AN AMERICAN MURDER Part Two

 

I think it's clear that Meriwether Lewis (above) was, at 35, an American hero. He had been the official leader of the 6,000 mile long Lewis and Clark expedition.  On his return in 1807,  President Thomas Jefferson named him the governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory, it's capital in St. Louis.  But just two years later he was dead, in an isolated hostel just north over the border between modern day Mississippi and Tennessee, shot twice and with knife cuts across his throat.

Before the march to the Pacific Ocean, before he even served as the personal aide to the President Thomas Jefferson,  Lewis exhibited all the indications of suffering with Asperger syndrome. He was socially inept, a painfully shy, solitary man, “touchy, opinionated, and quarrelsome”.  Making friends was difficult for him, and he had the sorry capability of turning first-time acquaintances into  lifelong enemies. 

And then there was the Lewis and Clark expedition, the greatest achievement of Merriweather's life. But it had cost the Virginian more than was generally appreciated. While on this three year adventure, not only had he repeatedly starved, he had been frozen, and several times nearly drowned, he had also been shot by one of his own men (by accident).  And he had probably contracted syphilis.

There is no unambiguous proof of this last affliction, of course. But the average incubation period for syphilis is about 21 days. And, “Six to eight weeks after the initial sore disappears the patient will feel tired, may experience a headache with a fever, have swollen lymph nodes and a sore throat.... hair loss and a skin rash...These symptoms can last for over three months, and sometimes as long as six months.”

We know from the private journals kept by its members, that on 13 and 14  August of 1805 Captain Lewis and some of the men from the expedition ‘partied’ with some Shoshone women -  just another part of the destruction of tribal coherence. Twenty-eight days later, on 19 September,  Meriwether Lewis became so ill he stopped writing in his diary for three months. And when the expedition returned to St. Louis in late September of 1806, they tarried there for six weeks without any reasonable explanation.

Today an infection of syphilis would be treated with a course of antibiotics. But in the 19^th century the standard was a month's treatment with the poisonous metal mercury -  taken either orally, applied as a balm, breathing in the vapors, or by a direct injection. Physicians at the time can be forgiven for thinking mercury could cure syphilis because in the normal course of the disease, the symptoms disappear and then reappear at random, perhaps with years between outbreaks. 

But even more misleading was that the symptoms of mercury poisoning – numbness and pins-and-needles in the hands and feet, loss of coordination, muscle weakness, mood swings, memory loss,  impairment of speech and hearing and mental disturbance- are the same symptoms as advancing syphilis. It is not merely a case of the cure being worse than the disease. In this case, the cure reinforced the disease.

In March of 1807,  after that month long delay in St. Louis,  Captain Lewis finally reported to the President in Washington, D.C.   Jefferson then appointed his ex-neighbor to the governorship of the Upper Louisiana Territory.  Then he released Lewis to visit with his family in Virginia, and prepare his journals for publication.

Then, unexpectedly, President Jefferson added to Captain Lewis’ burden. He asked him to go to Richmond to attend the trial of that lightning rod of American politics, Aaron Burr.

Burr (above) was, depending on whom you choose to believe, either a hero seeking to strike a blow against the Spanish empire, or he was a traitor who had raised a small army to foster rebellion within the United States. Jefferson chose to believe the latter because he already hated Burr. 

After Burr was acquitted, Meriwether Lewis returned to his mother’s home,  not far from Jefferson’s home at Monticello. He wrote to a Philadelphia friend, Mahlon Dickerson, in early November, “What may be my next adventure, God knows, but on this I am determined, to get a wife.” Many women were interviewed for the job, in Virginia and Philadelphia and even Cincinnati, but none were willing to move with Lewis to the distant frontier, even as a Governor's wife. Meriwether's relations with women were as clumsy and difficult as his relations with men.

