YEAR OF OUR LORD, 365

I would call 365 of the Common Era the worst year for Christianity since Jesus got arrested. It began in January when raiding parties of Germanic tribes crossed the Rhine at Strasburg in Gaul. As a soldier risen from the ranks, the new Emperor in Constantinople, the sour faced Valentinian I, realized that if the Germans were having a hungry winter, then spring would bring a full scale invasion. He immediately ordered the commander of the two under strength legions in Gaul, Charietto, to call for support from the loyal tribes. And he started planing to move his court and his legions to the west.

The sour puss Valentinian (above)  had only taken on the purple in March of 364, at 43 years old. He was smart and decisive. But he had little patience with intellectuals, and when the Christian leader Hillary of Potiers insisted the Emperor enforce persecutions of pagans and Christian heretics the Emperor told him to go home, into exile. Valentinian was a Christian, but with so many enemies outside the empire, he did not want to give anybody inside the empire - pagan or Christian - a reason to join them. To an ideologue like Hillary, such practical tolerance was an insult to God.

Hillary (above) had been waging war against the ideas of Bishop Arius of Alexandria since the Council of Nicoea, back in 325 C.E.. Eventually even Constantine the Great, who had convened the Council, got tired of Hillary's insistent calls for punishing any who suggested that God the father (Yawyeh) and God the Son (Jesus) were not the same persona. “Jesus that I know as my Redeemer cannot be less than God”, the “Hammer of the Arians” insisted. And yet even after Arius died in an Alexandrian toilet after being poisoned in 336, his idea of God the father and the demigod his son, refused to be stamped out   Even after being dismissed by Valentinian I, with the threat of exile hanging over his own head ,  Hillary could not keep his mouth or his pen shut. In the spring of 365 Hillary's condemnation of the Emperor became a minor best seller.

Like many a Christian ideologue since, the 55 year old Hillary divined the end of the world was coming because the Emperor refused to listen to him. And if anybody could see the end of the world coming, it would be Hillary of Poitiers, who helped create acceptance for the “Book of Revelations” by the Council of Nicocea (above). That book prophesied that one of the signs of the “end of times” would be the rise and rule of the Antichrist. And wrote Hillary in the year 365, “the Antichrist is ruling.”. Most educated people took his rhetoric as just more holy hot air.

Back in Gaul, as winter turned to spring, Charietto sent scouts into the border forests, to attack the German raiders in their sleep. He paid these hunters by the kill, which they proved by bringing in German heads, which were then impaled on spikes around Gaulic villages as a morale builder. But the bloody tributes failed to inspire the population. So the general sought out the support of an aging pro Roman Gaul, Serverianus, who managed to raise a small force loyal to him. And that June, with his legions tied to the major cities, Charietto was forced to use Severianus's men as a rapid response force.

Unfortunately the Germans ambushed the Gauls. Serverianus was thrown from his horse and killed. Charietto managed to slow the rout for a time, but when he was killed the entire force was either slaughtered or scattered. And all of Gaul began to ask themselves what they were paying Roman taxes for. It started to seem as if Hillary had been right. God - father, son and Holy Ghost - was intent on punishing the Roman world.

The Emperor Valentinian I was already on the road to Gaul, and had reached the old Imperial villa at Mediana, in what is today southern Serbia, when word of the disaster reached him. He immediately dispatched an old political ally, Dagalaifus, to take charge of things on the ground in Gaul.  But the disaster highlighted, again,  that the Empire was too big for one man to rule. Valentinian had promised to name a co-ruler and he did so now, handing over Constantinople and the eastern half of his realm to his younger brother Valens . This division, in 365, would prove to be the ultimate break between east and west, Greek and Latin Christianity, but at the time it was merely a division of convience. Valentinian then hurried on to Gaul, not pausing until he had reached the ancient circular fortress town of Rheims.

