The Lake Gun

{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.}
The Seneca is remarkable for its Wandering Jew, and the Lake Gun. The first is a tree so balanced that when its roots are clear of the bottom it floats with its broken and pointed trunk a few feet above the surface of the water, driving before the winds, or following in the course of the currents. At times, the Wandering Jew is seen off Jefferson, near the head of this beautiful sheet; and next it will appear anchored, as it might be, in the shallow water near the outlet.