AMERICAN MURDER Part Three

 

I am amazed that to the 7 million people living in the United States in 1810, the old adage that "The one thing they are not making more of is land", was not true.  Ignoring for the moment that it was actually being stolen from the native peoples, the vast surplus of a commodity rare in Europe should have been the dominant economic reality in Meriwether Lewis' world. And yet, curiously, land prices remained extremely  high.

The reason was Alexander Hamilton's great compromise. He exchanged establishing the Federal Capital between Virginia and Maryland, two states which had little debt,  for allowing the Federal Government to take over all the other states' debts. This put the American economy on a solid financial footing.  But the downside was Hamilton meant to pay off the debts by selling public land as quickly as possible, 

Because of that decision, as Donald Holtgrieve explained in 1975,  "...over one-half of the land disposed of by the federal government in the history of this country went through the hands of professional land dealers before it was occupied.”

What this meant for early America was noted by Krout and Fox in their seminal 1944 book, “The Completion of Independence”. “The price of farmland, except near cities, averaged between ten and fifteen dollars per acre..." The values of actual sales were in direct contrast with the official price, set in 1795 at a mere $2 an acre. But those official bargains were only available in parcels of 320 acre lots."

And as was, again, noted in “The Completion...” “The common Carey Plow (above) was made entirely of wood, save for an iron collar to cut the sod...With such an implement an acre was a good days work." In other words, any farm over forty acres was simply of no use to a family depending upon farming for its livelihood.

The only ones who could afford to buy in the Federal auctions were wealthy speculators and corporations of speculators, who re-surveyed and subdivided the land, and then re-sold it to smaller speculators, who re-surveyed and re-sold it to, eventually, actual farmers. And at each resale the price went up.

The Yeoman farmer might be celebrated in myth, but in reality they were at the bottom of a profit pyramid, paying as much as 40% interest on the loans to buy their farms. "Farmers were thus forced to grow (not food for their own tables, but ) cash crops like tobacco or cotton, to pay their debts.” And even if, “...a farmer who found a desired piece of land,  became a squatter by clearing and planting it with the hope of one day purchasing the acres he had improved... when the cleared lands went up for auction, a speculator could out-bid the squatter....”  And often did.

George Washington was a speculator, as was Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Andrew Jackson and Meriwether Lewis. And none of these leaders were above hiring thugs to drive squatters off “their” land.  It was the speculators who drove Abraham Lincoln's father off his farm in Kentucky, and again off his farm in Indiana and eventually drove him to Illinois, where Abraham gave up farming entirely. 

As another source writing about this unromantic American frontier points out, “As a consequence of monopolistic tactics and official fraud, northern Alabama lands were overwhelmingly engrossed by absentee speculators and wealthy settler elites.”  The leveling process of the American frontier was largely a myth, created by the wealthy in a natural effort to romanticize their own past. On the frontier, as in the Eastern cities, money talked. America did not have to be settled in this fashion. But it was.

The image was that everyone seemed to be getting rich in land speculation. But the reality was that a majority of speculators lost money. And the farther you were down the food chain from the original government auction, the less chance you had to see a profit. Like the stock market bubbles of later generations, those drawn into the land market bubbles had to quickly sell at profit or they went broke. That drove the prices up, which made the almost unlimited American lands, painfully expensive. As it was in 2000, so it was in 1800; the only guarantee of a profit was to be a banker, or to have one as a partner.

It was this reality which faced Governor Meriwether Lewis as he first stepped onto the docks of St. Louis.

Lewis did two things immediately which almost assured he would be a failure as a Governor. First he announced that should he be out of the territory for any reason, then his old comrade William Clark (whom Jefferson had named the Indian Agent for the upper Louisiana Territory) would serve as acting Governor. This made sense to Governor Lewis because he was new to the territory and he knew and could trust Clark. 

But it was also a disaster, because Frederick Bates was the Lieutenant Governor, and had been the acting Governor for almost a year while Lewis had slowly made his way west.  Bates was, officially,  the man who was legally required to be the acting Governor should Lewis be out of the territory. And it was Bates who had already filled the government offices before Lewis arrived, making the power structure loyal to the junior officer.  So naming Clark as acting Governor was an insult Lewis was not required to deliver and probably had not intended upon making.  But from that moment forward Fredrick Bates was Lewis' sworn enemy. He would prove to be an effective opponent - for Frederick Bates was a very good at being an unpleasant man.