Meanwhile, roughly 17,000 feet beneath the merchant ships plying the surface between the bread basket of North Africa and the way station island of Crete, a truly earth shaking doomsday was looming. As yet unimagined by human minds, ancient Greece and the islands of the Aegean, birthplace of democracy and Western literature, was being held in place by the anvil of the European plate, while from the south the even larger hammer of the African plate was driving under the Aegean plate at an inch and a half a year, downward at a 30 degree angle and pulling the southern edge of Crete down with it. 

And off the island's southwest coast, just after dawn on 21 July, 365,  the rocks of the Aegean plate snapped, and the west coast of Crete suddenly popped 20 feet into the air.  Hillary of Poitiers may have prophesied this as the end of the world, but it had happened before. That was why Crete is there.

Almost two thousand years later the shaking would be estimated as an 8.5 earthquake on the classic Richter Scale. Survivor Ammianus Marcellinus would describe it as “...a thick succession of fiercely shaken thunderbolts” which made “the solidity of the whole earth...shake and shudder.” And he was 600 miles southeast of the epicenter. 

 A mere 20 miles away, at the base of a peninsula on the northwest coast of Crete, was the port of Phalasarna (above), a wealthy harbor for over six hundred years. That morning, 21 July, 365, the entire harbor and town was lifted nine feet out of the water. 

Walls and stairways cracked, homes and work shops collapsed and the stone supports for the piers (above) were lifted straight upward, high and dry. In a few moments it became a port without water. In the town, the dead outnumbered the living. And every town on Crete was damaged or destroyed by the quake.

The pagan writer Libanius attributed the disaster to the anger of Poseidon, the god of the sea and of earthquakes, as punishment for the heresy of Christianity. The world was, “Like a horse shaking off his rider...All the cities of Libya were destroyed...the greatest cities in Sicily lie in ruins, as do those in the Hellenes...beautiful Nicacea has been felled.”  Meanwhile the Christian writer Jerome described the collapse of the walls and houses of the city Ar Moab, east of the Dead Sea in Palestine, as the Christian God's wraith for paganism.

But the greater killer was the tsunami. To the west, 600 miles from the epicenter, the first 82 foot high tidal wave hit 70 minutes after the quake, washing up to a mile inland on Malta. On the south coast of Cyprus, 500 miles to the east,  the wave drowned the city of Kourion, killing at least 5,000, including craftsmen at their work benches. But the worst was what the wave did to the great city of Alexandria, on the Nile Delta.

Marcellinus was there when “...the sea was driven away...so that the abyss of the depths was uncovered...Many ships, then, were stranded as if on dry land, and people wandered...to collect fish and the like in their hands; then the roaring sea....returning when least expected killed many thousands by drowning...the bodies of people killed in shipwrecks lay there, faces up or down. Other huge ships, thrust out by the mad blasts, perched on the roofs of houses...hurled nearly two miles from the shore.”.The cost in Alexandria was at least 5,000 dead and 50,000 homes and apartments destroyed. Farmland in the rich Nile Delta was poisoned by salt water for a decade.

Where the island of Crete, north of the fault, had been raised in an instant by 9 feet or more, south of the fault, in Alexandria, the shore slowly sank by 20 feet, submerging the harbor breakwaters, the famous lighthouse, even Cleopatra's tomb. 

And the House of the Dead, tomb of Alexander the Great, one of the greatest mausoleums in the world, was shattered by the earthquake and then smashed by the waves, its scattered stones scavenged until there was nothing left of it. For two centuries Alexandria would memorialize “The Day of Horror”.

In far off Reims, in northeastern France, Valentinian I's only concern was that in the midst of a Germanic invasion, he was suddenly told he could expect no revenues from the rich lands of north Africa and Sicily. Meanwhile in the east, his brother Valens was facing his own crises.

Upon becoming eastern Emperor, Valens (above) moved his legions to quell revolts in Mesopotamia, and had reached Cappadocian Ceasarea, 600 miles from Constantinople, when his father-in-law hit the fan.

