AMERICAN MURDER Part Four

 

I think the breaking point for Governor Meriwether Lewis (above) came when the Federal Government denied the bill he submitted for translating the territorial laws into French - in a place where, until 1803, French was the official language. It was only $18. And even in 1808 that was not much money – it would be about $245 today. But it was just another example of the penny pinching of the bean counters in the administration of the new President, James Madison.

The politicians were never very kind to Meriwether Lewis. For risking his life and limbs in the wilderness for three long years, for being shot, for repeatedly almost starving to death and almost drowning several times, when he got back alive the Captain received $1,228 in back pay (equal to about $16,000 today) and a coupon good for 1,600 acres of Federal land. (The official price of which was just $2 an acre – so the equivalent of another $3,000.) Added to this would be his yearly budget/salary  as Governor of $2,000, ($26,000 today), out of which he had to draw all incidental expenses, from which was now deducted that $18. So that was just another kick in the behind.

During their return voyage in 1806, Lewis and Clark had invited the Manndan Chief White Coyote to visit President Jefferson in Washington, and the chief had impulsively agreed. Jefferson was delighted, and the visit had cemented relations with the strongest tribe in the middle Missouri River country. But it proved difficult to get White Coyote and his entourage back home.

An attempt in 1807 had been turned back by the Arikarass tribe, at cost of the lives of three soldiers and the leg of a fourth man. More soldiers would have to be dispatched and bribes paid to allow the chief and his family to get home. But the price tag of this diplomatic mercy mission had risen to $7,000. The Washington bean counters were appalled. And they sort of had a point.

Lewis had handed the problem over to the St. Louis-Missouri River Fur Company, a private enterprise corporation. One hundred fifty men had marched and paddled up the Missouri River to the Manndan villages. They had returned the chief, and had then continued on, trapping beaver, otter and bear. All the pelts were shipped back to the company warehouse in St. Louis. The profits had gone to the shareholders, but the bill for paying all those men to pole their way up the Missouri River had gone to the Government. Sound familiar? And two of the shareholders in the St. Louis Fur Company were Governor Meriwether Lewis and his brother Reuben Lewis.

These details had been pointed out to the bureaucrats in Washington by the priggish Frederick Bates,   (above). The result was that the Madison administration, which had not picked Lewis,  had begun going over the Governor's expenses with a fine tooth comb. They grudgingly paid most of the bill for White Coyote's return, but managed to find $940 they could refuse to reimburse to Lewis. That was almost half his yearly budget and salary! 

Worse still, the Madison administration had re-opened the books on the three year old Lewis and Clark Expedition, and were now demanding a detailed accounting as to why a expedition projected to cost  $2,500 had ended up costing $40,000. The biggest reasons was, of course, that an enthusiastic congress, at Jefferson's urging, had added those land grants for everybody. But the Madison administration had suddenly developed amnesia about that.

The reality was that the land grants had not cost the government a dime, except in the accounting ledgers of the bean counters. But over the summer it took a month for one of the bureaucrats' demands for more paperwork to travel from Washington to St. Louis, and at least another month for Governor Lewis to respond. In the winter there was no mail at all, and for months at a time the misconstructions and misunderstandings simply piled one atop the next. It was a system made for bureaucratic misunderstandings, and the denial of an $18 translating fee was just the final straw. Meriwether Lewis, Governor of the Territory, must return to Washington and make his case face-to-face with the Federal bean counters.

In mid-August of 1809 Meriwether Lewis signed papers granting William Clark and two other friends Power-of-Attorney, in case anything should happen to him on his trip back east. It was a standard precaution, like buying flight insurance in the 21st century.  Lewis also sent a letter off to the Secretary of War protesting his treatment, and a letter to his mother, saying he was looking forward to seeing her in Virginia.  None of these were the actions of man who did not expect to return.

The St. Louis Gazette reported on Monday, 4 September, 1809 that Lewis had left town “in good health”. aboard a "Kentucky Ark", usually a twelve foot wide and thirty feet long flatboat which floated clumsily down the Mississippi.  Lewis was bound for New Orleans, where he intended upon boarding a sailing ship for the long voyage around the isthmus of Spanish Florida to Washington. But September was probably the worst time to be traveling by river in America.  And that September in particular.

It was the dry season of a dry year. The river was low, and the flatboat grounded methodically on every sand bar. It was brutally hot, the mosquito population feasted on every inch of bare flesh, and Lewis suffered a relapse of the malaria he had contracted during the transcontinental expedition.