By late November the still single Meriwether and his brother Reuben had arrived at the falls of the Ohio River (above), where the town of Louisville, Kentucky had been established. There Lewis hired Joseph Charles to run the newspaper he intended upon starting in St. Louis, and in early January 1808 he advertised for subscribers at $3 a year. It was a shrewd political move, making certain his side of political events would be publicize, and was probably suggested by Jefferson who had a history of using newspapers to attack his political opponents.

Lewis would need all the the support he could muster, because in St. Louis (above) he was walking into a den of thieves as treacherous as the one in Washington, D.C,

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THE GREAT DIAMOND MOUNTAIN Chapter Six

 

I can imagine what William Ralston felt when his assistant Mr. Colton handed him the telegram from Professor King. His shock, and probably anger at this previously unknown (to him) interloper,  who dared to  question his dream, must have been overwhelming. But this was quickly followed by reports from the London newspapers detailing the bizarre Americans who had bought junk diamonds in bulk. 

Wrote the London Times, “....they purchased without reference to size, weight or quality, the lot including diamonds, rubies, emeralds, etc. to the value of over $15,000.”  Shortly there after King himself arrived in San Francisco, with full details of the salted claims.  Ralston, admiral of the San Francisco money armada,  wasted no time in moving to minimize the damage to his finances.

First he made arraignments to repay every investor in full. That million dollar hit to his personal finances did hurt, but in the days before the Securities and Exchange Commission, and their meddlesome regulations, tens of millions of dollars in investments could vanish with a mere whiff of rumor against the reputation of one man. If the Bank of California was to have any future, then Ralston had to restore at once the full trust of men like Baron Rothschild. It was at moments like these that it should be clear that a lack of government regulations is a severe hindrance to the trust which makes larger international investments possible.  But those interested in the short con,  are always opposed to having a cop on the beat. 

Next Ralston moved to get his money back. He hired the best detective he could find, long time San Francisco Captain of Detectives, Isaiah Wrigley Lees (above). Over thirty years of service, Lees had managed to avoid any taint of corruption while rising to the top of a department awash in payoffs and political favoritism. 

Lees (above) had championed innovations such as photographing all arrested suspects, and originated the rouges gallery of their photographs. Lees  was now granted a leave of absence from the department, and Ralston provided him with a salary and an expense account to find out everything he could about the Great Diamond Mountain con.

Lees immediately set out for Europe and found, as he suspected, that there were many along Tulip Street who recognized the photographs of the two odd Americans from their 1870 expedition.  By tracking the aliases they had used in Amsterdam against shipping manifests Lees could confirm that Arnold and Slack had sailed – in both 1870 and 1872 – from the Canadian port of Halifax. The Windsor and Annapolis Railway had been completed in January of 1872,  connecting the U.S. State of Maine with Nova Scotia, and that seemed the obvious path they had taken to avoid American ports and American customs agents.

Although John Slack was was nowhere to be found at the moment, the Pinkerton agency easily tracked down Philip Arnold, living amongst the 2,000 residents in his home town of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. And far from hiding, Arnold had followed the example of his mark, William Ralston. 

Slack had invested his ill-gotten gains in a troubled bank run by Thomas Polk, now renamed the Arnold and Polk Bank (above, b;g; right). The move saved the small town from financial ruin. 

Arnold put the rest of his money into the safe in his two story brick Italiante home (above) at 422 East Poplar street, in the hills on the north side of “E”town, along with 500 acres of farmland where he started breeding horses, hogs and sheep.

Arnold and Slack were both indicted for fraud in San Francisco, but Philip Arnold (above) had no intention of giving himself up.  His family connections in Hardin County, Kentucky, and his donations to local politicians were only reinforced by the interviews he gave to the “Louisville Courier”; “I have employed counsel, a good Henry Rifle” he announced.  

