1836 with a then 20 year old athletic rock-headed ego maniac from Philadelphia named Edwin Forrest. He was a sort of full-back version of the Michael Flatley, “Lord of the Dance”. Humbly, Mr. Forrest described himself as “…a Hercules.” As an actor, “…baring his well-oiled chest and brawny thighs…” Forrest milked every ounce of histrionics out of “Henry V” and every pound of pathos out of “King Lear”, bounding about the stage to liven up the "slow" parts of Shakespeare. By the time he was twenty, Forrest was earning $200 at day (today’s equivalent would be $4,000). Then Forrest decided to conquer the London stage, and parenthetically to study at the foot of the giant of Victorian Shakespearean over- actors, Mr. Edward Kean.

“If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak”

Macbeth; Act I, scene iii
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Forrest was a minor hit in London playing supporting roles. While in town he wined and dinned the other giants of the English stage, Charles Kemble and William Charles Macready, and paid them homage. And as a memento of his trip, Forrest took home an English wife, the lovely and wise Catherine Norton Sinclair (below).

Forrest's return to America was greeted with packed houses and raves by most reviewers. There were some voices of dissent, such as William Winter, who wrote for the New York Tribune that Forrest behaved on stage like a maddened animal “bewildered by a grain of genius”. But such discontent was drowned out in the applause from Boston to Denver. American audiences liked their actors larger than life in those days, and Forrest was just about as large as he could get. In fact, everything would have been perfect but for two small details. First, Edwin could not resist sharing himself with every woman who swooned over his manly thighs (the vast numbers of whom Catherine had a little trouble dealing with), and second, Edwin decided to make a triumphal return tour of England in 1845.

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair".

Macbeth: Act I, scene i. **************************************************************************** Forrest opened at the Princess’s Theatre in London, where he billed himself as “The Great American Shakespearean Actor”. That was his first mistake. Importing Shakespearean actors to England is like bringing coals to Newcastle; they don’t really need any more. And calling himself "Great" did not go down well, either. When Forrest performed his Macbeth, the audience even had the audacity to “boo”. Forrest then made his second mistake when he decided that the negative reaction was a conspiracy hatched by of all people, William Macready.

"What 's done is done"

Macbeth: Act III scene iii
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Oddly enough Macready (above) respected Forrest, even though their acting styles were diametrically opposed. Macready even thought of them as friends. Which made Macready all the more shocked when one night, during his “to be or not to be” speech in Edinburg, he discovered that the foulmouthed baboon hissing at him from a private box adjacent to the stage was none other than his erstwhile friend, Edwin Forrest. Forrest even wrote to the “London Times” to justify his gauche behavior as every 'audience members’ right to critique a performer on the spot'. That lit up the press from Leadville, Colorado to Inverness, Scotland. Every yahoo critic and hot headed fanatic had an opinion as to who was the more objectionable, the vulgar American, or the stuck up Limey.

“Let not light see my black and deep desires”

Macbeth; Act I scene iv ********************************************************************************
In 1849, when Macready, “The Eminent Tragedian”, began what he intended as his farewell tour of America, he found that Forest had sown salt ahead of him. At every major city he played, from New Orleans to Cleveland, Forest was headlining in another local theatre, performing the same plays.

When Macready opened on 7 May in “Macbeth” at the Astor Place Opera House in Manhattan (above), Forrest was opening in “Macbeth” at another theatre just a mile away. And the instant that Macready stepped onto the stage that first night in Manhattan,  it was, in the words of a modern critic, “Groundlings, grab your tomatoes!” The audience began to boo, and then to throw things. After a chair just missed beheading Macready, he took a quick bow and ran for the wings.

"...When the battle 's lost and won".

