{This text has been transcribed and annotated by Hugh C. MacDougall,
Founder and Secretary of the James Fenimore Cooper Society
(jfcooper@wpe.com), who welcomes corrections and emendations. The text
has been transcribed as written, except that because of the limitations
of the Gutenberg Project format, italicized words have been transcribed
in FULL CAPITALS.}
{"The Lake Gun" is one of James Fenimore Cooper's very few short
stories, and was written in the last year of his life. It was
commissioned by George E. Wood for publication in a volume of
miscellaneous stories and poems called "The Parthenon" (New York:
George E. Wood, 1850), and Cooper received $100 for it. The story was
reprinted a few years later in a similar volume called "Specimens of
American Literature" (New York, 1866). It was published in book form in
1932 in a slipcased edition limited to 450 copies (New York: William
Farquhar Payson, 1932) with an introduction by Robert F. Spiller.}
{Introductory Note: The "Lake Gun," though based on folklore about
Seneca Lake in Central New York State (the "Wandering Jew" and the
"Lake Gun"), and on a supposed Seneca Indian legend, is in fact
political satire commenting on American political demagogues in
general, and in particular on the then (1850) Whig Senator from New
York State, William Henry Seward (1801-1872), who had served as
Governor of New York (1838-1842) and would later become Secretary of
State (1861-1869) under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson. By 1850 Cooper
feared that unscrupulous political extremists, mobilizing public
opinion behind causes such as abolitionism, were leading America
towards a disastrous Civil War. Cooper probably obtained his local lore
about Seneca Lake while visiting his son Paul, who attended Geneva
College (now Hobart College) on Lake Seneca from 1840-1844.}