Let's Talk About Hoaxes
First, let's talk a bit about Jonathan R. Davis. While there is no known photo of him, we know that he did serve as a Second Lieutenant with the United States Volunteers Palmetto Regiment. While not a part of the Regular U.S. Army, he did serve in the U.S. Volunteers for a little over a year and a half from December 1846 to July 1848. Yes, he served a little over a year-and-a-half, during the Mexican–American War, and he was a participant at the Battle of Churubusco.
While online websites have his rank listed as "Honorary Captain" with the United States Volunteers Palmetto Regiment, there is no record of him being an "Honorary Captain." In fact, the official records of the United States Volunteers Palmetto Regiment list his rank upon discharge as a "Second Lieutenant," the same rank that he entered the unit.
Was Capt. Jonathan R. Davis's story of his epic battle against a gang of 11 killers a hoax?
Looking at the news reports of the time, 1854 and 1855, we can see that within days of its first report, more and more newspapers started to proclaim the story a hoax. And yes, my friends, there is a very good reason to ask whether the Davis story was a hoax or not, a reason that had nothing to do with the story itself. It had to do with newspaper hoaxes back in the day. Yes, what we call "fake news" today was printed as common practice in the 1800s.
Believe it or not, creating "fake news," entirely fabricated information designed to disseminate deceptive content, or grossly distort actual news reports, has been around for longer than most people today realize. Selling fake news to deliberately misinform or deceive readers to influence people’s views, push a political agenda, cause confusion, increase anxiety, create panic and chaos, or benefit someone is not new.
Even back in the 1800s, humbug, a sell, a hoax, was a way to use fake news stories to deceive people by appearing as authentic, trusted reporting, from reputable news organizations. And by the 1850s, as was the case throughout the 1800s, false news stories, fake stories that were not true, newspaper hoaxes, news stories that seemed too far-fetched for anyone to believe, were routinely published. It was simply a common practice at the time to take some stories with a grain of salt.
Why would the news media back in the day do such a thing? Well, like today, they can call it what they want, but it's all about making money. Friends, it wasn't surprising when the Democratic Party controlled news media, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, and a slew of Democrat-controlled newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post saw their viewership and readership climb when they were peddling the Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax from 2016 to 2020. They ran with it and threw gas on the fire whenever possible to keep it going, because it made them a lot of money.
Back in the 1800s, when print media was King, in most cases, the hoaxes were started and perpetrated by competing publications that competed for readership. They used sensational stories and fabricated accounts to increase circulation, which meant making more money. Hoaxes made newspapers a lot of money because they sold more papers and got more advertisers.
There were fake claims of local riots and lynchings that never happened, mob justice, arsonists, bandits who were caught and hanged but weren't, as well as people being shot to death who weren't. In a lot of the archived newspapers that I research, I find a lot of fake articles about fires, robberies, and more, including their retractions.
Of course, there were huge hoaxes, hoaxes on a national scale, like The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 where The New York Sun published a series of articles claiming that an astronomer had discovered life on the moon, including blue goats and bat-like creatures and The Balloon Hoax of 1944, where The New York Sun ran a story about a balloon that was supposed to go from London to Paris but was blown off course and ended up in South Carolina -- which made it a successful transatlantic crossing in a balloon. As with The Great Moon Hoax, those stories were national news and had a lot of people believing them. And while the articles were revealed to be hoaxes fairly quickly, they created a lot of excitement. Of course, as with the way things are today, people have to learn that not all news stories are true.
For me, because the news media cannot be trusted 100%, I keep that in mind all the time while researching period newspapers. It's important to keep in mind that some newspapers did, in fact, consciously print hoaxes and sell them to the public while trying to pass them off as true. Other newspapers published biased news stories that are just as bad.
A great example of an extremely biased and totally untrustworthy newspaper is The Tombstone Epitaph. The way they reported events in the early 1880s in Tombstone, while obviously throwing their full weight of support behind Wyatt Earp and his men during what became known as the "Earp Vendetta," bordered on dishonesty.
If you don't think so, read some of the Arizona newspapers that didn't have a vested interest in attacking Tombstone's cowboy faction while trying to justify the actions of the Earps. Then compare that to what The Tombstone Epitaph was putting out as impartial journalism, and you'll see what I'm talking about. That's why it's important to read and compare stories to ferret out the truth.
One of my favorite 1800s hoaxes is The Calaveras Skull Hoax of 1866 because it took place here in Calaveras County near where I live. The hoax started when a couple of miners found a human skull buried inside a mine. A mining engineer who was an amateur archaeologist identified it as dating back to the Pliocene Age.