As commander of the Martensian legion responsible for order in the capital, Pretronius Probus (the father-in-law) was running the city in Valens absence. But according to our old friend Marcellinus, Petronius was “ a man ugly in spirit and in appearance...inexorable, cruel, savage and fearlessly hard-hearted, never capable of giving or receiving reason” in his search for tax debts going back decades. He “...closed the houses of the poor and the palaces of the rich in great numbers....”

And according to the Catholic historian Gregory of Nazianzus, Pretonius even arrested (later Saint) Basil of Nazianzus, to squeeze money out of the church. It proved a repossession too far, and there was a general uprising in the city. “Each man was armed with the tool he was using, or with whatever else came to hand at the moment. Torch in hand, amid showers of stones, with cudgel's ready, all ran and shouted together in their united zeal....Nor were the women weaponless...” As dramatic as the story told by both historians may be, I suspect that what rose in Constantinople in the late summer of 365 was an “astro-turf” rebellion, for the benefit of Procopius, a distant relative of the Emperor Constantine the Great,  who promised the upper classes a return of stability and power.

Learning of all this in September, Valens thought briefly about abdication, or even suicide. But his advisers (and his wife) would have none of that. So he turned his military expedition around and started his legions back to the capital. The first two legions to approach the city were bribed by Probopius's supporters, and joined the rebellion, supported by Catholic Church leaders.  This fed Valens's growing distrust in the Church and encouraged Valen's sympathy for the “Arians Christians”, who were more understanding of the Emperor's need to raise revenues. The split between Latin and Greek Churches was growing wider by the minute.

It would be the next year before the rebel Procopius and his supporters could be tracked down and killed. And that same year, of 366,  before the Germanic tribes would be forced back across the Rhine. For the time being.

In January of 367 defender of the Trinity, Hillary of Poitiers, who prophesied with certainty the world was coming to an end, instead died in exile. But Christianity, and the world, both survived in spite of his vision.

This was proof again that Christianity could survive even its most fervent supporters, who always seem to confuse their personal doomsday with God's.

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MAKING PEACE - One - Common Interests

I have begun to wonder just how we can end will the war in Afghanistan. In this endeavor we are haunted by

the old dictum from the American Civil War. Having surrounded a Confederate army in Fort Donaldson, Kentucky, General  U.S. Grant demanded their  " unconditional and immediate surrender." But the reality was that demand was immediately rejected by the Confederate commander, General Buckner. And Grant immediately modified his offer.  Despite this President Roosevelt issued the same demand in World War Two of both Germany and Japan. And because Germany was crushed and occupied, the “Greatest Generation” and their children, still expect all American wars to end like World War Two in Europe did. But the truth is that even WWII did not end in "unconditional surrender" in the Pacific, the most heartless bloodbath America has ever been caught up in.

Logically, America and Japan's war in the Pacific was decided on Sunday, 9 July, 1944. On that day, at 16:15 hours (4:15pm local time), the American commander Admiral Richmond J. Turner declared the island of Saipan secured. The victory had been decisive.

In the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot (AKA the Battle of the Philippine Sea), three Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk and 600 aircraft and pilots were destroyed. 

The United States lost just 123 planes, and 80 of those experienced air crews were rescued. On  Saipan itself  30,000 Japanese soldiers and 22,000 civilians had died for the Emperor. The United States lost less than 3,000 dead, and 10,364 wounded. That ratio of 10 Japanese dead for every one American dead, had been fairly constant through the war in the Pacific.. 

And even before Admiral Turner’s pronouncement, U.S. Navy Construction Battalions ("the amazing C.B.’s") had begun turning Siapan into the world’s largest airport, from which, eventually, 2,000 B-29’s heavy bombers would turn Japanese factories and cities into torches.