Macbeth: Act I, Scene i
********************************************************************************* If the troubles had ended there it would have been a mere footnote in theatrical history. But the next morning Washington Irving and Herman Melville stuck their gigantic egos into the mess. They circulated and published a petition signed by 47 ‘distinguished’ New Yorkers begging Macready to stay for just one more performance. Against his own better judgment, and facing threats of lawsuits from his producers if he quit early, Macready agreed to one more show.

“If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me.”

Macbeth; Act I scene iii
********************************************************************************* Overnight handbills blossomed on every lamppost in the Bowery; “Workingmen! Shall Americans or English rule this city?” The question was posed by something called “The American Committee”, obviously not a bulwark of artistic objectivity. But I still wonder who really paid for those posters? The city fathers ordered up 325 policemen, and called up 200 members of the 7th regiment, New York Volunteers, to guard the Opera House. And brother, they needed them.

On Thursday, 10 May, 1849 the troublemakers were kept out of the theatre, but perhaps 10,000 future New York Yankee fans gathered across Astor Place hurling first insults at the cops, and then moving on to rocks and bricks. Eventually the shower of stone shattered the plywood that protected the theatre’s windows and audience members inside were dodging missiles bouncing between their seats.

“Is this a dagger which I see before me?”

Macbeth; Act II, scene i
******************************************************************************* Then the crowd charged the cops. The cops beat them back: twice. A handful of “Bowery Boys” tried to set the Opera House on fire. And the next time the crowd charged the 200 members of the 7th let loose a volley. When the smoke cleared, some 22 to 30 people were dead and more than 100 wounded, including some police officers. As at Kent State a century and a half later, many of those shot were innocent bystanders. But enough of the troublemakers had been scared enough to leave Astor Place, and rest of the mob followed. The Shakespeare Riot was over.

"All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”

Macbeth Act V, Scene i.
********************************************************************************* It would be comforting to say that Edwin Forrest suffered for his ego maniacal gambling with other people’s lives. But he didn’t. He just got more famous and more popular. Which may explain why, in 1850 Edwin  had the utter gall to sue Catherine for divorce, charging her with adultery.

Yes, the biggest horn dog in America was claiming his English wife had been unfaithful to him. She hadn’t, but who could blame her if she had?  The press - on both sides of the Atlantic - published every nasty innuendo and allegation leaked by both sides. In the end, New York Justice Thomas J. Oakley awarded Catherine her freedom and ordered Edwin Forrest to pay her $3,750 (the equivalent of $92,000 today) every year for the rest of her life. It doesn’t appear as if Edwin really missed the money because he never paid it. True to his character he simply avoided New York State and kept every dime of his fortune. And when he died in 1876, alone and forgotten in his Philadelphia mansion, most of his estate went to Catherine because of the unpaid alimony. At least she outlived the old jerk.

“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.”

Macbeth: Act I, scene iv. ********************************************************************************* It all brings to mind the old English music hall ditty, “…They jeered me; they queered me, and half of them stoned me to death. They threw nuts and sultanas, fired eggs and bananas, the night I appeared as Macbeth.”

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THE MUTINY AT SPITHEAD

I don't believe 52 year old Vice Admiral John Griffith Colpoys (above) was an excitable man. He had served with honor in the Royal Navy through shot and storm since he was thirteen. But at about three in the afternoon of Sunday 7 May, 1797, while floating peacefully at anchor and within sight of friendly shore, he threw a hissy fit. He lost his mind. His meltdown began just an hour earlier, when Edward Griffith, the Captain of the HMS London, who was also Colpoy's nephew, entered the Admiral's cabin and announced, “Sir, I am very sorry to acquaint you, that everything appears as wrong as ever with the fleet...” And at that instant, Colpoy's stable universe seemed to collapse around him. So he did too.

The British Navy learned to sail in the Solent, the fifteen mile long, two mile wide strait between the Isle of Wright and the southern English harbor of Portsmouth. Just beyond the harbor entrance was the shallow anchorage called The Spithead, where for 300 years British warships had waited for off shore winds to carry them to conquer the world. And it was here, on 17 April 1797, that the British “Tars” manning the 16 ships of the Channel Fleet refused in unison to raise anchor until their long time grievances were finally addressed.

