America's First Serial Killer

Monday was the sesquicentennial of the birth of the man known to history as America's first documented serial killer — H.H. Holmes.

Serial killing was not a new thing when Holmes (whose real name was Herman Webster Mudgett) started killing people in the second half of the 19th century so I must conclude that he was not this country's first serial killer — and I'm reasonably sure he wasn't the first to confess to killing someone.

But he did confess to more than two dozen murders — and the authorities of the day, using the forensic technology they possessed, confirmed nine of them. Thus, by the most common legal definition of serial killing, Holmes was a serial killer.

By some estimates, he may have been far more prolific than the legal community could have imagined. His actual body count may well have been more than 200.

He began his life of crime as a swindler, but he soon moved on to more sinister things.

For the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, Holmes opened a three–story "World's Fair" hotel. It was a block long, and it was located a short distance from the fair, an attractive option for out–of–towners.

It was a real house of horrors, though, a maze with dead ends, rooms with no windows, stairs that went nowhere, doors that could be opened only from the outside. Holmes' victims — and, of the ones who have been confirmed, many were women who worked for him in his hotel or the other commercial ventures in the building, but there may also have been several who were in town strictly to visit the fair — never had a chance.

Holmes wanted it that way. He was the only one who fully understood how his hotel was designed because he kept changing builders. It kept suspicion down and tongues from wagging.

Holmes, too, had been a medical student. He apparently dissected many of the bodies and sold parts to medical schools through the connections he had established when he was younger. Thus, getting rid of the evidence was ridiculously easy.

After the fair concluded, Holmes left Chicago. He resurfaced for a time in this part of the country and tried to build a hotel in Fort Worth that was similar to the one he had in Chicago, but he gave up on that and wandered around North America for awhile.

Holmes might have gone undetected if not for the fact that he was arrested in St. Louis for a horse swindle. He was bailed out, but, while behind bars, he became friendly with Marion Hedgepeth, a train robber in whom he confided a scheme for faking his own death and having his wife collect on the insurance.

Hedgepeth was promised payment for providing the name of an attorney who would participate in the scheme, but Hedgepeth wasn't paid so he blew the whistle.

And the whole thing unraveled.

The legal system didn't dawdle over things like appeals in those days. Less than two years after his arrest in St. Louis, on May 7, 1896, Holmes was hanged.

He was a little more than a week away from his 35th birthday.

The Sesquicentennial of the Civil War

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It was 150 years ago today that the Civil War began with the Battle of Fort Sumter.

In hindsight, it was probably inevitable that a civil war would occur. There were simply too many issues that had to be resolved — and they had to be resolved before the young nation could begin its maturation process.

The election of Abraham Lincoln as president in November 1860 led to South Carolina's decision to secede on Christmas Eve, and half a dozen Southern states followed in the next six weeks. Four more states seceded after the attack on Fort Sumter.

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Folks have been anticipating this anniversary.

• Mike Litterst of the National Park Service wants people to know that what will take place today and over the course of the next four years, as the 150th anniversaries of everything that happened during that time are observed, are "commemoration[s], not celebration[s]," writes Jay Clarke in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
  
  I guess it's crucial to make that distinction in today's politically charged, politically correct atmosphere.


• It could be a little hard to discern, given the somewhat romanticized approaches that have been taken to the anniversary of the first battle of the war by outfits like MSNBC and NPR.


• The Americans of 1861 had been anticipating the start of hostilities for some time, but they had no idea, as I wrote a few months ago, what their future held.
  
  If they had, I rather suspect they would have made more of an effort to avoid the whole thing.

There really was very little that the Americans of the mid–19th century knew, to be honest about it.

Southerners knew who their general was going to be — Robert E. Lee — but he was seen as old and not necessarily in touch with developments in modern warfare — kind of the John McCain of his day.

In the heat of battle, though, Lee won the respect of his men and the confidence of the Confederacy. To this day, he is admired and remembered for both his military knowledge and his integrity. He could have been the general of the Union forces — Lincoln wanted him — but he declined, choosing to fight for his home state of Virginia, even though he disagreed with its decision to secede.

Well, that's been the official story for quite some time now. But, as Elizabeth Brown Pryor wrote in American Heritage in 2008, it may have been a lot more complicated than that.

Lincoln went through several generals before deciding on Ulysses S. Grant to lead the Union forces. In the course of that journey, Lincoln relieved the man who would run against him in 1864, George McClellan.

Frustrated with McClellan's rather plodding approach to warfare, Lincoln, in what may be my favorite example of his unique wit, said to his general, "If you don't want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for awhile."

Grant had served in the Army during the Mexican–American War, then abruptly resigned in 1854; several biographers have written that Grant had been drunk off duty and had been told by his commanding officer to resign or face a court–martial. He was not in the service when the Civil War began on this date in 1861, but he re–enlisted shortly thereafter.

Initially assigned to recruiting and training, he performed so well he was rewarded with a field command and eventually given command of the entire Union army.

As America pauses, from time to time, in the next few years to re–examine that pivotal period in the 19th century, I hope we will re–examine the people who fought in it and their reasons for doing so.