Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT, CLICK HERE
PART SIX: The sixth surviving Fool Killer Letter. (See Part One for an explanation.)
September 11th was the publication date but the “letter” was dated August, 1877. Location: “Sitting on somebody’s gate post, I don’t know where.”
This Fool Killer Letter, one of the precious few to have survived, surfaced in 1975 and had originally been syndicated in 1877 in the Oxford, NC publication called The Torchlight. Previously Balladeer’s Blog covered how the darkly satirical adventures of Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans’ fictional Fool Killer were syndicated not just in Evans’ Milton Chronicle but in other newspapers throughout North Carolina and Virginia at least.
For the first time in the surviving letters the homicidal vigilante has no idea what location he’s writing from in his “correspondence” with Editor Charles Evans. Jesse Holmes (as the wandering murderer claimed to be his real name) was uncharacteristically downbeat in the opening lines. He confessed to being close to despair and contemplated returning to his hidden cave to hibernate again for several years, like he had from roughly 1861/2 to 1870.
The Fool Killer complained that for every fool he slew with his club/ walking stick/ cudgel or his set of Bowie knives (each blade inscribed with the words “Fool Killer”) three more fools sprang up to take their place. He said that fools were as plentiful as grains of sand on the beach.
Jesse especially reviled the idiots who thought themselves intellectually superior to the rest of the citizenry and the deceitful, hypocritical and villainous malefactors who abused their positions as politicians, clergy and teachers. The timelessness of the Fool Killer Letters always makes me wonder why they are so neglected.
Holmes’ body count in this letter started off with assorted nouveau riche snobs of the Gilded Age, whom he condemned as would-be aristocrats. The Fool Killer struck down these formerly poor people who became wealthy and then put on airs, snubbing friends and relations who were not as well off and forbidding their daughters to even be seen dancing with “mechanics” (the term used in the actual 1877 letter).
Our “hero” disparaged the beaver-fur top hats worn by at least one of his nouveau riche victims. Hey, “Fur Kills” even in 1877 I guess!
Moving on to Jesse’s other killings confessed to in this letter: Continue reading
PART FIVE: The fifth surviving Fool Killer Letter. (See Part One for an explanation.)
This letter has Jesse Holmes claim he is waking up from a nap begun AFTER the Civil War ended. Previous letters had the Fool Killer begin his hibernation in 1861 or 1862, motivated by disgust at the fools who brought on the Civil War. Under that initial timeline Holmes emerged from his hibernation around 1870, dressed in up to date men’s fashion, to resume his killing spree by preying on Ku Klux Klansmen and northern Carpetbaggers alike.
We’ll probably never know and may be giving it more thought than Charles Evans himself did. So, on to the murders that the Fool Killer confesses to in this letter.
And the hits! Keep! Coming! President Donald Trump, the new FDR, JFK, Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt, continues his destruction of the Democrats’ delicate “narratives.” Despite the way privileged white Democrats try to paint him as anti-Hispanic, the polls that Democrats live by now show at least 50% of Hispanic voters have a favorable impression of him. He continues to make similar inroads into the black vote AND he has more female senior advisors than Obama, Bush and Clinton did!
LA DAME DE MONSOREAU (1846) – A collaboration with Auguste Maquet. The title refers to the beautiful and fascinating Countess Diana de Monsoreau and her illicit romance with the novel’s male lead, Louis de Clermont de Bussy d’Amboise. Both characters are real but naturally Dumas and Maquet take the usual poetic license accorded to historical fiction. 
GEORGES (1843) – Published just one year before The Three Musketeers, this novel is not only a rollicking adventure full of action, romance and double-crosses but it deals with racial issues in such a way that you would have thought it would have been adapted for film four or five decades ago. The title character uses his sword to fight slavery!
In the spirit of Balladeer’s Blog’s irreverent, tongue-in-cheek looks at the pros and cons of U.S. Presidents and Vice Presidents here’s another post for the upcoming Presidents Day three-day weekend.
HILLARY CLINTON (Lost to President Donald Trump)
Pro: Her childish refusal to address her own supporters the night Donald Trump utterly humiliated her provided a look at how truly petty, shallow and classless she is.
The three-day President’s Day holiday weekend is fast approaching. 
JOHN F KENNEDY
President’s Day is coming up in 8 days so here’s yet another seasonal post. It’s one of my random takes on one of our Presidents. Or in this case just one aspect of one of our Presidents.
With President’s Day coming here’s a look at some of the men and women who proved pivotal to the administrations of the Presidents of the United States. Many of those Secretaries may not be household names here in the 21st Century but they would definitely stand out on any staff. Here is an examination of sixteen such figures in chronological order. Figures like James G Blaine, William Seward, and Henry Kissinger are so well-known that they are not included on this list.
2. HENRY CLAY (1825-1829)
3. JOHN FORSYTH (1834-1841)
TRAIL OF TEARS: Democrat President Andrew Jackson openly ignored a Supreme Court decision and subjected Native Americans to the hardships and large-scale deaths in forcibly moving them along what became infamous as the Trail of Tears.
SLAVERY: Anyone who knows American history knows that the Democrats fought to preserve and extend their beloved “Peculiar Institution” of slavery just as obstinately as they fight today to preserve and extend Islam’s Gender Apartheid and their beloved Peculiar Institution of Sharia Law.
THE DRED SCOTT DECISION: In the years leading up to the Civil War DEMOCRAT Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger B Taney was responsible for the Dred Scott Decision which claimed that African-Americans were not people and therefore had no rights. Democrats still blame the rest of us for this outrage, too.
JIM CROW: Democrats used every underhanded legislative and judiciary trick their bigoted minds could come up with to keep violating the rights of African-Americans. They did this for a century, then gave into the inevitable and embraced the long-active Civil Rights Movement.