Monday, June 08, 2009

Was Clark deceived about Lewis’s suicide?

The first of a series of blogs based on the book The Death of Meriwether Lewis: A Historic Crime Scene Investigation by James E. Starrs and Kira Gale.  http://www.deathofmeriwetherlewis.com
William Clark seems to have been fooled by James Wilkinson at three different times in his life—first, when he didn’t realize that Wilkinson had sabotaged the career of his older brother George Rogers Clark in 1786—then, when he served under General Wilkinson in 1790-94 during the Indian Wars and took Wilkinson’s side in his feud with General “Mad Anthony” Wayne—and, finally, when he believed the story of his friend Meriwether Lewis’s suicide.
Like many young officers, Clark admired the charismatic Wilkinson. The great historian Frederick Jackson Turner described Wilkinson as “the most consummate artist in treason the nation ever possessed.”

Despite Wilkinson’s treacheries and conspiracies, his rival, Wayne managed to win the Battle of Fallen Timbers, ending the Indian Wars in the Old Northwest Territory in 1794.  Two years later, Anthony Wayne died of “stomach gout,” and Wilkinson succeeded him as Commanding General of the United States Army. (“Stomach gout” sounds suspiciously like a case of poisoning.)
Eventually William Clark grew to distrust Wilkinson, but did he ever realize that the General had caused the ruin of his older brother, General George Rogers Clark? Like Anthony Wayne, George Rogers Clark was Wilkinson’s rival for power in the army. Clark’s capture of the British fort at Vincennes had won the Northwest Territory for the United States at the close of the Revolutionary War. In 1786, Wilkinson succeeded in destroying George Rogers Clark’s career through the use of anonymous letters and false charges. A year later, in 1787, Wilkinson became a highly paid secret agent for the Spanish government. His Spanish connections were widely suspected but not proven until years after his death. He died an opium addict in Mexico City in 1825, while acting as an adviser to the newly established Mexican government.
In The Death of Meriwether Lewis: A Historic Crime Scene Investigation, I make the case for Wilkinson arranging for the assassination of Meriwether Lewis. Lewis replaced Wilkinson as the Governor of Louisiana Territory in 1807.

William Clark and the suicide story
A key question is why did Lewis’s best friend, William Clark, accept the story that the 35 year old Lewis committed suicide? Clark knew his friend was agitated about the government’s failure to reimburse him for government expenses—one of the reasons why Lewis was traveling to Washington in the fall of 1809. Then, after his friend’s death, Clark received letters citing suicide attempts by Lewis while he was en route to Fort Pickering and 15 days of mental derangement while he was at the fort. It was enough to convince him at the time. But most likely, these letters were forgeries created by General Wilkinson to mislead Clark. Clark thought the letters were written by Captain Gilbert Russell, the commander of Fort Pickering (today’s Memphis, Tennessee), where Lewis spent two weeks in September.
Lewis died under mysterious circumstances on the Natchez Trace on October 11, 1809 after leaving Fort Pickering. Clark wrote to his brother Jonathan Clark on November 26, 1809 with news of Lewis’s suicide attempts and mental derangement—information contained in the letters Clark had received, supposedly written by Captain Russell. These letters from Russell have never been found, so the handwriting cannot be analyzed. However, we have two authentic letters written by Captain Russell to President Thomas Jefferson in January, 1810. These letters to the President provided a wealth of detail, but they contain no report of prior suicide attempts while en route to the fort, no report of 15 days in a state of mental derangement while Lewis was at the fort, and no report of a second will written at the fort.  All things Captain Russell would surely have reported to the President if they were true.
William Clark searched for the second will—a will which was never found, because it never existed. The existence of a second will was undoubtedly put in the letter to make Clark believe the rest of the information. Clark was told the second will made him executor of the estate and gave him the authority to take over the publication of the journals, which happened anyway, by everyone’s agreement.
At the same time that Lewis was traveling to Washington, D. C., Clark was also traveling east with his wife and their infant son, Meriwether Lewis Clark. The Clarks were taking another route to visit their families in Louisville, Kentucky and Fincastle, Virginia. Clark also had worrisome issues to deal with regarding the federal bureaucracy.
At some point after Lewis’s death, Clark and Jefferson must have compared notes regarding the information in the letters they had received. It is noteworthy that neither Clark nor Jefferson ever wrote anything about Lewis’s death that has been found. There is nothing in the historic record, with one exception—a biographical essay on Lewis that Jefferson was asked to write for the publication of the Lewis and Clark Journals in 1814. Jefferson mentions symptoms of mental illness he had observed in Lewis, but most of his long essay is devoted to praising his friend, and includes the famous quotation, that “he was of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness & perserverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from its direction.”
It is a 200 year old mystery, whether Lewis committed suicide or was murdered. Over 170 Lewis family descendants have signed a petition requesting the exhumation of his remains at the National Monument & Gravesite in western Tennessee. To learn more, visit the family’s website, http://www.solvethemystery.org . Twenty historic documents are provided with commentary in the The Death of Meriwether Lewis: A Historic Crime Scene Investigation. These documents constitute all of the historic record relating to the circumstances of his death. You may read them for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Professor Starrs and myself, and the Lewis family members, are all willing to attempt to solve this mystery by exhuming his remains and letting scientific truth decide the matter. —Kira Gale

Posted by Kira Gale on 06/08/2009 at 03:03 PM

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