Philip Arnold's feisty talk assured public opinion would materialized firmly behind the local boy who had outfoxed the west coast robber barons.  He even hired a lawyer or two. The con man turned banker was dug in like a tick on a Kentucky mule, and banker Ralston was not going to get him out without an expensive, exhausting and embarrassing court fight. Rather than see himself mocked and derided in Kentucky courtrooms, the robber baron decided to cut a deal.

The details were never made public, but it seems the California banker settled for less than a third of what he personally had lost, about $200,000.  In exchange Ralston dropped all claims against the Kentucky con man.  But the bad news was just starting for the Magician of San Francisco. The capitalist sharks smelled blood in the water.  

In August of 1875,  fellow robber baron and close personal friend Senator William Sharon (above), broke a promise to Ralston and sparked the collapse of the Bank of California. Try as he might to avoid it, William Ralston ended up just like Henry Comestock, and he made the same exit. 

The day after they took his bank away, William Ralston was found floating in San Francisco bay. his pockets full of rocks.  His funeral was attended by 50,000 people. They loved him, they just weren't willing to lend him any more money.

Charles Lewis Tiffany (above), the man who had vouched for the value of worthless diamonds and sapphires, reestablished his reputation in 1878 by buying himself a French Legion of Honor.  He died in 1902 at the age of 90.  He left behind an estate valued at $35 million.

Shortly after paying Ralston to go away, Philip Arnold opened a hardware store at 58 Public Square in “E” town (above).  It seems he had gotten away with 4 or 5 million dollars out of  the diamond hoax, and even after his deal with Ralston he was doing pretty well.  Unfortunately, he would not live long to enjoy it. 

Just five years later, on Tuesday, 20 August 1878, Philip Arnold got into a bar fight with Henry Holdsworth, a clerk at a competing bank. In a story that would be familiar to anyone who watches the local news, a chastized Holdsworth left the bar and returned a few minutes later with a double barreled shotgun.

According to the Breckenridge News,  Arnold was just leaving the bar when he saw Holdsworth approaching. Arnold pulled his revolver and fired twice. He missed both times. Holdsworth returned fire with one barrel, missing Arnold but hitting two innocent bystanders, one of them in the neck.  Hodsworth then ducked behind a tree. From there he emptied the second barrel at Arnold, hitting him in the shoulder and “lacerating it terribly”.  Encouraged,  Arnold reloaded twice, and fired three more rounds, again missing Hodsworth, but this time hitting a local farmer named John Anderson, in the gut, and killing him.  Since everybody was now empty, the gun fight was over, and the tally was seven rounds fired, one antagonist wounded, one innocent bystander killed and two more noncombatants injured - a typical gun fight.

Philip Arnold did die, just not quickly. The 49 year old lingered for almost a year, finally dying  of pneumonia on 8 August, 1879.   At least he outlived his victim,  William Ralston.  Arnold's funeral was one of the best attended in the history of “E” town, and his monument on the rolling slopes of the Elizabethtown Cemetery is one of the tallest. But over time memories of Philip Arnold have shifted and now, a century later, every October, the residents of “E”town stage the “Philip Arnold Dead Man Rolling Bed Race”- to raise money for charity, of course. Contact the E-town Heritage Council for details. The final irony is that Arnold's hardware store has now become a law office.

In a footnote - Arnold's nemeses, Henry Hardworths, was not satisfied with having mortally wounded Arnold. He also sued him for $7,600 for injuries suffered in the bar fight. Henry lost the case. But that figure came up again in August of 1884 when Henry was arrested in New Orleans for passing bad checks  in "E" town, totaling $7,000.

Arnold's partner in crime, John Slack was eventually tracked down in St. Louis, where he was working in the affiliated professions of cabinet and coffin maker. Evidently he had no money for  William Ralston to recover. But the silent con man missed the mines of his youth and continued his profession as a prospector in the  New Mexico silver strike boom town of White Oaks, where he became “one of the oldest and most universally respected citizens...” of Lincoln County.  He died in 1896, at the age of seventy-six years, two months and six days, leaving an estate of $1,611.14.