After a week of travel, 180 river miles downriver, his flatboat arrived at the outpost of New Madrid.

This village of 800 had been a border town for a hundred years, first dividing Spanish territory from French territory, then between English and Spanish, then Spanish and American. Since 1803, it marked the border between Lewis' own Northern Louisiana Territory and the territory of Southern Louisiana, run from New Orleans. Governor Lewis was now under the authority of Governor and General James Wilkinson.

And from the moment he had landed at New Madrid (above), Lewis' behavior changed. His plans changed as well. It almost seems as if  Governor Meriwether Lewis clearly felt uncomfortable staying here while incapacitated by his fever, and allowed himself just two days to recuperate. On Wednesday, 13 September, he order his boat to shove off again.

Two days later the boat put in at the fourth of the Chickasaw Bluffs (and the future site of Memphis) at Fort Pickering.  Here Governor Lewis was carried off the river on a stretcher, badly dehydrated from his malaria fevers. He was met by Captain Gilbert Russel, commander of the sixteen man outpost. 

Captain Russel immediately turned over his own bed to the Governor, but was Lewis really so sick he could not continue the boat trip to New Orleans? Was he crazed by illness to the point of paranoia? Whatever the truth, the moment he had landed at New Madrid, Lewis' behavior had changed again. His plans certainly did. It almost seems that Governor Meriwether Lewis now thought of himself as being behind enemy lines.

- 30 -

AMERICAN MURDER Part Four

 

I think the breaking point for Governor Meriwether Lewis (above) came when the Federal Government denied the bill he submitted for translating the territorial laws into French - in a place where, until 1803, French was the official language. It was only $18. And even in 1808 that was not much money – it would be about $245 today. But it was just another example of the penny pinching of the bean counters in the administration of the new President, James Madison.

The politicians were never very kind to Meriwether Lewis. For risking his life and limbs in the wilderness for three long years, for being shot, for repeatedly almost starving to death and almost drowning several times, when he got back alive the Captain received $1,228 in back pay (equal to about $16,000 today) and a coupon good for 1,600 acres of Federal land. (The official price of which was just $2 an acre – so the equivalent of another $3,000.) Added to this would be his yearly budget/salary  as Governor of $2,000, ($26,000 today), out of which he had to draw all incidental expenses, from which was now deducted that $18. So that was just another kick in the behind.

During their return voyage in 1806, Lewis and Clark had invited the Manndan Chief White Coyote to visit President Jefferson in Washington, and the chief had impulsively agreed. Jefferson was delighted, and the visit had cemented relations with the strongest tribe in the middle Missouri River country. But it proved difficult to get White Coyote and his entourage back home.

An attempt in 1807 had been turned back by the Arikarass tribe, at cost of the lives of three soldiers and the leg of a fourth man. More soldiers would have to be dispatched and bribes paid to allow the chief and his family to get home. But the price tag of this diplomatic mercy mission had risen to $7,000. The Washington bean counters were appalled. And they sort of had a point.

Lewis had handed the problem over to the St. Louis-Missouri River Fur Company, a private enterprise corporation. One hundred fifty men had marched and paddled up the Missouri River to the Manndan villages. They had returned the chief, and had then continued on, trapping beaver, otter and bear. All the pelts were shipped back to the company warehouse in St. Louis. The profits had gone to the shareholders, but the bill for paying all those men to pole their way up the Missouri River had gone to the Government. Sound familiar? And two of the shareholders in the St. Louis Fur Company were Governor Meriwether Lewis and his brother Reuben Lewis.

These details had been pointed out to the bureaucrats in Washington by the priggish Frederick Bates,   (above). The result was that the Madison administration, which had not picked Lewis,  had begun going over the Governor's expenses with a fine tooth comb. They grudgingly paid most of the bill for White Coyote's return, but managed to find $940 they could refuse to reimburse to Lewis. That was almost half his yearly budget and salary! 

Worse still, the Madison administration had re-opened the books on the three year old Lewis and Clark Expedition, and were now demanding a detailed accounting as to why a expedition projected to cost  $2,500 had ended up costing $40,000. The biggest reasons was, of course, that an enthusiastic congress, at Jefferson's urging, had added those land grants for everybody. But the Madison administration had suddenly developed amnesia about that.

The reality was that the land grants had not cost the government a dime, except in the accounting ledgers of the bean counters. But over the summer it took a month for one of the bureaucrats' demands for more paperwork to travel from Washington to St. Louis, and at least another month for Governor Lewis to respond. In the winter there was no mail at all, and for months at a time the misconstructions and misunderstandings simply piled one atop the next. It was a system made for bureaucratic misunderstandings, and the denial of an $18 translating fee was just the final straw. Meriwether Lewis, Governor of the Territory, must return to Washington and make his case face-to-face with the Federal bean counters.