The Japanese recognized it. Nine days after Admiral Turner's pronouncement, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, the architect of the war with America, and his entire cabinet (above) resigned. This was unambiguous proof that every Japanese senior commander knew that Japan had lost the war. But Japanese leadership now offered the dream that if the Japanese could kill enough Americans in just one more big battle, they would win a more favorable peace from the Americans - no occupation, and no war crimes trials, as were already being held in Germany. So they adjusted their strategy.

In conquering Iwo Jima  (above) the United States suffered 8,621 dead and 19,189 wounded. And at Okinawa, on the threshold of Japan itself, America suffered 12,513 dead and 38,513 wounded 

But in those two island battles,  Japan would lose 21,000 dead and 130,000 dead. The ratio of American to Japanese losses had been lowered. But the Americans still gave no public hint of bending on terms. The Japanese strategy was not working..

Even after those bloodbaths, no Japanese leader even hinted in public that they might be willing to negotiate a peace with the Americans. In part this was because the Japanese saw no evidence that America was having any second thoughts about "Unconditional Surrender", and in part because the Japanese military was driven by its most radical leadership.  It can be said that Japan's public silence on the issue of a negotiations  amounted to the mass murder of their own citizens and soldiers,  and of the U.S. forces closing in on them, and the hundreds of thousands of civilians in occupied China and the Philippines, caught between the avenging Americans and the fatalistic fanatics of Japan.

It takes only one nation  to start a war, but it takes two nations to make was peace. And there were only a few, mostly in Washington, D.C. and at Pearl Harbor, who realized it was in neither in America nor Japan's best interests to continue this slaughter.  How could these few find a way to convince the majority on both sides  to stop the killing?.

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WRITING STORIES

I doubt you could have missed the pair, seated in the Swan tavern on Fleet Street in London, that 28 March , 1716.  Last to arrive was the infamous publisher, pornographer and plagiarist Edmund Curll, a scarecrow of a man, very tall and thin, splayfooted, and with gray goggle eyes that threatened to burst from his pale face like a cartoon character. Waiting for him like a spider on his web was one the greatest poets in history, the oft quoted and revered deformed genius Alexander Pope, with a Roman nose and a spine so twisted he stood barely four feet six inches tall from his stylish shoes to the top of the hump on his back. Curll thought he had been invited to settle their disagreements. Pope was about to poison his guest's beer. Later Pope joyfully wrote a mocking obituary of his victim, “A Full and True Account of a Horrid and Barbarous Revenge by Poison on the Body of Mr. Edmund Curll, bookseller...To be published weekly”. Curll was not dead, but he did projectile vomit until he wished his was. It was like a scene from Animal House. Ah, good times among the 18^th century London literati.

Publishing was in its youth, as young as the internet is today, and just as chaotic, dishonest, unregulated, and unencumbered with a functional business model. In 1688 there were only 68 printing presses in London, all controlled by members of the Stationer's Company. But in 1695 Parliament refused to renew the company's monopoly, setting off a decade of pure anarchy. Daniel Defoe of Robinson Crusoe fame, noted, “One man studies seven year(s), to bring a finished piece into the world, and a pirate printer....sells it for a quarter of the price ... these things call for an Act of Parliament". So in 1710 Parliament obliged with The Statue of Anne - she was queen at the time - which created a 14 year copyright for authors. Still, six years later one author felt required to strike at a pirate printer – by making him vomit for 24 straight hours, and then attacking him again in print.

“Next o'er his books his eyes begin to roll,

In pleasing memory of all he stole;
How here he sipp'd, how there he plunder'd snug,
And suck'd all o'er like an industrious bug.”

