In his new nonfiction, Jefferson's Spy: The Secret Life of Meriwether Lewis, Tony L. Turnbow explores Lewis's relationship with his mentor, Thomas Jefferson, and the secret work he performed on Jefferson's behalf until his mysterious death at the age of thirty-five.
Meriwether Lewis, co-leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was one of the few men Jefferson chose to perform spy work or "secret services" as it was called at the time. Lewis, who lost his own father at age five, looked to his neighbor Jefferson as a father figure. Jefferson propelled Lewis's rise from a Charlottesville, Virginia farm, to a residence in the East Room of the White House, and then to a 3,500-mile intelligence-gathering expedition into the unknown across the Rockies to the Pacific. Lewis and his co-captain, William Clark, returned to become two of the first American popular heroes.
But Jefferson's next mission for Lewis would prove a challenge he would not overcome. The work to take Spanish-controlled Texas and Santa Fe entangled Lewis in shadowy networks of spies, assassins, and assorted villains along the enemy border. Lewis died carrying sensitive information to Washington on a road so dangerous it was known as "The Devil's Backbone." Though it was claimed Lewis shot himself two or three times, cut his own throat, and slit his wrists to the bone, Jefferson was informed-and apparently accepted-that Lewis killed himself. Three decades later, a state commission concluded that it was more likely Lewis died at the hands of an assassin.
On America's 250, this first volume of a two-volume series will offer new information to reexamine one of the nation's most enduring mysteries and provide a new perspective on two of its heroes.
Tony L. Turnbow has studied the history of the historic Natchez Trace and the circumstances of Lewis's death for more than 40 years. In 1996, he served as the alternate juror on an official coroner's inquest into the circumstances of Lewis's death in 1809. He has written about Lewis's death in We Proceeded On, the journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Alliance. In 2009, he wrote and produced a full-length play, Inquest on the Natchez Trace, that recreated an 1809 inquest setting to give voice to witness statements about Lewis's death. Mr. Turnbow has appeared in television productions that explored the circumstances of Lewis's death, and he frequently speaks to groups about the history of the Natchez Trace.Mr. Turnbow practices law in Franklin, Tennessee. With a Bachelor of Arts and a concentration in southern U.S. history from Vanderbilt University and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Tennessee College of Law, Mr. Turnbow has continued to use his training to explore the primary history of the old Natchez Trace.