The only conventional hero in our tale seems to have been the geologist and professor, Clarence King (above). He had uncovered the scam, and that act rocketed him to fame as a paragon of virtue and science, which saw him made the first director of the United States Geological Survey.  But there was, of course, another side to the rock hound, a human side.  In 1888  Professor King  married Ada Copeland, an ex-slave who had moved from Georgia to New York. What was dark about this marriage  was that King hid his true identity from Ada, telling her that his name was actually James Todd, that he was a black man and his profession was actually that of a Pullman Porter. Over the next 13 years he continued this divided life, black man James Todd at home, and world renown white geology professor Clarence King while away from home. Ada and James/Clarence  had five children together, but Clarence did not reveal his true identity to poor Ada or the children until December 1901. And did it via long distance, from his death bed in Arizona. The lesson here is that everybody is lying to somebody, usually to themselves. 

If you want to see the Diamond Mountain that has no diamonds, find Diamond Wash Draw, in Moffat County, Colorado, about one mile south of the Wyoming state line and a quarter mile east of the Utah state border. The flat topped mountain in front of you is Diamond Peak. And the square mile scrub brush plain to the north of that is the scene of the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872. If you can get there, you just might be able to pull a diamond right out of the ground. And when you do, if you do,  you will understand why William Ralston had been so willing to believe, and why capitalism has always depended upon a mix of fantasy and fraud to thrive. 

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THE GREAT ABSCONDING

 

I am sure you have heard of “Tricky Dick” Nixon, and probably “Slick Willy” Clinton, and maybe even Martin Van “Ruin”, or “Ruther-”fraud” B. Hays or maybe even  “Ten Cent” Jimmy Buchanan - who opined that a dime was a fair daily wage, and vetoed new colleges because “"there were already too many educated people",  But I'm willing to bet few have ever heard of James William “Honest Dick” Tate, even if they are from Kentucky. But you ought to have.

 

Sans his nom de plume, there was nothing special about James Tate (above). He was of average height and average weight. His forehead was made large by his retreating jet-black hair line. But his bushy “coffee strainer” mustache was the fashion in his day. However, it did hide a down turned mouth, that perhaps hinted at the tragic death of Howard, his three year old son. Still his daughter, Edmonia Lloyd Tate, survived, as did his loving wife Lucy Hawkins Tate. Then in 1867, after 13 years in various appointed positions in Kentucky politics, the 36 year old James Tate had so “materially contributed, by his personal popularity, to the great success of the Democratic party"  that he was nominated and elected State Treasurer.  Of course the racist propaganda also cemented the Democrat's hold on state politics.

The Treasurer was responsible for all funds collected in fees, permits, taxes, fines and rents, managed the state's bank accounts, paid state employees and dispensed benefits and verified and paid all bills. And despite it being around the time of this election that James acquired his cognomen, I cannot escape the suspicion “Honest Dick” Tate was not chosen for his probity, but for his “popularity”. In fact it was Democratic Party supporters who actually bonded him, pledging their wealth as a guarantee of Tate's “rock sand honesty”, as required by law before he could assume the position. But that guarantee was contingent upon other state officials verifying “Honest Dick's” work  And there is no evidence anybody ever actually did that.

To the public, James “Honest Dick “Tate was an average man, making an average salary, just $2,400 a year (barely $60,000 today), with perks worth perhaps a thousand dollars more. James' average unassuming home, at Second and Shelby Streets in Frankfort, cost all of $6,000 (about $100k today). But James was moving in powerful circles now, re-elected every two years for the next two decades. He was the “Treasurer for Life”.  

Inside Frankfort Democratic circles it became known that should a politician need to borrow a few thousand dollars, as Governor Preston H. Leslie (above) did in 1872, then “Honest Dick” would be happy to accept their IOU, and not be too bothersome about demanding prompt repayment. So amiable was “Honest Dick” that he had a safe filled with personal checks, cashed for Democratic friends, but never submitted for reimbursement.