As Bates wrote to his brother, “My habits are pacific. Yet I have had acrimonious differences with almost every person with whom (I) have been associated in public business…But before God I cannot acknowledge that I have been blamable in one instance.” And he never would admit it.

A few weeks later, Bates (above) related how he was getting along with Lewis. “Sometime after this there was a ball in St. Louis, I attended early, and was seated in conversation with some gentlemen when the Governor entered. He drew his chair close to mine – there was a pause in the conversation – I availed myself of it – arose and walked to the opposite side of the room...He knew my resolution not to speak to him except on business, and he ought not to have thrust himself in my way.”

And these two men now found themselves in charge of dispensing millions of acres of land to the hundreds of speculators who had flocked to St. Louis to avail themselves of the bounty. And there were natural resources to be exploited, lead and tin mines just discovered beneath the rolling Louisiana territory (below). With that much profit to be made, such a pair of offended egos did not portend a profitable future for any one not skilled at bureaucratic infighting. Like Meriwether Lewis.

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AMERICAN MURDER Part Two

I can say with confidence 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 had rewarded him with the governorship of the Upper Louisiana Territory, it's capital in St. Louis. And just two years later he was dead, in an isolated hostel just north over the border between Mississippi and Tennessee, shot twice and with knife cuts across his throat.

Before the march over the Rocky Mountains, before he even served as the personal aide to the President, 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 expedition, the greatest achievement of his life. But it had cost Meriwether 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 (I assume another accident).

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 him 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 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), at Louisville, Kentucky. 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  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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AMERICAN MURDER Part One

 

I don't want to call the lady a liar, but I don't believe any of the stories Priscilla Grinder told about that night. But I simply do not believe this woman heard two gunshots shatter the early morning darkness, heard her guest begging for help and never peeked out her door. I can not say exactly what occurred that pitiless night. But maybe it was murder.

Grinder's Stand, as it was called, stood along the ridge route called the Natchez Trace or “The Devil's Backbone”. The road - to give it a generous title - began where the first high ground above New Orleans, touched the Mississippi River, at a human den of inequity called Natchez. 

Following ancient buffalo trails "The Trace" then meandered through a dense macabre forests 445 miles, twenty days by horse and foot, to Nashville, Tennessee, where it joined Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road to the east. Under the progressive President Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. Army was set to work clearing the trace to 8 feet wide and removing all tree stumps above 16 inches tall, so "The Trace" could be used by high riding Conestoga wagons. But each stream and river still had to be forded, even if the traveler could afford to pay a toll along those short parallel sections improved by local entrepreneurs

In 1802, when Louisiana was still French territory, the customs house in Natchez reported a million dollars worth of tobacco, flower, hemp, cider and whiskey on its way down the Mississippi to New Orleans. By 1804, after the Louisiana Purchase, "The Trace" saw as many as 1,000 travelers a year -  the crews of flatboats and rafts returning home on foot with their profits. 

And where there are profits, there are those who would steal them. Each ominous river and stream crossing on "The Trace" was reputed to be the unmarked graves of boatmen who had been set upon by gangs of “Land Pirates”. There was no law on "The Trace". And while the level of violence never approached the legends, meeting a group of strangers at an isolated ford or forest clearing, or blind turning in the trail was still an unnerving experience.

Robert Evans Grinder and Priscilla Knight were each born within sight of Moore's knob (above), the 1,700 foot high granite mountain that looms over Stokes county, North Carolina. As teenagers they ran away together, and in 1799 were married in Nashville, about the time their daughter, Parthenia, was born. They were living examples of the new nation, young, illiterate, hard working and hungry to succeed.

So as the soldiers hacked and sawed their way south along "The Trace", the Grinder's followed. And in 1807 they came to the Tennessee “Barins”, high ground between the Duck and Tennessee Rivers, sixty miles southwest of Nashville. Here the Grinders enlarged and hacked out a couple of clearings amidst the oaks and dogwoods. Back in the woods they planted corn and rye. And in a clearing along the trace they built a small one room cabin, and a similar sized barn and stable, 

The cabin and barn stood at right angles to each other, their front doors opening on  a common space. "The Trace".  A third building close by was a detached kitchen, and stood behind the first two.  This was Grinder's Stand, one of only seven such “Stands” along The Trace in 1807, where for thirty cents you could rent a bed or part of a bed or just a roof for the night. 

