as the highest. In 1855, Thomas Lanier Clingman (1812–1897), a politician and former student of Mitchell's, climbed a summit north of Stepps Gap known as Black Dome (what is now Mount Mitchell) and measured its elevation at . Clingman reported his findings to Joseph Henry, the head of the Smithsonian Institution. Henry, using Guyot's more careful and accurate measurements taken several years earlier, agreed with Clingman that Black Dome was higher (although Guyot noted Clingman's measurement of 6,941 feet was off by 200 feet), and the highest mountain in the Appalachians was to be named for Clingman. When Mitchell learned of Clingman's find, he claimed that the mountain he had measured in 1844 was, in fact, Black Dome, and that locals had mistakenly named the summit to the south (the modern Clingmans Peak) after him. Clingman rejected Mitchell's claim, arguing that the route Mitchell took led south of Stepps Gap (i.e., to what is now Mount Gibbes or Clingmans Peak) and that a broken barometer found by Blackstock on Mount Gibbes in 1845 could only have been Mitchell's. The two bickered back and forth in the local newspapers throughout 1856, each claiming to have been the first to summit and measure the higher Black Dome. The debate was intensified by the political climate of the 1850s, as Mitchell was a Whig supporter and Clingman had recently left the Whig party to join the pro-secession Democrats. Zebulon Vance, a Whig politician and friend of Mitchell's, located the two guides Mitchell had recruited for his 1844 excursion, and when the two described the route they had followed, it appeared that Mitchell had indeed summited Mount Gibbes. Finally, in 1857, Mitchell returned to the Blacks in an attempt to gain still more accurate measurements. One evening, while attempting to reach the Cane River Valley, he slipped and fell into a gorge along Sugar Camp Fork, near the waterfall that now bears his name. His body was found 11 days later by the legendary mountain guide Thomas "Big Tom" Wilson (1825–1909). Mitchell's death sparked an outpouring of public sympathy across North Carolina. Zebulon Vance led a movement to verify Mitchell as the first to summit the highest mountain in the Eastern United States and to have the mountain named for him. Vance convinced several mountain guides to change previous statements and claim the route they had taken actually led to Black Dome, rather than