On the morning of October 11, 1809 the innkeeper at Grinder’s Stand on the Natchez Trace about 70 miles southwest of Nashville
heard gunshots. Soon servants found Meriwether Lewis badly injured from gunshot wounds, including one to the head. Lewis died shortly after sunrise that morning. Lewis had stopped at the inn the day prior, according to a Thomas Jefferson on October 18th. Lewis was on his way to Washington where he hoped to settle issues regarding payment of drafts he had drawn against the War Department while serving as governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory. Lewis also carried his journals with him for delivery to his publisher. From Wikipedia:
While modern historians generally accept his death as a suicide, there is some debate.[23] No one admitted to seeing Lewis shoot himself. Three inconsistent accounts are attributed to the tavern-keeper’s wife Priscilla Grinder, though Mrs. Grinder did not leave a written account. In one account, the writer said that Mrs. Grinder claimed Lewis acted strangely the night before his death. She said that during dinner, Lewis stood and paced about the room talking to himself in the way one would speak to a lawyer. She observed his face to flush as if it had come on him in a fit. After he retired for the evening, she continued to hear him talking to himself. At some point in the night, she heard multiple gunshots, and what she believed was someone calling for help. She claimed to be able to see Lewis through the slit in the door crawling back to his room. She never explained why, at the time, she did not investigate further concerning Lewis’ condition or the source of the gunshots.
…..The only doctor to examine Lewis’ body did not do so until 40 years later, in 1848. The Tennessee State Commission, including Dr. Samuel B. Moore, charged with locating Lewis’s grave and erecting a monument over it, opened Lewis’s grave. The commission wrote in its official report that though the impression had long prevailed that Lewis died by his own hand, “it seems to be more probable that he died by the hands of an assassin.”[24] His mother and relatives contended it was murder. A coroner’s jury held an inquest immediately after Lewis’s death as provided by local law; however, they did not charge anyone with murdering Lewis.[25] The jury foreman kept a pocket diary of the proceedings. The pocket diary disappeared in the early 1900s.
While both Jefferson and William Clark accepted the theory that Lewis committed suicide, there are others who propose that it may
have been murder. Back in 1994 – (20 years ago?) I read David Leon Chandler’s book:Jefferson Conspiracies: A President’s Role in the Assassination of Meriwether Lewis. In that book Chandler speculates that Lewis was killed by James Wilkinson, a high-ranking General, co-conspirator with Aaron Burr, and an agent for the Spanish government. The speculation was that Lewis was headed to Washington to expose Wilkinson, whom he succeeded as the Governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory. I can’t remember all the details of the book, but many reviewers discount Chandler’s theories mostly because the two people who knew Lewis best Jefferson and Clark both felt that his mental state at the time could easily have led him to suicide.
From Wikipedia:
Historian Stephen Ambrose dismisses the murder theory as “not convincing”,[8] stating:
What is convincing is the initial reaction of the two men who knew Lewis best and loved him most. William Clark and Thomas Jefferson immediately concluded that the story of Lewis’s suicide was entirely believable, Clark on the basis of his intimate knowledge of Lewis’s mental state and more explicitly on the never found Lewis letter of mid-September [1809]. Neither Jefferson or Clark ever doubted that Lewis killed himself.[8]
The story of Lewis’ mysterious death does led itself to conspiracy speculation doesn’t it? I just saw a newer book from 2007 By His Own Hand?: The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis. Hum, sounds good $9.99 Amazon Kindle – birthday money??? Maybe??
Links
Wikipedia: Meriwether Lewis
Goodreads: Jefferson Conspiracies: A President’s Role in the Assassination of Meriwether Lewis
Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia: Meriwether Lewis
Kirkus: Jefferson Conspiracies: A President’s Role in the Assassination of Meriwether Lewis