James Tate also chased his own financial Eldorado, investing in land in Indiana, Virginia and Tennessee, along with several coal mines in Kentucky. However the land he bought does not appear to have appreciated in value, and the mines never seemed to produce enough coal to justify their purchase price. James also tried speculating in stocks and, it appears, when those investments failed, in even more direct forms of gambling. And like all gamblers, losing was just an excuse to risk even more.

All of this was below the surface, while in the public view the 1878 “Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky” noted that “Honest Dick” Tate was “successively re-elected by popular majorities, perhaps exceeding those obtained by any other candidate for office in the State...it would seem that his lease on the office might be regarded as a fixed fact.” And in 1886, John McAfee described James Tate as the “trusted and honored treasurer” with an “unblemished record for probity and principle...(James) is held in high esteem, and his integrity and forbearance are regarded as of the highest order.”. But rumors must have been floating about Frankfort, because during the 1887 campaign for governor, the perennial second place Kentucky party, the Republicans,  brought the issue to the surface.

Their candidate that year was the ex-prosecutor from Garrard County, orator William O'Connell Brady (above), and in what may have been the first Republican use of a “Big Government” attack, Brady charged the Democrats had created unneeded extravagant new offices, like Railroad Commissioners and an Agricultural Bureau. And almost as an aside, Brady suggested the time was past due for an audit of “Honest Dick” Tate's books

The Republicans had no evidence, but the attacks were so popular that after just one debate, ex-Confederate General and Democratic candidate Simon Bolivar Buckner, invented a reason to avoid any further debates.

Democrat Buckner (above) defeated Republican Brady, of course, but his 3 August, 1887 margin of victory was just 5 points, compared with a 19 point Democratic win in the 1883 election. 

Brady had made the strongest Republican showing since the Civil War, and it scared the hell out of the Democrats. In the same election, James “Honest Dick” Tate won re-election for the 11^th time, by a margin of 67,000 votes, far more impressive than Governor Buckner's 16,712 vote margin.

It was during the autumn of 1887  that newly elected Democratic State Senator John Kerr Hendrick (above), an ex-prosecutor from Livingston County, called for a full audit of “Honest Dick”'s books

But James Tate said a family illness required his attention, and he needed a little time to get the records together. Senator Hendricks thought Tate was stalling, but Governor Buckner agreed to put the audit off until the spring of 1888.

It was than that a change appeared in “Honest Dick's” modus operendi. Some on his staff noted cash deposits in the state's bank accounts slowed to a trickle. And, if any had noticed before, he paid in full a number of his personal debts. Then on Wednesday, 14 March, 1888, Henry Murray, a Treasury Clerk, noticed his boss in the office vault, filling two tobacco sacks with gold and silver coins, and an approximately 4 inch thick roll of paper money. Murray assumed the Treasurer was preparing to make a bank deposit. And even after “Honest Dick” was found to have slipped out of the office unseen, no one was alarmed. A note left on his desk informed the staff he was going to Louisville for two days. It caused little notice. And long time staffers knew better than to expect the boss to return to the office before Monday.

But “Honest Dick” did not return on Monday morning. A staffer dispatched to his home on Second Street, was told his wife Lucy had not heard from him since he left for Louisville, the previous Wednesday. Telegraphed inquires to the Ohio River town said the Treasurer was last seen on Friday evening at a bar, drinking heavily.  On Saturday, 17 March, he had been seen boarding a train for Cincinnati.  After that, James “Honest Dick” Tate simply vanished. Newspapers would call it the “Great Kentucky Absconsion”.