Alexander Pope (above)  The Dunciad (1728)

Pope's justification for the poisoning was revenge for embarrassing the smart and lovely Lady MaryMontagu. The morally pompous poet, so famous for his version of Shakespeare and translations of Homer that he was nicknamed “the Bard”, was smitten with the lady. They even maintained a correspondence. Pope privately published one of her poems. Copies were discretely passed about the English court, but Curll was, of course, soon selling copies on the streets. Cultured nobility were not supposed to engage in publication – it smacked of stooping to actually earning a living. So Pope saw himself as a knight protecting Lady Montagu's honor when he poisoned Curll and attacked him (among others) in his poem, “Dunciad”. Curll responded by pirating the poem, even publishing an annotated version, also called a “key”. Mocked Curll, “How easily two wits agree, one writes the poem, one writes the key”.

Edmund Curll was not quite the “shameless Curll” Pope portrayed – not quite. He was infamous for keeping a revolving stable of struggling quill drivers “three in a bed” in the “low-rent flophouses, brothels, and coffeehouses” jammed into Grub Street (above). Originally “grub” referred to the roots and insect larval uncovered when the street was originally scrapped out. Eventually it was adopted as a badge of honor by the poverty stricken occupants, like the eventual great biographer Samuel Johnson, or Ned Ward, who considered his profession as “scandalous...as whoring....”. These grubs were hack writers, named after the ubiquitous horse drawn Hackney cabs that plied London's streets, going where ever their paying passengers demanded. The occasional advance paid to a hungry writer was a “grub stake”, and the pitiful meals they could afford were “grub”. Jonathan Swift, eventual creator of “Gulliver's Travels”, grandiosely referred to this literary sub-culture as “the Republica Grubstreetaria”, but like Johnson, Swift was clever enough and lucky enough to eventually escape the life of a mere grub.

In fact, Curll employed no more Grub Street warriors than any other Fleet Street baron. But he was particularly adept at supplying what the public wanted - licentious sex, and manufactured controversy. Curll paid grubs to engage in a “pamphlet war” - much like the Fox News war on Christmas - over the 1712 trial of Jane Wehham for witchcraft. (She was convicted). Curll also printed cheap pirated books that sold for a mere shilling, thus undercutting the actual author's authorized editions. His growing empire made Edmund Curll one of the most successful barons on Fleet Street. Acknowledged one critic, “He had no scruples either in business or private life, but he published and sold many good books.”

With Pope's urging, Curll was convicted of obscenity in 1716, and twice more in 1725. In 1726, Curll struck back by befriending the mistress of a Pope confident. She passed him several letters in which the arrogantly moral Pope admitting to lusting after the Blount Sisters, Terresa and Martha. “How gladly would I give all that I am worth,” Pope wrote in one purloined missive, “for one of their maidenheads.” Embarrassed, Pope helped engineer yet another Curll conviction in February of 1727. This time an exasperated court fined Curll and ordered him pilloried for an hour. At the mercy of the mob, Curll was spared the usual assault of rotted food and manure when a pamphlet was read to the well armed crowd, claiming Curll was being punished for defending the departed Queen Anne. Thus misinformed, the mob carried him home on their shoulders. Pope was infuriated and determined to even the score.

One of Edmund Curll's most profitable ventures was what came to be called “Curlicisms”. When a well known figure died, Curll would advertise a forthcoming biography, and ask the public for any anecdotes about or letters from the deceased. Then, without validating the submissions Curll would hire a Grub street hack to string them together into an instant and usually inaccurate biography, creating what one potential subject described as “one of the new terrors of death.” Curll had done this when the Duke of Buckingham died in 1721. But Buckingham was a peer, a member of the House of Lords, and that body summoned Curll for interrogation. Curll was unrepentant, since it was not a crime to publish writings of a peer without their permission. So the Lords made it illegal, and in this Pope saw his opportunity.

In 1731 Curll announced a upcoming “Curlicism” of Alexander Pope; “Nothing shall be wanting,” Curll assured his potential readers, “but his (universally desired) death.” Again Curll called for submissions and a mysterious figured identified only as “P.T.” offered letters written by Pope to the Lord of Oxford. In 1734 Curll published the letters in a vicious biography of Pope. The next year Pope published his own “Literary Correspondence for Thirty Years”, including the same letters to Oxford. But the details in Pope's version did not match those published by Curll, as Pope pointed out when he alleged Curll had violated the privilege of a member of the House of Lords and worse, slandered the Lord while doing it. The trap was sprung.