For a few cents more Priscilla could supply a bowl of warm gruel. But after a toll road by-pass opened, the Grinder's income dropped off. So the Grinders depended on their fallback industry, selling corn mash whiskey to the Chickasaw Indians, whose nation's border lay just a few yards beyond Grinder's Stand's front door.

In the rainy dusk of 10 October, 1809, this failing wilderness hostel was unexpectedly confronted by a tall, gaunt man who materialized out of the woods.  Priscilla Grinder, alone with her children,  must have greeted him warily. Why was this man in an expensive blue and white stripped duster, traveling alone? Why had he not taken the bypass when he could obviously afford it?  

According to Priscilla, he tried to set her mind at ease by telling her that his two servants should be arriving shortly with pack animals. But that only added to the mystery. And if she had known her weary visitor was Merriweather Lewis, Governor of Upper Louisiana Territory  and one of the most famous men in North America, it likely would not have eased her mind .  In God's name, why was such a man stopping at her door, seeking the sad comforts that she could offer?  It was a question still waiting for an answer, 300 years later.

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LEGACY

I prefer to think of this inhuman event in human terms. In that regard, it was important not for when or why it was, because the “when” was mere connivance. M-hour was 7:15 A.M. local time, Saturday, 1 November, 1952.  But five hundred forty miles to the east at the same moment it was still Friday, 31 October 1952...Halloween.

The difference was the International Date Line,  a thin red line (above) drawn on paper across the not really empty emptiness of the Pacific Ocean.  The “why” is the simplest of the elements; because human egos were involved. So you see that ultimately the only important thing about the event is the humans it happened to; the people who lost their homes, the man who was not there, and the man who died.

The atoll of Enewetak was built upon a 60 million year old volcanic seamount which never reached the surface, but got close enough to it to provide a sunlit foundation for zillions of an almost microscopic creatures humans have called coral polyps. The polyps formed silicone exoskeletons, which were chewed on by parrot fish, who pooped out white sand, which provided a foothold for plants behind the protected waters of the coral reefs,  which held the sand together long enough for some 40 bits of dry land to stay above sea level.  And when the coral died the exoskeletons left behind eventually became limestone.

Humans arrived on “Aelon Kein Ad” (our islands) about 4,000 years ago. How and why humans made this improbably voyage remains a mystery. But since then,  Enewetak atoll proves the perseverance of corals and humanity.

Some how humans crossed hundreds of miles of open ocean to reach this tiny string of pearls -  just over 2 square miles in total of dry land, 200 yards across at it's widest point, with an average elevation of 5 feet above sea level, mostly on the east side of a 50 mile wide central lagoon. And somehow about 500 human beings at a time survived over two millennia in this place, enduring isolation, hurricanes and droughts.

And somehow they survived the arrival of the Spanish in 1528, the British in 1788 (who renamed their home “The Marshall” Islands), the Germans in 1885, and the Japanese in 1915. However, in 1943, the Americans were attracted to the islands when the Japanese built an airstrip on the largest triangle of land called Engebi island. 

And somehow the native peoples even survived the Americans, who bombarded their island and invaded it in February of 1944 (Operation Catchpole). In less than a week of fighting over three hundred Americans and two thousand six hundred Japanese died to claim possession of the various sand spits that made up the atoll of Enewetak. How many of the people who actually lived on the islands were killed in the battle was not recorded.  Nobody who cared about numbers bothered to ask about them until later.In December of 1947 the Americans decided to use Enewetak to test their new atomic bombs. So the 141 of those who had survived the Battle of Enewetak were transported 140 miles east to Ujelang atoll.  It would be, the Americans assured them, a mere three year sojourn. But the nuclear explosions did not stop until 1958.

During those 12 years the people who had lived on three islands around Enewetak lagoon, were now crowded into a single village on a single island. Food was sometimes so short that coconuts, which were supposed to have been sold for copra, were instead eaten for survival.