When the sailors' delegates rowed alongside to confer with the crew of HMS London, Admiral Colpoys had ordered his marines to repel them by force. Confrontation was avoided this time when Commander of the Channel Fleet, full Admiral Alexander Hood, ordered Colpoys to allow the delegates to meet with his crew. Hood sympathized with the “Tars”. And in response to the Admiralty Board's repeated orders to sail, he wrote, “Their Lordships desire me to use every means in my power to restore the discipline of the fleet...nothing in my opinion will be able to effect, but a compliance with their petitions.” Howe even ordered the captain of each ship to request that their crew supply a full list of grievances.

The 70,000 able seamen of the Royal Navy willingly endured death and boredom to keep Britain's enemies blockaded in their French ports. But they had not received a pay raise in 140 years. Two ounces of every pound of their meager daily ration of salted beef and maggoty biscuits were deducted as the “pursers' pound”.  Kidnapped (impressed) “landsmen”, were paid less and were increasingly replacing the volunteers whose sacrifices in 49 engagements large and small over the previous fifty years had allowed Britannia to rule the waves. The men wanted a pay raise, equity of pay among sailors, a full ration and promise of a pardon from the King for their “mutiny”. And they would not raise anchors until their demands were met.

A three man delegation from the Admiralty arrived in Portsmouth to negotiate with the sailors' delegates, and within three days had convinced the mutineers “not to lift anchor till every article is rendered into an Act of Parliament and the King's Pardon to all concerned.”  The sailors, who had taken an oath to act in unity, no longer trusted the Admiralty Board. The nobility had referred to the sailors as beggars because they "begged" the Admiralty board to hear their case. But the intimidated  delegation retreated to London. And then on Sunday 23 April, 100 copies of the King's full and complete pardon arrived in Portsmouth. With cheering among the lower decks, thus ended one of the most polite of rebellions in history – or it should have, but for two things.

First, the wind shifted. For two weeks the fleet was pinned against the lee shore, but in full communication about events in London. 

While they still rocked at anchor, on 3 May, 1797, the Tory Party under Prime Minister William Pitt (the younger - above) guided the emergency appropriations bill to pay for the salary increase and improved food smoothly through the House of Commons. But in the House of Lords the Spithead Mutineers ran into their most stubborn and stupid opposition. 

The new obstacle was the Wig gadfly, Francis Russel, 5^th Duke of Bedford (above).  As a public speaker Francis was ‘intolerably prolix and heavy in style”, but two years earlier this 34 year old handsome odd ball had protested new taxes on the white hair powder used by members of Parliament by going “native”, at least on his head. For this he was widely celebrated in liberal newspapers. But now this good friend of the heir apparent, the Prince of Wales, and a man who was always in favor of raising wages, demanded a full accounting. How much would the raise in wages, and better food for sailors cost the tax payers?  And where was that money to come from?

Normally the Duke of Bedford's gambit would have been nothing more than a minor irritation to William Pitts government. However, on 5 May a boat pulled alongside the 100 gun HMS Queen Charlotte at Spithead and tossed newspapers onto the lower gun deck. Within the day, every able seaman in the Channel Fleet knew “the seaman's cause” was threatened. The officers remained in the dark until, on 7 May, when the Captain of His Majesty's Ship “London”, John Griffith, informed his Admiral Edward Griffith Colpoys, that there was new trouble on board .

HMS London was a 177 foot long, 2,200 ton triple-decked 98 gun ship-of-the-line. It had taken five years and 6,000 oak trees to build her, and 4 acres of canvass, 27 miles of hemp and 750 sailors and Marines to sail her . She had 28 cannon on her lower deck, each throwing a 32 pound iron ball, 30 18-pounders on her middle deck, 30 12-pounders on her upper gun deck, eight more 12- pounders on her quarter-deck with two more on her forecastle at the bow. After thirty hard years of service she was still state of the art because naval tactics had not changed in a century. But the recent coating of her hull with copper had extended her tours of duty by years, beyond the endurance of the underpaid and badly fed men who had fought 49 naval battles over the last fifty years.

