CONTRECOUP FRACTURES

When I wrote The Almanac Trial I questioned the testimony of one of the witnesses, a Doctor Charles Parker. I just didn’t see how what he said could be true, and I let my skepticism show through. Because I’m now writing a book discussing all of Lincoln’s murder trials, I have revisited the Almanac Trial, and discovered that Parker’s testimony was not wholly without substance. The victim, Pres Metzker, died from two blows to the head, one to the front and one to the back, either one being sufficient to kill him. The blow to the front of the head hit his eye and drove part of the skull into the brain. Metzker got into two skirmishes the night he was fatally injured, the first skirmish being with Lincoln’s client Duff Armstrong. Armstrong hit Metzker a mighty blow in the face, which the prosecution blamed for the broken bones in Metzker’s face. Armstrong said he used his fist, the prosecution said he used a slungshot. Later that evening James H. Norris bushwhacked Metzker, striking him in the back of the head with a neck yoke—which would be the equivalent of hitting him with a baseball bat.

Lincoln wanted to blame the murder completely on Norris, and to do so, he had to have some evidence that Metzker’s face was broken by something other than Armstrong’s fist or slungshot. Enter Dr. Parker. Dr. Parker testified that the fracture to Metzker’s face could be a contrecoup fracture—something I had never heard of. I thought he was trying to blow smoke on the jury with some fast talk, and trying to transform a contrecoup brain injury into a fracture.

I’m now going to try to explain contrecoup brain injury, and it’s going to sound nothing like what you’d hear if a brain surgeon described it for you: The brain floats in a cavity filled with liquid. When something hits the head hard enough, the skull moves toward the brain and the brain hits the skull. The injury caused by the brain striking the skull where the blunt object hits it on the outside is called a coup trauma. Now, the brain acts like a rubber ball. It compresses, and then bounces across the skull cavity and hits the skull on the opposite side of the head. The injury caused when the brain hits the opposite side of the head is called a contrecoup trauma. You see a lot of that type of injury in severe child abuse cases and child murders. It seemed ridiculous to me to think that the brain would bounce across the skull cavity and hit the opposite side of the skull hard enough to cause a fracture.

Researching this second book, I decided to dig deeper into the issue and was surprised to learn that there actually is an injury to the skull called a contrecoup fracture, and it happens in the fragile orbital bones around the eyes. Maybe Doctor Parker wasn’t blowing smoke after all. I dug deeper, and this is what I learned (once again, my description is NOT going to be given with medical precision): If a large enough area of the back of the head is hit hard enough, it won’t break, but the force of the blow will be transferred through the skull to the front where it will break the orbital bones. It’s kind of like the karate guy who lays five board one on top of the other, hits them, and breaks only the bottom board.

Doctor Parker’s explanation for Metzker’s facial fracture was less unlikely than I thought it was, but there were still some problems with it:

1] The trauma to the back of the head has to cover a large enough area to keep the skull from breaking. If the skull breaks and caves into the braincase, the energy is dissipated in the back of the head and won’t transfer to the front. A neck yoke isn’t likely to cause a contrecoup fracture. Parker tried to remedy this by suggesting that Metzker could have fallen off his horse while riding home.

2] Contrecoup fractures are rare. Rare enough to call into question Doctor Parker’s testimony that he had treated three contrecoup fractures in his practice. An E.R. doctor in a large metropolitan area, maybe; a prairie doctor on a sparsely populated frontier, not likely.

3] Contrecoup fractures are never compressed. It’s against the laws of physics. the force is going in one direction, the broken bones are not going to swim against the tide of the blow and penetrate the brain going in the other direction. In Metzker’s eye injury, the broken bones were driven into the skull; therefore the eye injury was not a contrecoup fracture.

PETER CARTWRIGHT--THE BACKWOODS PREACHER

The killing which led to the prosecution of Duff Armstrong in the Almanac Trial occurred just outside a camp meeting held at a place which is sometimes called Walnut Grove. The grove, which also went by other names, was a 400 acre stand of trees along the Salt Creek in rural Illinois not far from Springfield. The camp meeting was a 19th century American phenomenon somewhat analogous to the early 20th century tent revival. It was a multi-day revival meeting, but it was held under the open sky. People came to the meeting in wagons, circled the wagons around the meeting ground, and camped for the duration of the meeting. The attendees needs were supplied by suttlers who camped on the outskirts of the camps. Some of these suttlers sold alcohol, and some of the worshippers overindulged. This led to such disturbances at the camp meeting that the Illinois legislature passed a law requiring that alcoholic beverages could not be sold within a mile of a camp meeting.

Purveyors of alcohol set up camps a mile distance from the camp meeting, and in addition to attracting thirsty worshippers it attracted riffraff. There would be gambling, horse racing, brawling, and other scandalous behavior at the whiskey camps. The commotion at the whiskey camps would sometimes spill over into the camp meetings. The campers responded to this by either forming security teams of armed men to keep order arranging for a law enforcement presence at the meetings. It was during such a brawl at the whiskey camp outside the Salt Creek meeting grounds that Preston Metzker, the Almanac Trial victim, received his fatal injuries.

There was one revivalist who, in his youth, was not averse to leaving his pulpit to fight with those who would disturb his sermons. This preacher was Peter Cartwright, one of the most famous of the camp meeting evangelists and a bitter political enemy of Abraham Lincoln. The two men argued before Lincoln entered politics, and they opposed each other the first time Lincoln ran for office (Cartwright won the election). Afterward, Cartwright opposed Lincoln every time Lincoln ran for office. During Lincoln’s presidency, however, Cartwright defended him against criticism.

 

Signed Frontispiece of Peter Cartwright's Autobiography

 

Cartwright was a towering figure in Illinois religion and politics. When I was in Illinois searching for the scene of the camp meeting, I saw a historical marker which showed the way to Cartwright’s grave. It was down a side road from the one I was traveling, and I resolved that when I returned down that same road to Springfield where I was staying I would visit his grave. I missed the sign on the return trip and consequently didn’t see the actual grave.

Cartwright was the featured speaker at the camp meeting where Metzker got killed, and there is a small amount of evidence that Metzker and Armstrong actually attended one of Cartwright’s sermons. As I said, the evidence for this is small. It is also weak. If Metzker and Armstrong did hear Cartwright speak, it is unfortunate that they did not heed his message. You might say that their refusal to repent was one of the few failures at the camp meeting, which the organizer declared to have been very successful.

As I said earlier, Cartwright went from bitter enemy of Lincoln the politician to defender of Lincoln the president. This may be attributed to the fact that after Lincoln lost his bid for the Senate, he defended Cartwright’s grandson on a charge of murder and got him off. How Lincoln accomplished this feat is a story in itself and will be dealt with at length in a future post.

If you are interested in learning more about Peter Cartwright, you can obtain a free copy of The Autobiography of Peter Cartwright: The Backwoods Preacher at the Internet Archive.