Epidemics of polio and measles and rats plagued the village. As one woman told an ethnographer, “In those days, the wailing across the village was constant.” And always there was the paradise lost, an Eden that looked more perfect as memories of it faded. The natives could not return home now because the white sand beaches and coral rocks were too radioactive to be safe. What could have been worth this nightmare forced upon the people of Enewetak? Their nightmare was the dream of one man more than any other. Edward Teller (above) was an Hungarian born genius who was despised by most of his fellow scientists. In 1950 he aided and abetted the humiliation of his mentor, Robert Oppenheimer, by slyly suggesting that “Oppie”, who had overseen the invention and construction of the uranium fission bombs, could no longer be trusted with state secrets. Because of Teller’s secrete testimony Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance and branded a traitor. Which he was not.

Oppemheimer’s actual crime seems to have been that he simply believed that Teller was over selling his design for the hydrogen fusion bomb, which was so big Teller referred to it as the "Super"..

Most scientists familiar with the subject agreed with Oppenheimer, including Stanislaw Ulam (above), a Polish-American mathematician, who in 1950 completed calculations that proved the design championed by Teller would never work. However Ulam did suggest there was a way “The Super” bomb could be built so that it would work.

Exactly what Ulam suggested is still classified. But Teller seized on that suggestion and pushed for the design to be tested as soon as possible.  The place chosen to test this new H-bomb was a distant speck, so far off in the Pacific Ocean that to most of the generals, admirals and politicians in Washington, it was not a real place. 

Teller himself never journeyed to Enewetak to supervise the construction of the device he had championed for six years because he “did not feel comfortable” at the test site, surrounded by his peers. So he did not have to look into the faces of the natives being ripped from their ancestral homes. 

Edward Teller did not have to watch the women carry their lives down to the boats that would transport them to a place they have never seen, One tropical island looks like every other, doesn't it? At least it does if you have never seen a tropical island before. So, on Halloween night 1950, the ambitious Edward Teller monitored events on a seismograph 5,000 miles away, in a basement at the University of California at Berkley.

Meanwhile, on the tiny island of Elugelab (above, bottom), near the southeastern tip of the Enewetak atoll, the United States built an explosive device based on what was now called the “Teller-Ulam Concept”.

It was not a bomb. It was not a practical weapon, as it could not be "delivered". It was a proof of concept Rube Goldberg device.  Nicknamed “The Sausage”, it stood 20 feet tall and 22 feet long. It would never fit in a bomb bay. It weighed  140,000 pounds, not counting the 24,000 pound refrigeration plant needed to chill the heavy hydrogen down to minus 417 degrees Fahrenheit, so that it would stay liquid, allowing it's atoms to fuse together.

Officially the device was code named "Ivey Mike" (above), and it was serviced by 9,350 military and 2,300 civilian personnel. Eniwetok had never been so crowded.

At precisely 7:14 and 59 and 4/10 seconds local time on the morning of 1 November, 1952 the device Ivy Mike was ignited by remote control from a ship 30 miles away.

Ivery Mike exploded with the force of  almost 10 and 1/2 million tons of TNT. That was bigger than had been anticipated. 

It sent 10 million tons of seawater and coral rocketing out of the lagoon. Waves 80 feet high raced outward for three miles.

Within 90 seconds the fireball had reached 57,000 feet, and the mushroom cloud would eventually become 100 miles wide. 

The island of Elubelab (above, left center) simply evaporated.......leaving behind a crater 6,240 feet wide and 164 feet deep. This quickly filled with sea water.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/32912172@N00/2924242774/)

One hour and forty minutes after Ivey Mike was ignited, four F-84 fighter jets (above), Pebble Red Flight,  entered the stem of the mushroom cloud at 42,000 feet, two at a time, to measure radiation levels. Each pilot wore a heavy lead lined “gown” for added protection against the gamma rays from cesium-137 and strontium-90 and alpha rays emitted by the plutonium-90.  Twenty miles from the point of ignition, a lethal 600 rad dose would be received within 25 minutes.

Upon entering the cloud the cockpit of Red One, flown by Lieutenant Colonel Virgil Meroney, was instantly bathed in a deep red glow. His “rad indicator” hit the peg – maxim radiation readings.

Worse, the rate indicator, which showed how quickly radiation was being accumulated, “went around like the sweep second hand of a watch.” Colonel Meroney immediately instructed his wing man in Red Two to follow him, and together they executed a 90 degree turn and flew back out of the cloud.

