by Owen J. Hurd
PRAISE FOR
AFTER THE FACT
“Don’t read this book alone. Make sure there’s someone seated next to you at all times, because you’re going to want to stop every three or four minutes and say, ‘No way! Did you know…?’ This book is filled with surprises—and also with meticulous research, crisp writing, and biting humor. After the Fact reminds us that history can and should be fun. It’s so good you’ll have to share it.”
—Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of Get Capone, Opening Day, and Luckiest Man
“Christopher Columbus in chains? Pocahontas in London? Who knew? Owen Hurd brings history to life in this wonderfully readable book that will engage everybody who cares about this country’s history. You’ll laugh when you read that Jackie Robinson took a job at Chock Full o’ Nuts, you’ll cry when you find out what happened to freedom fighter Harriet Tubman, and you’ll never look at history the same again.”
—Richard Cahan, author of Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows and The Lost Panoramas
AFTER THE FACT
The Surprising Fates of American History’s
Heroes, Villains, and Supporting Characters
OWEN J. HURD
A PERIGEE BOOK
A PERIGEE BOOK
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © 2012 by Owen J. Hurd
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First edition: August 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hurd, Owen.
After the fact : the surprising fates of American history’s heroes, villains, and supporting characters / Owen J. Hurd.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN: 978-1-101-61072-5
1. United States—History—Anecdotes. 2. United States—Biography—Anecdotes. I. Title.
E178.6.H88 2012
973—dc23 2012009639
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Most Perigee books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write: Special Markets, Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
To Geralyn,
Who walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Age of Discovery
2. Early Settlers and Pilgrims
3. The American Revolution
4. The Western Frontier
5. Literary Legacies
6. The Civil War
7. Disaster Relief
8. Wild West Outlaws and Sheriffs
9. Inventors
10. Gangsters and G-Men
11. Games Over
12. World War II
13. Happy Days No More
14. Civil Rights and Wrongs
Further Reading
Index
Acknowledgments
Many people lent their ears and opinions in the early stages of this book’s genesis, especially my sibling editorial team of Clare Abbene, Cheri Carpenter, and Bill Hurd. I also routinely drew on the love and support of my other brother, John, and sister, Ellen, as well as my mother, Mary Lee Hurd.
My clear-eyed and levelheaded agent, David Fugate, took a chance on what he instinctively knew was a good idea and helped shape it into a viable book proposal. Perigee senior editor Meg Leder was a big fan from the start and helped make the final product immeasurably better.
Fellow Chicago author Jonathan Eig was kind enough to review a portion of the manuscript. Dave Leitch read every page of the manuscript, providing useful and encouraging feedback all the way. He unfailingly responded to each chapter before the next one was delivered to him. My attempts to keep pace with him kept me on schedule.
Finally, I would be unable to write any book-length work without the love and support of my family, including my incredibly understanding wife, Geralyn, whose keen editorial instincts helped shape the book in its earliest stages, and my son, Patrick, who surprises and delights me almost every day on his way to becoming a very impressive young man. I love you both so very much.
Introduction
We’re all familiar with the momentous events in our nation’s history: Columbus’s journey to the Americas, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But what about the lives lived after the fact?
What happened, for example, to Paul Revere after his famous midnight ride? A better messenger than soldier, Revere was later kicked out of the militia for his role in the Penobscot Expedition, the most disastrous naval blunder of the Revolutionary War.
What became of Lewis and Clark in the years after their exploration of the American interior? Meriwether Lewis suffered a precipitous downfall, committing suicide just three years after the duo’s triumphant return from the wilderness. William Clark, on the other hand, lived a successful and fulfilling life, marred only by his government’s shameful treatment of the American Indians he had befriended.
What became of the men who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Or the scientists who developed the bomb? Or the survivors of those horrific attacks? And why did it take sixty years to publish the first eyewitness account written by a Western reporter to enter Nagasaki?
Instead of rehashing the well-known events in American history, this book picks up where traditional histories leave off, kind of like History 101 meets Where Are They Now? See what became of our nation’s heroes and villains as well as the supporting characters who played key roles in major historical events. After all, famous people don’t stop living after they’ve achieved their greatest triumphs or committed their most notorious crimes.
