Lewis either killed himself (the prevailing view) or was murdered near Hohenwald, Tenn., in 1809. His grave is on federal land outside town, tended by the National Park Service. The Feds, along with some eminent historians, insist Lewis should rest in peace. But James Starrs, a George Washington University law professor and forensic expert, thinks the truth’s worth digging for and that the government needs a science lesson. “I’ve seen what goes on with rodents tunneling underground,” says Starrs. “Trust me, ‘Rest in peace’ is a ridiculous phrase.”
The historical debate hangs on different ideas of the man himself. Was Lewis, by the age of 35, an alcoholic and pill-popping manic-depressive? Had nagging debts and dismay over the failed search for an all-water route over the Rockies to the Pacific led him to take his own life? Stephen E. Ambrose, author of the best-selling Lewis biography “Undaunted Courage,” thinks so, but argues that it subtracts little from his genius: “He was the first great American celebrity after the Revolutionary War–a superstar in today’s terms.” We do know that Lewis, governor of the Louisiana Territory, set out in the autumn of 1809 from St. Louis for Washington, D.C., to defend his expense reports. On the way, he stopped in Tennessee, and tire-main-account of his death comes from an innkeeper, a Mrs. Grinder. One fine October morning at 3, she said, two shots rang out. At dawn, she told one federal investigator, she and a frightened servant finally entered Lewis’s room. There were bullet wounds in his head and chest. He was alive, but wielding a razor, “busily engaged in cutting himself from head to foot.” Old pistols weren’t always lethal. But many Lewis admirers find the account implausible. Did robbers (maybe a Grinder) kill Lewis for his loot?
The pro-exhumation camp has been winning important friends. Tennessee Congressman Bob Clement hopes to meet soon with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to ask why the Park Service won’t budge. Two influential newspapers, The Tennessean and the Nashville Banner, have endorsed the dig. So did an official inquest last summer. Starrs’s most powerful allies, though, might be the next of kin. He has just sent 170 letters to the descendants of Lewis’s sister, and says 41 support him. He hopes to force an outcome by the end of the year. Starrs would test Lewis’s hair for remaining traces of substance abuse and his bones to see if bullet-hole angles conform to those of self-inflicted wounds. “History is too important to be left to the historians,” he says. If he has his way, it’ll be left to the gravediggers.