Red Three and Four were next to enter the cloud.  Very quickly Red Three returned. But from Red Four, flown by Lieutenant Jimmy Robinson (above) there was only silence. Then Robinson reported that he was at 20,000 feet, his autopilot having put him into a spin, and that his compass was out. 

Jimmy Robinson asked to be vectored to a B29 refueling tanker, but then reported  he had picked up the radio beacon from Enwetok air station, and was going to land there. He finally popped out of the mushroom cloud at 5,000 feet, saying he was now out of fuel and would have to bail out. He ejected his plexiglass canopy, but he never activated his ejection seat. 

A helicopter followed Robinson as he piloted Red Four into the lagoon,  about 3 ½ miles from the end of the runway. Robinson’s plane's tail hit first, then skipped 300 yards before slamming into the water nose first and flipping onto its back. 

It quickly sank in 175 feet of water, leaving an oil slick, a flight glove and some maps floating on the surface. The accident report suggested that the lead line apron may have prevented Robinson from getting out of the jet. Other than uncounted sea birds, crabs turtles and insects, his was the only death recorded that day.

Although told that divers had reached the wreckage of his F-84, neither his widow, Rebecca Robinson  nor her children were told if Jimmy's body was ever recovered, or why he  crashed.  Posthumously Jimmy Robinson was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. It was pinned on Rebecca's chest (above).  But the family were never told if he or his plane was recovered from the Eniwetok lagoon. All details were and are still covered by the phrase, "National Security".

Edward Teller claimed he was burdened with the title “Father of the Hydrogen bomb”. Yet he based the rest of his life around it. He championed using hydrogen bombs to build a harbor in Alaska and crushing petroleum out of Canadian oil sands. Later he was one of the primary champions who convinced President Ronald Reagan to push the infamous  and impractical "Star Wars Nuclear Defense System". None of Teller's ideas for civil uses of the hydrogen bomb were ever attempted. His star wars defense system was deemed unaffordable and unworkable, like his original design for the "Super" bomb.  Teller died in September of 2003, a controversial figure to the end of his life.

A quarter century after the U.S. government moved the people of Eniwetok, and sick of hearing unfulfilled promises, the 150 survivors finally appealed to the United Nations. An embarrassed American government then began, in mid 1970’s, to scoop up the radioactive soil contaminated by the 30  thermonuclear bombs exploded on, above and under their atoll.

Some 95,000 cubic yards of radioactive debris were trucked to the most northern island on the atoll, the tiny islet of Runit.  There it was mixed with Portland Cement until it formed a mound 25 feet high. 

The original plan was to seal this radioactive material within a concrete tomb. This was then to be covered by an 18 inch cap of "clean" concrete. 

But financial constraints meant the containment dome would have no bottom. In other words, it has always been open to the sea. 

They labeled their work "The Cactus Dome" or "The Runit Dome"(above). In 1980 this tiny island was declared safe for human habitation again. But almost from day one cracks appeared in the dome, and by the turn of the 21st century, some were so large "...birds have laid eggs in them." 

 In fact the expensive 1970's clean up collected less than 1% of the total radioactive waste left on the atoll.  Despite this  the natives of Enewetak were allowed to return.  The U.S. government built them houses (above) and even a town hall. The federal government even planted new coconut palm forests, in hopes of replacing the copra exports. But even without copra, the natives are doing better. Their boats catch fish every day. And they make a good living providing scuba diving tours of the war ships sunk in the lagoon by nuclear weapons.  

They enjoy American citizenship, but without access to social security or similar benefits. Today the natives peoples worry less about radiation than they do about rising sea levels. In fact, should The dome completely collapse tomorrow, their radiation exposure would not change significantly.

It wasn’t until fifty years later that the United States Department of Defense allowed the family of Jimmy Robinson to hold a memorial service and burial of an empty coffin in Arlington National Cemetery (above). His daughter, Rebecca “Becky” Miller, works for a Veterans organization but has been told that officially her father was not a casualty of the cold war. As a web site notes, "In reality, Jimmy Robinson remains lost because his own government …has chosen to abandon him.”And that, along with the spending of $9.6 trillion dollars, remains the legacy of nuclear weapons.

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