Unfortunately, Peary was the kind of guy even his biographers describe as "the most unpleasant man in the annals of polar exploration." His plan was to leave Henson behind before he reached the actual Pole proper, so he could get sole credit, and he wasn't mightily happy when Henson accidentally foiled the plot. Luckily (for him), Peary had a major ace in the hole: Henson was a black guy in an age when just inviting a black person to dine at the White House was enough to make the entire country lose its collective shit, so there was no goddamn way Henson would end up sharing a rostrum with Peary -- a fact that Peary exploited to great effect by hogging roughly all the glory available on the Northern hemisphere.
E. J. Reilly
He wore white tie 24/7.
For his role in finding the Pole, Peary received an Admiral's rank in the U.S. Navy, was awarded the Hubbard Medal, got invited to the White House, and lived the rest of his life on an 8,000-dollar-a-year pension. This is all on top of making the front page of every major newspaper and becoming a household name like Lewis & Clark. Henson, on the other hand, would receive little recognition among the general public until he was awarded a posthumous Hubbard Medal from the National Geographic society in freaking 2000.
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