UBC: Guice, ed., By His Own Hand?

By His Own Hand?: The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis by John D.W. Guice

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


(N.b., I'm writing this review on the one hundred seventh anniversary of Meriwether Lewis's death.)




This slim volume (as I believe the correct phrase is) consists of the arguments for (John D. W. Guice) and against (James J. Holmberg) the homicide theory in the death of Meriwether Lewis, supported and surrounded by non-partisan essays and with a selection of the relevant documents (which I personally would find more helpful if they had stuck to transcriptions and not bothered with photographing Lewis' diary and Clark's letters (beautiful handwriting though both of them had).

And the thing we need to talk about is what constitutes evidence of which.

1. Character assessments of Meriwether Lewis and whether he was or was not feeling suicidal when he came to Grinder's Reach are NOT RELEVANT to the question of whether someone murdered him. The fact that William Clark, Lewis's friend and exploration partner, and Thomas Jefferson, Lewis's patron and employer, both felt he was capable of killing himself and were certainly not surprised to learn that he had, while it lends credence to the idea that he might have committed suicide, has nothing to do with whether his death, on the evidence, can be judged self-inflicted or not. Just because he might have killed himself is not proof that someone else didn't beat him to it.

(1.a. Suicidal depression has nothing to do with "character" or "strength of will"; admitting that Lewis was prone to what we today would call clinical depression or major depressive disorder (or, possibly, was bipolar) is not a denigration of him as a person and casts no shadow on his accomplishments. So just leave that strawman out already, okay?)

2. What we have in the way of evidence is a collection of unreliable testimony from eyewitnesses, none of whom saw the shots fired (Lewis was shot twice, once in the head and once in the torso, with his own .69 caliber flintlock pistols; bonus point: a .69 caliber pistol ball is half an inch in diameter), and most of whom weren't there when Lewis received his fatal injuries. The exception is Priscilla Grinder, whose story seems to have changed depending on who she was talking to. Hearsay accounts from Captain Gilbert Russell (especially when he doesn't explain where he's getting his information from) are not evidence. It certainly seems like the 1848 Monument Committee, when they exhumed Lewis's body to rebury him beneath his monument in Hohenwald, Tennessee (milepost 385.9 on the Natchez Trace Parkway), saw something that made them suspicious, since they officially endorsed the murder theory, but they didn't explain themselves, and the National Park Service has steadfastly refused to allow a second exhumation. So that's not actually evidence either.

3. Yes, the Natchez Trace was dangerous. Yes, after dark on a night of the new moon in Tennessee is going to be pitch fucking black and Mrs. Grinder probably couldn't see much of anything happening in the yard beyond the door she refused to open. IF the version of her story in which Lewis wandered pathetically around the yard begging for water is the closest version to the truth. Which seems doubtful. The story she told nearest in time to the actual events, the story relayed by Neelly (who himself seems to have been a somewhat unreliable witness), is much simpler and, by Occam's Razor and what I know of the effects of (1) time on human memory; (2) leading questions from an interlocutor; and (3) the desire of an interview subject to tell a story that will please the interviewer, I suspect that that first version is true--or, at least, as close as we can get:

the woman reports that about three o'clock she heard two pistols fire off in the Governors Room. the servants being awakined by her, came in but too late to save him. he had shot himself in the head with one pistol & a little below the Breast with the other. when his servant came in he says, I have done the business my good servant give me some water. he gave him water, he survived but a short time, I came up some time after, & had him as decently Buried as I could in that place.
(150)

Could Priscilla Grinder be lying? Yes, of course, although she'd have to bring the servants in on the deal, and Lewis's personal servant John Pernier had no reason to go along with it, especially once he was away from Grinder's Stand. (Pernier did commit suicide--or, at least, Jefferson passed on the story that he committed suicide--in 1810, which might, or might not, be evidence of a guilty conscience.) Could James Neelly be lying? Yes, of course, although he'd have to bring the servants and the Grinders in on it, and that starts getting iffier and iffier as you go.

The case for homicide seems to rest mostly on inconsistencies in the eyewitness testimony and is significantly lacking in both suspects and motive (aside from highway robbery, but none of the evidence really seems to fit that. The case for suicide rests mostly on character testimonials and evidence from people who saw Lewis in the time leading up to his death. It's one of those irritating situations where I agree with Holmberg but find his argument completely unconvincing because he seems to have no ability to understand what constitutes evidence. Guice does a better job, but I'm not persuaded by him, either.

Most likely scenario: Meriwether Lewis, possibly on the downward swing of a bipolar cycle, possibly simply in a suicidal depression (either way, please remember, this is a mental illness; it has nothing to do with either Lewis's character or his situation as viewed rationally), used his .69 caliber flintlocks to kill himself. (I did like the testimony of the gun expert Guice found, who said, "Personally I am doubtful that anyone could shoot himself twice with such a weapon as the learning curve from this type of self-abuse would be quite nearly vertical" (94).) Homicide is less likely, but I could absolutely be convinced with the presentation/discovery of better evidence.



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