The scene left behind told the story of a desperately disorganized personality. Staffers said it had always been that way. The account books seemed written in barely legible hieroglyphics, filled with post dated transactions, erasures, corrections, and indecipherable notations. The safe contained a number of women's beaded handbags and purses, and a satchel belonging to a dead infant.  It was also brimming with $150,000 in IOUs and “cold checks” ranging from $5 to $5,000, some going back ten years. No hard cash was left behind except for a one thousand dollar bundle of $10 bills, found under the safe. How long it had laid there in the dust, no one could say.

In the afternoon of Tuesday 20 March 1888, the Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives,  the President of the state Senate and the Secretary of State, received the following message: “It having been learned this morning that said James W. Tate has been absent from his office since the 15th instant...there is in all probability a large deficit in his public accounts...we by virtue of the authority vested in us...hereby suspend said James W. Tate...” It was signed “S. B. BUCKNER, Governor”. From this day forward, “Honest Dick” Tate would be referred to as “The Defaulting Treasurer.”.

George Willis, a Democratic spin doctor, was left spinning. “Such (a) flash of lightning and peal of thunder as was never heard before or since came out of clear sky and rocked the state and the Democratic party as nothing had done since the (Civil) war."  Kentucky's state historian noted that “almost everyone was under suspicion either as an accomplice of Tate or because of owing the treasury money, and those who had borrowed money from the treasury were numerous.” Briefly, and perhaps for the first time in Kentucky history, the politicians were ashamed. The Governor made a personal loan to keep the state afloat for awhile.

So inaccurate and confused was The Defaulting Treasurer's record keeping that it proved difficult to make an accurate estimate of the missing funds. And it was not in the interest of those with checks and IOU's in the safe to make an accurate accounting. A week later Governor Buckner announced the missing tally at approximately $247,128.50 (almost $6 million in today's money). Within a week James “Honest Dick” Tate was impeached in absentia on six counts and removed from office, and then indicted by a grand jury.  A reward of $5,000 was offered for his arrest. But the reward was never claimed.

Honest Dick's wife Lucy had to leave Frankfort because the state of Kentucky seized the family home  and everything of value within it, all of James' bank and stock accounts, including 100 barrels of “Big Spring” bourbon whiskey – another bad investment by the “Defaulting Treasurer”.   Luckily, daughter Edmomia had married a man named Martin, and was living free and clear in distant Kansas City, so the abandoned Lucy could live with her. 

The house, the whiskey, the investments, were all sold at auction, and collected $50,000 (over $1 million today.) But that left the bond holders on the hook for the remaining $200,000 (about $5 million today). They paid, but thanks to a Kentucky Supreme Court decision in 1895, none of those who had authored checks or IOU's found in the safe were required to reimburse the bond holders. That judgement was marked “Not to be officially reported”, and sealed. Most of the names on the IOU's never became public.

But what happened to the “Defaulting Treasurer”, “the Great Absconder”, AKA James “Honest Dick” Tate? He was rumored to be everywhere from Bremen, Germany to Toronto, Canada. Some said he had joined the expiate Confederate community in Honduras, or Brazil, where slavery remained until May of 1888.  In October of 1893 there was a brief flurry of excitement when a newspaper reported he was “Said to have been seen on the “Cotton Belt Train.” in Arizona Territory. But that proved to be mistaken identity, since the New York Times had reported “friends who should know” said he had died in China three years earlier.  In 1894 Navy Ensign Hugh Rodman, who had known Tate back in Frankfort, reportedly had dinner with the “Defaulting Treasurer” in Japan, and said he was not well. That should not have been surprising, since he would have been well over sixty by then.

Edmonia later admitted to receiving letters from her father, posted from San Francisco, British Columbia and Japan. The last one read, in part, “I know I will be much denounced and by parties who forget former circumstances”. He professed to being interested in returning to denounce his partners in crime. In 1896 1,200 Kentuckians signed a petition asking the Governor to grant a pardon to James Tate, so he could return and name names.  No such pardon was ever offered. With time new scandals rocked Kentucky, and people forgot about “Honest Dick “ Tate. But we should remember our mistakes. That is how we learn.

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