Some of the stories provide tales of scandal and degradat
ion—of people who once breathed rarefied air, only to lose their status, their wealth, or their sanity long after the nation’s attention veered elsewhere—like Mary Lincoln, who spent the rest of her life in grief and poverty (sometimes actual, other times perceived), suffering bouts of despair and madness.
Other stories show how the human spirit can overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges and crushing grief. Elizabeth Custer, for example, after her husband’s foolhardy last stand, became a successful author and champion of her late husband’s legacy.
The signing of the Declaration of Independence provides examples that cut across the spectrum of triumph and tragedy. Most people think of the event as a symbolic act that began and ended on July 4, 1776. Not so for the flesh and blood men who actually signed this slap in England’s face. For them, it was an act of defiance with real consequences. Nine of the signers would die during the American War of Independence. Several were wounded in battle, while others languished in British prisons. One of Georgia’s signers, Button Gwinnett, was killed in a duel stemming from a dispute over a botched military expedition.
Just about every one of the signers suffered vast financial losses, as the British forces targeted the homes and business interests (not to mention families) of those who dared challenge King George’s authority. Some of the signers—Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson—of course went on to serve their country with distinction and to enjoy the benefits of their hard-earned freedoms. A few others met with strange ends, like George Wythe, who was murdered by an inheritance-seeking grandnephew. And many of the signers slipped into obscurity. Ever heard of William Floyd, Stephen Hopkins, or George Taylor? Didn’t think so.
These are the types of stories found in the pages of After the Fact—stories that surprise and confound, that illuminate the events themselves by providing a context seldom considered.
People often ask me where I came up with the idea for After the Fact. A couple years ago I was reading Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, a thoroughly informative and entertaining account of the immediate aftermath of the assassination. In more than three hundred pages, the author, James Swanson, meticulously and dramatically relates the events of April 14–26, 1865, in which John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre and then met his own end, trapped in a burning tobacco barn in northern Virginia. In the seventeen-page epilogue that closed the book, Swanson ran down the list of actors who played roles in one of the nation’s most intriguing dramas, explaining what became of them in the years that followed. As fascinating as I found the main body of the book, this section provided a treasure trove of intriguing information, compelling me to embark on my own research into what happened after the fact.
What became of Booth’s brothers and sisters? What about his coconspirators? Which of the conspirators were hanged? What became of those who received lesser sentences? And which ones got away scot-free?
What became of the man who shot Booth in the burning tobacco barn in Virginia? Who, if anyone, claimed the cash rewards offered for the capture of Booth and the others?
What was the fate of the surviving Lincolns?
Most people have heard stories about Mary’s depression and battered psyche, but what about her skirmishes with Congress, the press, and her son Robert, not to mention her turncoat seamstress and ingrate daughter-in-law? And what about Robert? How was it that he became a kind of presidential bad-luck charm, figuring in the next two presidential assassinations?
What happened to Colonel Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris, the only other people sitting in the president’s balcony at Ford’s Theatre when Booth sneaked in and shot Lincoln? (In short, they married, he went crazy and killed her.)
The logic of After the Fact is that some of the most offbeat and illuminating stories occur in the denouement that follows the climax. We begin with the earliest explorers to the so-called New World, before moving on to cover landmark events throughout American history all the way up to the Watergate scandal of Richard Nixon’s administration. I decided not to include any more recent events, because the characters in those dramas may yet add more chapters to their biographies.
True history buffs will surely be familiar with at least a couple of the stories presented here, but they will just as certainly be surprised by new facts and insights.
CHAPTER ONE
AGE OF DISCOVERY
SOME explorers just don’t know when to quit. But isn’t that what makes a good explorer? The will to fly in the face of danger has certainly made many a reputation. However, it’s also led to a fair share of ill-fated demises.
Vasco Núñez de Balboa is best known for his discovery in 1513 of the Pacific Ocean—or at least for being the first European to realize that another huge ocean stood just opposite the isthmus of Panama. His thanks? He was later arrested for treason and shipped back to Spain, where an ax-wielding executioner required two hacks to separate Balboa’s head from his neck.
