Frederick Demond

[Susan Higginbotham]

I recognize the various problems with the Hanson Hiss story, but I'm not convinced that it was a fraud. Hiss came from a respected Baltimore family, and I just don't see him fabricating an interview when the subject (or the subject's friends) were almost guaranteed to see the piece and could readily deny it. I did a search and found a few other Hiss pieces from the period, and they aren't of the "yellow journalism" variety at all (fox hunting, golf, the Bonapartes in Baltimore, etc.)

I wouldn't be surprised if Hiss did add a little color to his story, but some of the errors probably came about because he was born after the war and was relying on the recollections of others that had become embroidered over the years. It may also be significant that he appears to have suffered from mental illness during the last years of his life; his death in 1907 was supposed by some to be suicide, and he seems to have spent some time in asylums during the early 1900s.