The only problem was, Curll again refused to repent. Called again before the Lords, Curll quipped, "Pope has a knack of versifying, but in prose I think myself a match for him.” And in fact as well. The Duke of Oxford still had the original letters in his files. So, asked Curll, where had P.T.'s inaccurate versions come from? Curll produced P.T.'s letters so the Lords could judge for themselves who was implicated by the handwriting. For a few days, the city of London, or that section that cared about such things, held its breath. And then an ad appeared in a small newspaper offering 20 guineas if P.T. would come forward to admit he had “acted by the direction of any other person.” P.T., of course did not appear. And the ploy fooled no one – Pope had written the originals and the fakes and even the ad, and everybody knew it. The House found a political solution; since the published letters were fakes, the law had not been broken. Case closed, except Pope now had even more egg on his face.

Wrote Curll, “Crying came our bard into the world, but lying, it is to be feared, he will go out of it.”.

And so he did. Pope died on 30 May, 1744, and Edmund Curll followed him in December of 1747.

Thus, Curll earned the last word. He described his relationship with Pope this way, “A fitter couple was never hatched, Some married are, indeed, but we are matched”.

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AMERICAN MURDER Part Eight

I said at the opening of this series that I don't believe anything Priscilla Grinder said about the night that Meriwether Lewis died, and here is why. In all three versions of her stories, she claims that about 3 A.M. (or “the middle of the night”) she heard a shot, heard a man call, “Oh, Lord”. Then she heard a second shot. Then, sometime later she heard a scratching at the door of the kitchen cabin, and Lewis pleading for water. She said she did not open the door because she did not feel safe. But she knew it was Lewis because she peeked through the open chinks in the wall and saw him wandering around outside between the cabins. And that story is a load of hooey.

On the night of Lewis' death, October 10^th, 1809,  there was a new moon, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory, meaning there was no light to illuminate Lewis for Priscilla Grinder to see him. Was Lewis carrying a candle or a lamp? If so Priscilla did not mention it. And any light inside the cabin would have blinded her to anyone moving around outside. No, I don't believe Priscilla's version of events. And the only thing we know for certain is that somebody that night shot Governor Meriwether Lewis, allegedly twice, once in the head and once in the side, and the pool of suspects is pretty shallow. There may have been others at Grinder's Stand that night, but we know of only four individuals who were there - Priscilla Grinder, Meriwether Lewis, his servant John Pernier and the James Neeley's servant. (Priscilla had her two daughters with her in the cooking cabin, but because they were young we can treat the three of them as one person.)

Now, it is unlikely that Agent Neeley's servant had a weapon. He was a slave, and handing a weapon to a slave was the equivalent of freeing him - so that makes it unlikely he was the shooter. Secondly, John Pernier was described as a “free mulatto”, meaning he had “negro blood”. Given the racism of the age, and the elitism of Lewis' Virginia heritage, I think it unlikely Lewis would have allowed him to possess a weapon. As evidence of this, no one asked Pernier what had happened that night, or bothered to write down his version of events, although I suspect that James Neeley's letter to President Jefferson was based on what Pernier told him had happened. Pernier did share his story with Meriwether Lewis' mother, but her reaction was to accuse him of killing her son. She did not do that to his face, and she never offered any justification for her suspicions. Pernier cannot be completely ruled out as a possible shooter, but it is difficult to accept a grieving racist mother's opinion at face value.

We know that Governor Lewis himself had four weapons. He had a hunting knife and a long gun, a smooth bore flintlock musket. However the size of the long gun ( about 5' in length) makes it impossible that Lewis shot himself in the head with this gun, then reloaded and shot himself a second time.