In mid-August of 1809 Meriwether Lewis signed papers granting William Clark and two other friends Power-of-Attorney, in case anything should happen to him on his trip back east. It was a standard precaution, like buying flight insurance in the 21st century.  Lewis also sent a letter off to the Secretary of War protesting his treatment, and a letter to his mother, saying he was looking forward to seeing her in Virginia.  None of these were the actions of man who did not expect to return.

The St. Louis Gazette reported on Monday, 4 September, 1809 that Lewis had left town “in good health”. aboard a "Kentucky Ark", usually a twelve foot wide and thirty feet long flatboat which floated clumsily down the Mississippi.  Lewis was bound for New Orleans, where he intended upon boarding a sailing ship for the long voyage around the isthmus of Spanish Florida to Washington. But September was probably the worst time to be traveling by river in America.  And that September in particular.

It was the dry season of a dry year. The river was low, and the flatboat grounded methodically on every sand bar. It was brutally hot, the mosquito population feasted on every inch of bare flesh, and Lewis suffered a relapse of the malaria he had contracted during the transcontinental expedition.

After a week of travel, 180 river miles downriver, his flatboat arrived at the outpost of New Madrid.

This village of 800 had been a border town for a hundred years, first dividing Spanish territory from French territory, then between English and Spanish, then Spanish and American. Since 1803, it marked the border between Lewis' own Northern Louisiana Territory and the territory of Southern Louisiana, run from New Orleans. Governor Lewis was now under the authority of Governor and General James Wilkinson.

And from the moment he had landed at New Madrid (above), Lewis' behavior changed. His plans changed as well. It almost seems as if  Governor Meriwether Lewis clearly felt uncomfortable staying here while incapacitated by his fever, and allowed himself just two days to recuperate. On Wednesday, 13 September, he order his boat to shove off again.

Two days later the boat put in at the fourth of the Chickasaw Bluffs (and the future site of Memphis) at Fort Pickering.  Here Governor Lewis was carried off the river on a stretcher, badly dehydrated from his malaria fevers. He was met by Captain Gilbert Russel, commander of the sixteen man outpost. 

Captain Russel immediately turned over his own bed to the Governor, but was Lewis really so sick he could not continue the boat trip to New Orleans? Was he crazed by illness to the point of paranoia? Whatever the truth, the moment he had landed at New Madrid, Lewis' behavior had changed again. His plans certainly did. It almost seems that Governor Meriwether Lewis now thought of himself as being behind enemy lines.

- 30 -

AMERICAN MURDER Part Four

 

I think the breaking point for Governor Meriwether Lewis (above) came when the Federal Government denied the bill he submitted for translating the territorial laws into French - in a place where, until 1803, French was the official language. It was only $18. And even in 1808 that was not much money – it would be about $245 today. But it was just another example of the penny pinching of the bean counters in the administration of the new President James Madison.

The politicians were never very kind to Meriwether Lewis. For risking his life and limbs in the wilderness for three long years, for being shot, for repeatedly almost starving to death and almost drowning several times, when he got back alive the Captain received $1,228 in back pay (equal to about $16,000 today) and a coupon good for 1,600 acres of Federal land. (The official price of which was just $2 an acre – so the equivalent of another $3,000.) Added to this would be his yearly budget/salary  as Governor of $2,000, ($26,000 today), out of which he had to draw all incidental expenses, from which was now deducted that $18. So that was just another kick in the behind.

During their return voyage in 1806, Lewis and Clark had invited the Manndan Chief White Coyote to visit President Jefferson in Washington, and the chief had impulsively agreed. Jefferson was delighted, and the visit had cemented relations with the strongest tribe in the middle Missouri River country. But it proved difficult to get White Coyote and his entourage back home.

An attempt in 1807 had been turned back by the Arikarass tribe, at cost of the lives of three soldiers and the leg of a fourth man. More soldiers would have to be dispatched and bribes paid to allow the chief and his family to get home. But the price tag of this diplomatic mercy mission had risen to $7,000. The Washington bean counters were appalled. And they sort of had a point.