On a 1524 voyage, Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first explorer, after Leif Eriksson, to explore and map much of the Atlantic Coast from Newfoundland to South Carolina. His name is mostly forgotten now, but it does grace three United States bridges, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York, the Verrazano Bridge in Maryland, and the Jamestown Verrazzano Bridge in Rhode Island, which gets extra points for spelling his name correctly (regardless of what spell-check says). But the Italian explorer pushed his luck on a subsequent voyage to the Americas. Wading ashore a Caribbean island to greet some friendly seeming natives, Verrazzano was immediately set upon by what turned out to be ravenous cannibals. His brother watched in horror from a nearby boat as Verrazzano was unceremoniously disassembled and eaten.
Not all explorers met such grisly ends, but as we’ll see, the glory of discovery is often followed by suffering and disgrace.
Columbus in Chains
There are many fanciful stories about the events leading up to Columbus’s epic sea voyage to the Americas—how he labored to persuade ignorant monarchs that the world was round, how Queen Isabella sold Spain’s royal jewels to finance the expedition, and how Columbus was forced to recruit a crew of convicts because proper sailors were too fearful of the journey. (All untrue.) Our story begins after Columbus made his pivotal voyage to the Americas, landing in 1492 on the island he named Hispaniola, shared in modern times by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
On January 16, 1493, Christopher Columbus weighed anchor off the shores of Hispaniola and sailed back toward Spain. This time he sailed aboard the Niña. His flagship, Santa Maria, the vessel Columbus commanded on his unwitting way to the Americas, had been lost on Christmas 1492—a victim to the shallows off Hispaniola.
Over the course of the two-month journey back to Europe, Columbus would have ample time to reflect on his discoveries—on the route taken toward what he still claimed to be the East Indies, on the peoples he encountered, and on the economic opportunities to be exploited. No doubt relying on the daily journals he religiously kept throughout his voyage, he composed a letter to his sponsors, King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I.
It was a delicate task. Columbus had promised a shorter, less-expensive trade route to Japan, China, and India. But instead of ancient, sophisticated kingdoms, eager to engage in trade, Columbus encountered a relatively small, primitive civilization. In his letter, Columbus shifted his focus to colonization and to harvesting natural resources.
Unfortunately, Columbus found little in the way of that most coveted resource, gold. The indigenous peoples, called Tainos, had certainly talked a lot about the abundance of gold on the island, and some of them even wore small golden trinkets. At least one local chief exhibited an intricate ceremonial mask bearing gold leaf features. The Indians repeatedly promised to show Columbus where more gold was to be found, but never did.
Apparently, the Europeans’ obsession with gold did not trigger the locals’ suspicions. Why would it? Columbus found them to be an “artless and gen
erous” people, freely sharing all that they had. In the letter, he writes, “If it be asked for, they never say no, but do rather invite the person to accept it, and show as much lovingness as though they would give their hearts.” And it didn’t matter what they got in return, no matter how worthless.
Columbus caught his men trading “fragments of broken platters and pieces of broken glass, and strap buckles” with the natives. In exchange, these “senseless brutes” would readily fork over “gold to the weight of two and a half castellanos,” about half an ounce. Columbus forbade his men from exploiting the ignorance of the locals, who were apt to treat the most worthless item as if it were “the best jewel in the world.”
And yet, despite all the talk of gold, Columbus was returning to Spain relatively empty-handed, unless you count the birds, plants, and Indians he commandeered, most of which died on the return journey. How was he to compensate for this seemingly paltry tribute?
Columbus offered to provide his sponsors with spices, cotton, and aloe wood, “as much as their Highnesses will order to be shipped.”
Failing that, Columbus would provide Spain with Christian souls. Those who refused to convert—or were simply denied the opportunity—Columbus would gladly enslave, once again promising his sponsors “as many [slaves] as they shall order to be shipped.”
Columbus did not fail to note that the islanders were fairly defenseless. “They have no other weapons than the stems of reeds in their seeding state, on the end of which they fix little sharpened stakes.” Besides, they seemed so naturally good-natured and averse to conflict that they would easily be tamed. In his journals, Columbus noted ominously, “I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased.”
Ignorant of Columbus’s designs, the Indians were quick to indulge the Spaniards at every turn. When the Santa Maria ran aground, it was the local Indians who leaped into action, paddling canoes out to the boat and transporting every single item of value to shore. The local chieftain, Guanacagarí, even turned some of his subjects out of their homes to provide Columbus with adequate storage space.