But Lewis also had a “brace” of pistols, meaning two. The ones he was most likely carrying were called “horse pistols” because they were too large (9 inches long) and too heavy (three pounds each) to wear in your belt on foot. These fired the same .69 caliber lead ball as the long rifle, 1 ½ inches in diameter, weighing an ounce and a third each. Black powder weapons compensated for their relatively low muzzle velocities – about 600 feet per second - with large mass - .58 to .79 caliber. They varied in size because they were all hand made, but they could still deliver on impact  450 to 500 pounds per inch. The wounds these weapons made were horrific. If Governor Lewis shot himself, he used the horse pistols, which would account for the two shots Priscilla supposedly heard.

Finally, Priscilla Grinder must have had at least one weapon to defend herself and her daughters, else her husband would have never left her alone on The Trace. Her weapon was probably a blunderbuss, also called a “coach gun”, a muzzle loading shotgun with a short barrel and relatively lite in weight. They were a superb weapon for intimidation and required little marksmanship. They fired a hand full of lead balls, but could also be loaded with whatever scrap metal or whatever stones were within reach. Or Priscilla could have been proficient with a standard flintlock musket or her own pistol. Self defense is just part of the cost of running a small business in a rough neighborhood. And along The Trace, you could call a cop but it might be six months before anybody showed up

So of the four people who most likely were responsible for the death of Governor Meriwether Lewis, only two likely had the means and opportunity to have committed this crime, Priscilla Grinder or Lewis himself. There were other less likely possibilities, primarily Priscilla's husband, Robert. But if he had been at the Stand, why would not John Prenier or Neeley's servant have mentioned him, then or later?

The same can be said for highwaymen or Indians, who have also been accused of Lewis' murder. The most valuable things that Meriwether Lewis possessed were not his papers. That was what he valued. But what highwaymen or renegade Indians in 1809 would have valued were the five or six horses Lewis' party rode in on - worth about $25 each or about $150.00 total (over $2,000 today). Stealing the horses would have been quick and safe, with little risk of having a confrontation with a motivated citizen with a gun.

And if there had been “secret agents” sent to murder Governor Lewis, then why not attack him while he was camped out in the wilderness, as he was on several nights during this trip? Why wait until he was in Grinder's Stand, where the risk was greater that another traveler or the staff would stumble upon the scene? And remember, Grinder's Stand was suffering from a loss of business because of the toll road by-pass. How could these secret agents know he would even stop in Grinder's Stand? There would have to have been dozens of “agents” descending upon the Natchez Trace to assure the elimination of Governor Lewis. And in an age before photographs, would all of them have been carrying a portrait of the hero so they didn't murder the wrong man? And would all of them have refrained from drunken boasting later on?

There was a lot of money to be made by land speculation in St. Louis. But there is no evidence that Governor Lewis was not perfectly willing to do business with mercantile interests, as his investment in the St. Louis and Missouri Company showed. It is extremely unlikely there was ever an economic conspiracy to murder the Governor. And there seem to be only rumors to indicate a political motivation in Lewis' death.

It is interesting to note, however, that according to modern multi-cultural studies, although suicide can affect anyone, those at the greatest risk of committing suicide are single white males from an affluent background who are moderate alcoholics and/or drug abusers, with few friends, and who are also dealing with a health problem while suffering from a diagnosable mental-health disorder such as depression. Emile Durkheim, the Frenchman who established the field of Sociology, described this condition as “excessive individuation”. Applying this description, Meriwether Lewis was the poster child for suicide.

I wish we had John Prenier's version of events that night. I wish experts could exhume Governor Lewis' body, to determine exactly what his wounds were. But honestly, I do not think either of those missing pieces of evidence are likely to ever be supplied. So what we are left with the death of a man who was far from perfect even when judged by the standards of his own time, but who was still more than an American hero. Meriwether Lewis was an American Archetype, even in his mode of death - self murder.

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