Lewis had handed the problem over to the St. Louis-Missouri River Fur Company, a private enterprise corporation. One hundred fifty men had marched and paddled up the Missouri River to the Manndan villages. They had returned the chief, and had then continued on, trapping beaver, otter and bear. All the pelts were shipped back to the company warehouse in St. Louis. The profits had gone to the shareholders, but the bill for paying all those men to pole their way up the Missouri River had gone to the Government. Sound familiar? And two of the shareholders in the St. Louis Fur Company were Governor Meriwether Lewis and his brother Reuben Lewis.

These details had been pointed out to the bureaucrats in Washington by the priggish Frederick Bates,   (above). The result was that the Madison administration, which had not picked Lewis,  had begun going over the Governor's expenses with a fine tooth comb. They grudgingly paid most of the bill for White Coyote's return, but managed to find $940 they could refuse to reimburse to Lewis. That was almost half his yearly budget and salary! 

Worse still, the Madison administration had re-opened the books on the three year old Lewis and Clark Expedition, and were now demanding a detailed accounting as to why a expedition projected to cost  $2,500 had ended up costing $40,000. The biggest reasons was, of course, that an enthusiastic congress, at Jefferson's urging, had added those land grants for everybody. But the Madison administration had suddenly developed amnesia about that.

The reality was that the land grants had not cost the government a dime, except in the accounting ledgers of the bean counters. But over the summer it took a month for one of the bureaucrats' demands for more paperwork to travel from Washington to St. Louis, and at least another month for Governor Lewis to respond. In the winter there was no mail at all, and for months at a time the misconstructions and misunderstandings simply piled one atop the next. It was a system made for bureaucratic misunderstandings, and the denial of an $18 translating fee was just the final straw. Meriwether Lewis, Governor of the Territory, must return to Washington and make his case face-to-face with the Federal bean counters.

In mid-August of 1809 Meriwether Lewis signed papers granting William Clark and two other friends Power-of-Attorney, in case anything should happen to him on his trip back east. It was a standard precaution, like buying flight insurance in the 21st century.  Lewis also sent a letter off to the Secretary of War protesting his treatment, and a letter to his mother, saying he was looking forward to seeing her in Virginia.  None of these were the actions of man who did not expect to return.

The St. Louis Gazette reported on Monday, 4 September, 1809 that Lewis had left town “in good health”. aboard a "Kentucky Ark", usually a twelve foot wide and thirty feet long flatboat which floated clumsily down the Mississippi.  Lewis was bound for New Orleans, where he intended upon boarding a sailing ship for the long voyage around the isthmus of Spanish Florida to Washington. But September was probably the worst time to be traveling by river in America.  And that September in particular.

It was the dry season of a dry year. The river was low, and the flatboat grounded methodically on every sand bar. It was brutally hot, the mosquito population feasted on every inch of bare flesh, and Lewis suffered a relapse of the malaria he had contracted during the transcontinental expedition.

After a week of travel, 180 river miles downriver, his flatboat arrived at the outpost of New Madrid.

This village of 800 had been a border town for a hundred years, first dividing Spanish territory from French territory, then between English and Spanish, then Spanish and American. Since 1803, it marked the border between Lewis' own Northern Louisiana Territory and the territory of Southern Louisiana, run from New Orleans. Governor Lewis was now under the authority of Governor and General James Wilkinson.

And from the moment he had landed at New Madrid (above), Lewis' behavior changed. His plans changed as well. It almost seems as if  Governor Meriwether Lewis clearly felt uncomfortable staying here while incapacitated by his fever, and allowed himself just two days to recuperate. On Wednesday, 13 September, he order his boat to shove off again.

Two days later the boat put in at the fourth of the Chickasaw Bluffs (and the future site of Memphis) at Fort Pickering.  Here Governor Lewis was carried off the river on a stretcher, badly dehydrated from his malaria fevers. He was met by Captain Gilbert Russel, commander of the sixteen man outpost. 

Captain Russel immediately turned over his own bed to the Governor, but was Lewis really so sick he could not continue the boat trip to New Orleans? Was he crazed by illness to the point of paranoia? Whatever the truth, the moment he had landed at New Madrid, Lewis' behavior had changed again. His plans certainly did. It almost seems that Governor Meriwether Lewis now thought of himself as being behind enemy lines.

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Two

 The third surprising thing about Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant was that no one ordered him to specifically "take" Vicksburg. The only Union General who received such orders was the Illinois political and military anarchist, 50 year old Major General John Alexander McClernand (above).  And he practically wrote those orders for himself. 

McClernand was described by his fellow Illinois politician,  Richard Oglesby, as “...vain, irritable, overbearing...(and) possessed of the monomania that it was a mere clerical error which placed Grant’s name and not his in the Commission for Lieutenant General."

