A little over three years after he returned in triumph from his epic exploration of the North American West with William Clark, Meriwether Lewis was found dead in October 1809 of gunshot wounds at a small inn along the historic Natchez Trace in Tennessee. Ever since, historians have debated how he died, with most opting for the official explanation that Lewis, in a state of \u201cmental derangement,\u201d died by suicide\u2014while others insist he was murdered. Turnbow joins the fray with a lucid account of the events leading up to Lewis\u2019 death, which he calls \u201cone of the most intriguing and enduring mysteries in American history.\u201d The author devotes much of this volume to Lewis\u2019 activities as a \u201cpoint man, agent, or spy\u201d for Thomas Jefferson. He became particularly useful to the president, per Turnbow, as a source of information about James Wilkinson, a rogue U.S. Army general whom he replaced as governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory in 1807 and who had not given up on his own plans \u201cto control the West.\u201d After Lewis set off from St. Louis in September 1809 to defend himself in Washington against critics of his administration, the author asserts that Wilkinson \u201ccould have anticipated that Lewis would fight him for his own influence and survival.\u201d Another possible enemy of Lewis\u2019 was a \u201cland cabal\u201d in Tennessee that included future president Andrew Jackson (\u201cMore than a few could see Lewis as a threat to their interests\u201d). Meticulously researched and documented, the book may prove heavy going for those who are not aficionados of the history of the early American Republic. Turnbow doesn\u2019t explicitly state where he stands in the historic debate, but he does appear to be siding with the \u201cmurderists,\u201d noting, for example, that Clark \u201cnever wrote that he believed Lewis committed suicide.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A little over three years after he returned in triumph from his epic exploration of the North American West with William Clark, Meriwether Lewis was found dead in October 1809 of gunshot wounds at a small inn along the historic Natchez Trace in Tennessee. Ever since, historians have debated how he died, with most opting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}