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, 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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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 - that she 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 heading 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 even more 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. 

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, BG)), 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 an adjoining barn with a small stable. 

The cabin and barn stood at right angles to each other, their front doors opening on a common space.  A third building close by served as the detached kitchen. In 1807 these three structures served as Grinder's Stand, one of only seven such “Stands” or way stations along The Trace, 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. And it was a successful business, until a toll road by-pass opened, and 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 (above), 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 which she could offer?  It was a question still waiting for an answer, 300 years later.

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FIFTY-FOUR FORTY OR FIGHT!

 

I can't help wondering why so many people keep complaining about politicians.  Check my math, please: politicians say stupid  things, like "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight", or" Segregation Now, Segregation Forever!", or "The Election was Stolen". and politicians get elected. Could there be a connection?  Let me give you some examples from ancient history, so no living voters feel insulted.

James Knox Polk (above) was America's eleventh President, serving a single term from 1845 to 1849. He was, until Richard Nixon, our most secretive President. He often did not even tell his own cabinet members what he was thinking. He had been Speaker of the House of Representatives and most recently the Democratic Governor of Tennessee.  But no matter what your history books tell you Polk did not campaign on the phrase "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight" – that came up later. 

The actual 1844 campaign centered on the divisive issue of Texas (above). Recently declared to be a slave republic, Democrats favored it's admission into the union because it would strengthen their hold on the Senate, and weaken Wig control of the House. It also extended slavery westward, toward the Pacific.  

The Wigs opposed Texas admission for the same reasons, but they preferred talking about high tariff's, which raised prices for all consumers. So their candidate, Henry Clay (above),  merely issued a few confusing statements about Texas. And then, abruptly, in August,  the Wigs decided to claim that Polk was unfit to be President because he branded his slaves. And trust me, this smear was so good they still haven’t figured out who exactly was behind it.

The story was first published in the 21 August, 1844 edition of the Ithaca New York "Chronicle". It was a Whig Party newspaper. And the story claimed to be a letter to the editor, quoting a three paragraph extract from an unpublished book, titled “Roorback’s Tour Through the Western and Southern States…” 

The extract claimed to detail Baron Von Roorback's conversations with a group of slave traders on the Duck River in Tennessee. “Forty of these unfortunate beings had been purchased, I was informed, by the Honorable J.K. Polk…; the mark of a branding iron, with the initials of his name on their shoulders, distinguishing them from the rest.”  Now, even in 1844 the idea of branding human beings, even those treated as slaves, was appalling to many people...most Whigs and even some Democrats, of whom, remember, James K. Polk was the leading candidate for President.

Which was why the story was picked up by the "Albany Evening Journal", and other Whig newspapers, particularly in the 1844 “battleground states” of New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Many voters in those swing states were outraged that a man standing for President would do something so despicable as to brand human beings the same way you brand cattle. 

To Whig politicians the story from "Roorback’s Tour" was almost too good to be true.  And almost instantly the Democratic press discovered there was no such book and no such Baron. 

The details claiming to be about Polk had been lifted from a real travel book, of a run in with some slave traders on Virginia’s New River. Polk’s plantation was in Tennessee, so the inventor of the smear had shifted the scene to where it would be easier to tie the branded humans to Governor Polk. Besides, it was not common practice to brand slaves.  Like whipping scars, branding tended to reduce their value as property, since it indicated this slave had a tendency to escape. Slaves were certainly whipped and branded because in 1844, most Americans, even most Democrats, still believed black slaves were property and would have been equally offended if some government official tried to tell them how to treat their horses or how to slaughter their hogs.

So now, embarrassed at repeating what was so obviously a fabrication, the Whigs pinned the whole thing on William Linn, a lawyer and a Democratic operative in Ithaca, New York.  But why would a Democrat smear his own candidate? Well, if I were a believer in conspiracy theories, I might say that this kind of allegation against Polk was actually a fairly safe charge to make. 