Colpoys ordered the seamen assembled on the aft quarter deck. In the meantime, he had Captain Griffith make certain the marines would back their officers. Colpoys then asked if the crew had any new grievances. Assured they had none, he pledged, “If you will follow my advice, then you shall not get into any disgrace with your brethren in the fleet, as I shall become responsible for your conduct.” He then ordered them to proceed below and to close the gun ports. And as soon as the last sailor was below decks, the marines and officers were stationed at every exit. He now had the crew bottled up below decks. When grumbling was heard from below, Griffith asked if they should fire should the crew try to come on deck. Colpoys answered, “Yes, certainly; they must not be allowed to come up until I order them.”

They did not wait. The crew began edging up the hatchway. Taking the Admiral's orders to heart, twenty-five year old First Lieutenant Peter Bover threatened the mutineers with his flintlock pistol. A delegate dared him to fire, so Bover did, shooting the man in the chest. The enraged crew stormed the hatch, pummeling the Lieutenant. More shots were fired. The entire marine detachment, except two, threw down their arms and joined the crew. The shocked Admiral abruptly surrendered. It seemed that Admiral Hood had been right, after all.

The infuriated crewmen dragged Lieutenant Bover to the forecastle, and slipped a noose over his head. But just as they were about to string him up, a voice shouted, “If you hang this young man you shall hang me, for I shall never quit him.” The speaker was Quartermaster's mate Valentine Joyce, a seventeen year veteran of the service -, about as experienced as Admiral Hood. Joyce was stationed aboard the 100 gun Royal George, and must have just come aboard in the confusion, or been aboard for some time. One of the primary mutiny negotiators, his presence at this critical moment cannot have been completely accidental. The lynching was stopped, the offending officer restrained, and the crew took command of the ship.

In all five officers and four sailors had been wounded. Three of the sailors would later die, including the man shot by Bover. The entire rebellious fleet now raised anchor and floated ten miles south, away from Portsmouth. They dropped anchor again off the east coast of the Isle of Wright, near the small village of St. Helens and the Bramble Bank. Four days later, on 11 May, Bover was handed over to civilian authorities to be tried for murder. (a jury would find his actions to be “justifiable homicide.”) At the same time Captain Griffith Colpoys and Vice Admiral Colpoys were released on the beach. The Mutineers had a new demand, that certain objectionable officers and marines were to be removed permanently. Oddly enough, Lt. Bover was not among them.

None of it was necessary. On 8 May rumors of the fresh rebellion had reached London, and the Wigs were suddenly aware they could be blamed. The additional budget of three hundred seventy-two thousand pounds was quickly approved on a silent vote, and only a gale prevented the fleet from learning the government had already surrendered. That only left the new demand for removal of the worst officers. For four days the negotiations in St. Helens dragged on. The sailors unity did not waiver, and in the end Lord Howe, the new head of negotiations for the Admiralty Board, was forced to admit , it was “fit to acquiesce in what was now the mutual desire of both officers and seamen in that fleet.” as “the officers themselves had no wish to be foisted on crews which would not obey them.”

By 15 May the deal was finally done. In all 114 officers, including Vice Admiral Colpoys and four ship captains, were removed from ships at both St. Helens and those still at Spithead, and in the rest of the Royal Navy. None of the mutineers were ever punished..On 15 May 1797 Admiral Hood ordered the Channel Fleet to raise anchor and set sail for the French Coast. Not a single ship failed to follow his orders. The Spithead Mutiny was over.  But a new one, at the mouth of the Thames, was just beginning.

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