Hello Friends,
This month I did a little digging into the mysterious death of the great adventurer Meriwether Lewis. Thomas Jefferson and Lewis were long-time friends and developed a code to pass secret messages without detection.
One of the documents between the two men is a list of all suspicious military officers detailing whether they were loyal to Jefferson’s administration and in good standing with the armed forces. At the top of that list was General James Wilkinson.
Now, according to Kira Gale, the author of “Meriwether Lewis: The Assassination of an American Hero and the Silver Mines of Mexico,” Wilkinson committed treason against the U.S. She found that Wilkinson received $26,000 from Spanish agents in exchange for information about the United States explorations and Lewis’ travels. Gale also notes that Wilkinson had a history of assassinating his enemies.
In 1806, Jefferson removed Wilkinson as the governor of the Louisiana Territory and replaced him with Lewis. Three years later, Wilkinson suspected Lewis found incriminating evidence against him and traveled back to Washington with his proof.
Lewis traveled from St. Louis to Washington with Indian Agent James Neelly as his escort. Wilkinson appointed Neely as a companion. During the boat ride from St. Louis to New Orleans, Lewis stopped at Fort Pickering (Memphis), and due to financial issues, they decided to travel by horse from there.
Yet, weeks later, the commanding officer at the Fort, Major Gilbert C. Russell, wrote to Jefferson and disclosed that Lewis displayed strange behavior and ordered him to stay until he cleared his head. Russell’s statement to Jefferson claimed Lewis made several suicide attempts while on the boat and spent many nights intoxicated. He also said Lewis created a will and left orders to disperse his belongings when he died.
However, in 1962 handwriting experts examined Russell’s statements. They compared his letters to Jefferson with court filings that alleged he acted as a Spanish agent. The handwriting in the court filings did not match the letters. Therefore, Russell’s claims to Jefferson regarding his knowledge of Lewis’ suicide attempts and possible mental illness were fraudulent.
So, what happened on October 11, 1809? According to Neelly, they stopped at Grinders Stand, an Inn near Hohenwald, Tenn., for the night. Lewis checked in alone, and Neelly set off to find two stray horses. The innkeeper, Robert Grinder, left town, and his wife, Priscilla, remained. When Neelly returns to the Stand, Priscilla meets him with the news of Lewis’ suicide. Priscilla says Lewis displayed strange behavior during dinner and “talked to himself.” When he went to his room, she heard gunshots. Priscilla tells Neelly that she peeked through the wood slats and saw Lewis crawling on the ground, bleeding and asking for water to heal his wounds. Scared, Priscilla does nothing and finds him dead the next day with a gunshot to his head and chest. (Priscilla changed her story three times years later.)
Lewis carried a 1799 North and Cheney, Flintlock pistol. That gun uses a ball that weighs an ounce and a flint cartridge to fire a single shot. For Priscilla’s story to be accurate, Lewis would have to fire a shot in his skull, then reload and shoot again into his abdomen.
Once more, forensic specialists found that Neelly never wrote the letter to President Jefferson on October 18, 1809. After hearing the news from Neelly, a Virginia Capitan of the army, John Brahan, wrote the same letter to Jefferson detailing Lewis’ death. When the handwriting analyst compared Lewis’ letter, it matched John Brahan’s handwriting. That means that Brahan wrote the same letter twice, but the second time signed Neelly’s name on it. Years later, Brahan loses his position for financial impropriety.
Kira Gale and other historians suspect that Wilkinson hired the inn’s owner, Robert Grinder, to kill Lewis, then convinced his cohorts, like Neelly and Brahan, to cover up the crime.
Finally, Tennessee attorney Tony Turnbow recently found that when Neelly claimed to be looking for two horses, he was in Franklin, Tennessee, sixty miles and two days away from Grinders Stand. The habeas corpus document shows Neelly was in a court of law the day Lewis committed suicide.
History may have gotten this story wrong. Lewis’ fourth great-nephew is actively petitioning the government to exhume his uncle’s body and perform an autopsy. But as of this date, they have met resistance.
I hope you found the new facts about Lewis’ death interesting.
Until next month,
Harper
HARPER GALE BOOKS 