In may ways McClernand (above, right) was Lincoln's (above,  left) doppelganger. John was born in Kentucky - like Lincoln - raised in Illinois - like Lincoln - and a lawyer - like Lincoln. He was elected to the Illinois statehouse in Springfield - like Lincoln - and later was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives - like Lincoln.  In November of 1842 John had married Sarah Dunlap, a BFF of Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd.  Lincoln even tried his last court case in partnership with John McClernand.  But unlike Lincoln, McClernand was a pro-union and anti-slavery Democrat, and as such, was politically valuable to the Republican President Lincoln. 

In 1860 McClernand resigned from Congress and was commissioned a Brigadier General of Volunteers. In the snow at Fort Donelson, and under Grant,  he allowed his command to be caught off guard by a rebel breakout attempt, in which his headquarters was captured.  He then rallied his men and pushed the rebels back into the trap.

And then at Shiloh (again under Grant) he displayed fine skills as a commander, reforming his men after the rebel dawn surprise attack (above), and on the second day, regained all the ground lost. But his most extraordinary campaign was the way he sceemed to replace his boss, General Grant.

McClernand (above, left) wrote frequent letters to his friend the President (above, right), making suggestions and offering opinions. This of course infuriated his fellow military officers who had to take orders from those same politicians but had no such back door access. As a Major General he even suggested himself as a replacement for Lieutenant General George McClellan, then commander of the Army of the Potomac. And he was insistent in telling Lincoln that Grant's plan to advance down the Mississippi Central Railroad would never capture Vicksburg.

McClerand knew his audience. Early in 1862 President Lincoln had pontificated at a gathering of naval officers, including Vice Admiral David Dixon Porter, who would have his own part to play in the coming drama  on the Mississippi River.

"See… what a lot of land these fellows hold", said Lincoln, "of which Vicksburg is the key. Here is (the) Red River which will supply the Confederates with cattle and corn to feed their armies. There are the Arkansas and White Rivers, which can supply cattle and hogs by the thousand. From Vicksburg these supplies can be distributed by rail all over the Confederacy. Then there is the giant depot of supplies on the Yazoo. Let us get Vicksburg and all that country is ours. The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket. I am acquainted with that region...We may take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can still defy us from Vicksburg. It means hog and hominy without limit, fresh troops from all the States of the far South, and a cotton country where they can raise the staple without interference."

Lincoln, the political genius, was not yet a military one and he clearly had a blind spot regarding his fellow Illinois politician, and seemed unable to see McClernand's worst failings. Perhaps Lincoln also felt sorry for his friend because of Sarah McClerand's death in March of 1862.  In any case, when John arrived in Washington asking to be given 50,000 troops to attack Vicksburg from the Mississippi River, Lincoln ordered his Secretary of war, Stanton, to draw up the orders. However the War Department resisted, and McClernand was forced to reduce his request to recruiting 20,000 men.   And Stanton could not refuse his President.

So, on Thursday, 9 October 1862 , 48 year old Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton (above) issued orders authorizing General of Volunteers John McClernand to raise a divisions each from Indiana, Illinois and Iowa  - to be known as the XIII Corps - as an independent command to be used against Vicksburg from the Mississippi River side. And, at McClernand's suggestion, just what the recruits were to be used for was to be kept secret from the rest of the army and the political establishmennt.

Lincoln made it clear he desired McClernand's secret plan "...to be pushed forward with all possible dispatch..."  But Stanton (above) included a catch in the orders. When Grant was present, McClernand would remain his subordinate. And Stanton made certain Grant was warned as to McClernand's secret appointment, and of his secret intentions toward Vicksburg.

McClernand (above) showed his ambition in the speed with which he raised and trained his men. His lead elements were dispatched to Memphis, Tennessee, arriving in early November of 1862 - within two months after his appointment. 

As fast as McClernand and his lieutenants organized companies and regiments, and shipped them south to Cairo, Illinois (above),  Halleck ordered them loaded onto steamboats and shipped south to Memphis, Tennessee. Once there they swelled the ranks of the Army of the Tennessee, commanded by General Grant - until McClernand physically arrived in the theater. 

However, McClernand did not notice this purloining of his recriuts, as he was consumed with his  approaching wedding . On the day after Christmas of 1862 McClerand married his second wife - 26 year old Minerva Dunlop - sister of his first wife.   And then there was the honeymoon. All of which offered Grant a window of opportunity for action before his foe in blue, arrived.

                                     - 30 -