Polk did own slaves. But his Whig opponent in the 1844 election, Henry Clay (above), owned even more slaves than Polk did.  And it has been suggested by some historians that the “Roorback” story was a case of nineteenth century “wedge” politics. 

Abolitionism was still a minor issue in 1844, but abolitionists formed a solid voting block in certain sections of New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, those key battleground states. Convince enough abolitionists in those states that the Whigs were lying to them, and they just might choose the Democrat Polk over the Whig Clay as the lesser of two evils.  Or they just might stay home and not vote at all. And the letter to the Ithaca Chronicle had been signed, “An Abolitionist”, thus adding insult to the injury.

Well, maybe....And maybe that theory implies a level of sophisticated conspiracy that did not exist in the simpler culture and times of 1844 –

...and certainly would not have existed in Athens in 415 B.C., when Alcibiades was accused of vandalizing statues of the god Hermes.

You see Hermes (above) was the mythical inventor of fire, who "...protects and takes care of all travelers...".  Each Greek home had an anatomically correct statue of Hermes standing on its front lawn, and it was common practice for visitors to pause at the stature and stroke his stone phallus for good luck before knocking on the front door. 

And when the owner left the house, they would also give the phallus a tug for good luck.  And that was why it was so shocking that on the morning that Athens was launching a massive naval assault on Sicily, the city awoke to discover that during the night many home statues of Hermes had their phallus' knocked.

It sounds to my modern ears as if the neighborhood kids had been drinking sour wine on the street corner and started smashing phalluses as a prank. But to the devout in Athens (and there were many who believed in the gods) it was also sacrilege. And rumors began almost immediately that the person responsible for the damaged statues was the golden boy politician who had conceived of the Sicilian expedition, and was known for his past sacrilegious opinions, Alcibiades (above). 

Of course Alcibiades had his own theory. He thought it had been the work of his chief political opponent and co-commander of the Sicilian expedition, Nicias (above).  Two thousand five hundred years later, it is impossible to know who the phallus whackers really were or why they were whacking off in the dark.. But whether the politicians planned it all or just took advantage of the situation, the one thing we know for certain is, that the people spewing hot air over both sides of this scandal were politicians.

The point is, politicians have been gaming voters since voting was invented. And voters have been playing along, else the game would not have remained so popular. Like claiming to build a wall to nowhere.  And that is why when a politician tells me he is selling something, especially when it is something I want to buy,  my first reaction should be,  “Pull the other one.,”  When the American political system works  (which it has not been doing for a generation)  it is been based upon pragmatism, not hysteria.  When it gets hysterical, it's usually when the politicians want to distract you.

And the election of 1844 was not pragmatic, either.  Polk won 49.5% of the popular vote to Clay’s 48.1 %, and part of that razor thin margin were victories in New York and Pennsylvania - by less than 6,000 votes in both states.  Those two states gave Polk 62 Electoral Votes, out of his sixty-five vote margin of victory (170 to 105). It seems that if the Roorback story was a double blind trick, it damn well worked.

Oh,... and remember the phrase “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!”?  Well, that was actually invented by Ohio Senator William “Earthquake” Allen (above), known for his thundering speeches, and he used it after the 1844 election. 

The number was  the Southern border (54 degrees & 40 minutes of latitude) claimed by Russia when they owned Alaska, before 1867.  Radical Democrats were demanding the U.S. insist on that line for our northern border with Canada, and Polk seemed to back that position.  He might have even have supported starting a shooting war over it.  However,  simple glance at a map will confirm the modern border,  agreed upon by President Polk, was (and is) the 49th parallel. 

So much for the “…Or fight!” part of the slogan.  Have you noticed how often politicians don’t actually mean what they seem to say? Like they are going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it? Or how they say Democrats want to leave our southern boarder wide open?  You might say many of them make a career out of hysteria.  And always have.  And voters keep buying the horse manure they keep dropping all over the place.  And whose fault is that?

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