That would have made it a huge find in the Scientific world since it would have made that skull the oldest known record of human existence in North America. But then its authenticity was challenged, and a debate dragged on. Later, the skull was determined to be a fake. As for who was responsible for the hoax? Well, it's believed the miners who found the skull also planted it. It's believed they got it from an Indian burial site and planted it to play a practical joke on that mining engineer.
Then there's The Global Warming Hoax of 1874, where in February of 1874, the Kansas City Times ran a story claiming that Scientists had discovered that the transatlantic telegraph cables were acting like enormous electromagnets. The story used the names of scientists and engineers to fool people into believing that the transatlantic telegraph cables were acting like enormous electromagnets and pulling the Earth into the Sun. Their claims were wild, baseless conjecture, all a fraud to make money, but some people believed it hook-line-and-sinker.
Yes, people back then believed their claim that "Europe would become tropical in 12 years, that the poles were melting, and the entire earth would be uninhabitable because of Global Warming." Sound familiar? It should, since the Global Warming Hoax of 1874, like other hoaxes, it's ability to scare people senseless has been used over and over again in different ways, Yes, including doing what most bonco artists would do and give it a different name. For example, remember when Global Warming became "Climate Change" because con artists knew people are gullible enough to bite at the same hook more than once if all you use is different bait.
By the way, what became known as "The Balloon Hoax of 1944" was written by Edgar Allan Poe. Later, Mark Twain would do the same thing during his 21-month career as a reporter for the Virginia City, Nevada, Territorial Enterprise (1862-64), where he produced a series of hoaxes. Of course, neither Poe nor Twain can hold a candle to the late 1800s hoaxer Joseph Mulhattan who was notorious for repeatedly succeeding in having his far-fetched tales reported in newspapers.
Joseph Mulhattan was so good at what he did, that reporters would often assume it was Mulhattan whenever they heard someone had reported an outrageous or faked story. While some newspapers called him "Munchausen Mulhattan," other newspapers of the time are known to have called him a "Professional liar," and "The author of more hoaxes than any other man living." At least one newspaper called him "The liar-laureate of the world."
From what I can tell, most newspapers in 1854 and 1855 had overwhelmingly decided that Jonathan R. Davis was a fraud. Most newspapers didn't have a vested interest in the now-famous epic battle. They just reported what was on the wire and attached their disclaimers in the preface or at the end of their reports.
I think that was the case for The Mountain Democrat. Because they ran with it, their credibility was on the line. Though they seemed to have almost doubled down on their support for Davis, they did call him "Baron Munch" in the end. So while no one knows for sure, I don't know if the Editor for The Mountain Democrat saw himself as an unwitting accomplice in the hoax -- and didn't want to admit to that for the sake of credibility, or if he was a part of it.
Some of you have voiced your opinion, saying that The Mountain Democrat's Editor may have realized that people were seeing his newspaper as being easily taken in by hoaxers. Some of you have put it a lot more bluntly and have told me, "The Mountain Democrat knowingly published the Davis hoax to increase circulation." Whatever the case, I believe it was a no-win situation for The Mountain Democrat.
And yes, besides other newspapers starting to call The Mountain Democrat's credibility into question, the public was also asking if The Mountain Democrat had something to do with promoting what they were perceiving as a hoax by then. Remember, by the end of April 1855, the story of such an epic battle more or less died for lack of interest and believability.
So yes, even back in the 1800s, there were reasons why Americans had to be suspicious of stories that sounded too much like fake news. And let's be frank, the Davis 11 on 1 gun battle that turned into a 4 on 1 knife fight was way over the top for most people in the West.
It might have seemed completely reasonable to someone back East at the time who was reading Dime Novels of heroes accomplishing all sorts of incredible deeds against 100 to 1 odds. But for the people who lived in the West, people who lived in the frontier-towns and the mining camps, to the people who were part of the local Citizens Committee, those were people who knew what it was to be shot at or be the victim of armed robbery, they knew of the bandits and the badmen and the lynchings to stop such vermin. To those people, to the people who understood how dumb it would be for anyone to say that his hat was shot 17 times in such a fight for his life, the Davis story had too many holes in it to be believable.
Why would the public think the Davis story was a hoax? Basically, they thought it was a hoax for all of the same reasons that many of you have written to me to say that you believe the Davis story is just a hoax. For all the same reasons that most of you think Davis was a fraud. The whole story has more holes in it than Davis's supposedly shot-up hat.
Coming up -- Part Five
Tom Correa
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