The history of capitalist development in the United States is long, uneven, and overwhelmingly focused on the North. Macroeconomic studies of the South have primarily emphasized the role of the cotton economy in global trading networks. Until now, few in-depth scholarly works have attempted to explain how capitalism in the South took root and functioned in all of its diverse—and duplicitous—forms. Southern Scoundrels explores the lesser-known aspects of the emergence of capitalism in the region: the shady and unscrupulous peddlers, preachers, slave traders, war profiteers, thieves, and marginal men who seized available opportunities to get ahead and, in doing so, left their mark on the southern economy. Eschewing conventional economic theory, this volume features narrative storytelling as engaging and seductive as the cast of shifty characters under examination. Contributors cover the chronological sweep of the nineteenth-century South, from the antebellum era through the tumultuous and chaotic Civil War years, and into Reconstruction and beyond. The geographic scope is equally broad, with essays encompassing the Chesapeake, South Carolina, the Lower Mississippi Valley, Texas, Missouri, and Appalachia. These essays offer a series of social histories on the nineteenth-century southern economy and the changes wrought by capitalist transformation. Tracing that story through the kinds of oily individuals who made it happen, Southern Scoundrels provides fascinating insights into the region’s hucksters and its history. Contents Introduction, Jeff Forret and Bruce E. Baker “Preachers and Peddlers: Credit and Belief in the Flush Times,” John Lindbeck “A Gentleman and a Scoundrel? Alexander McDonald, Financial Reputation, and Slavery’s Capitalism,” Alexandra J. Finley “‘How Deeply They Weed into the Pockets’: Slave Traders, Bank Speculators, and the Anatomy of a Chesapeake Wildcat, 1840–1843,” Jeff Forret “Bernard Kendig: Orchestrating Fraud in the Market and the Courtroom,” Maria R. Montalvo “William A. Britton v. Benjamin F. Butler: Occupied New Orleans, Confiscation, and the Disruption of the Cotton Trade in Wartime Natchez,” Jeff Strickland “Devils at the Doorstep: Confederate Judges, Masters of Sequestration,” Rodney J. Steward “‘Irresistibly Impelled toward Illegal Appropriation’: The Civil War Schemes of William G. Cheeney,” Jimmy L. Bryan, Jr. “Das Kapital on Tchoupitoulas Street: The Marketing of Stolen Goods and the Reserve Army of Labor in Reconstruction-Era New Orleans,” Bruce E. Baker “The Violent Lives of William Faucett,” Elaine S. Frantz “Eureka! Law and Order for Sale in Gilded Age Appalachia,” T. R. C. Hutton

"Readers will find Brownlow unique, above all, but as entertaining as he is sometimes thrillingly loathsome, full of great energy and rhetorical skill and rambunctiousness in the tradition of the tall tale vernacular writers of the time." -- David Madden, Director of the United States Civil War Center East Tennessee newspaper editor and Methodist preacher William G. "Parson" Brownlow, a man of fervent principles and combative temperament, gained fame during the secession crisis as a staunch, outspoken southern unionist. Unlike most southern unionists, however, Brownlow refused to renounce his loyalty to the Union after the Civil War broke out. He continued to write editorial tirades against the Confederacy until forcibly silenced by southern authorities. Arrested, jailed, and ultimately banished to the North, Brownlow continued his war of words against the Confederacy through speaking tours and through the publication in 1862 of Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession; with a Narrative of Personal Adventures Among the Rebels -- a best-selling but ill-organized hodgepodge of his editorials, speeches, letters, and commentary. Secessionists and Other Scoundrels, a collection of selected excerpts from Brownlow's original, offers an accessible and powerful explication of the parson's unionism and a moving narrative of his travails under Confederate rule, without sacrificing the vitriolic prose and scathing wit for which he was celebrated -- and denounced. In these pages the inimitable parson is at his best. By turns sarcastic, angry, high-minded, informative, compassionate, and droll, he forthrightly proclaims his convictions and excoriates his foes. Every sentence exemplifies the motto that adorned the masthead of his newspaper, the Knoxville Whig: "Cry aloud and spare not." In an informative introduction, editor Stephen V. Ash places the excerpts in context by sketching Brownlow's career, summarizing his historical significance, and discussing the history of the book itself. Civil War scholars and enthusiasts will welcome Secessionists and Other Scoundrels as an exciting and entertaining opportunity to be reintroduced to one of the era's most colorful and controversial characters.

Whether it's the rule-defying lifer, the sharp-witted female newshound, or the irascible editor in chief, journalists in popular culture have shaped our views of the press and its role in a free society since mass culture arose over a century ago. Drawing on portrayals of journalists in television, film, radio, novels, comics, plays, and other media, Matthew C. Ehrlich and Joe Saltzman survey how popular media has depicted the profession across time. Their creative use of media artifacts provides thought-provoking forays into such fundamental issues as how pop culture mythologizes and demythologizes key events in journalism history and how it confronts issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation on the job. From Network to The Wire, from Lois Lane to Mikael Blomkvist, Heroes and Scoundrels reveals how portrayals of journalism's relationship to history, professionalism, power, image, and war influence our thinking and the very practice of democracy.

In Saints vs. Scoundrels Dr. Benjamin Wiker invites you to interact not just with the ideas that have shaped history, but with the people who created and spread those ideas. In this collection of lively and imaginative conversations between the great truth-tellers and the great error-peddlers of history, you will come to appreciate the personalities behind the “Great Conversation” that has shaped western civilization. Jean-Jacques Rousseau vs. St. Augustine. Machiavelli vs. St. Francis. Ayn Rand vs. Flannery O’Connor. These people may have never met in real life, but the ideas they represent and the movements they started have interacted throughout history and shaped our present. And so how fascinating would it be if they had ever shared a living room? This is the question Dr. Wiker answers with deep research and dynamic storytelling. Enjoy this unique opportunity to join the conversation!

“Readers will find Brownlow unique, above all, but as entertaining as he is sometimes thrillingly loathsome, full of great energy and rhetorical skill and rambunctiousness in the tradition of the tall tale vernacular writers of the time.”—David Madden, Director of the United States Civil War Center East Tennessee newspaper editor and Methodist preacher William G. “Parson” Brownlow, a man of fervent principles and combative temperament, gained fame during the secession crisis as a staunch, outspoken southern unionist. Unlike most southern unionists, however, Brownlow refused to renounce his loyalty to the Union after the Civil War broke out. He continued to write editorial tirades against the Confederacy until forcibly silenced by southern authorities. Arrested, jailed, and ultimately banished to the North, Brownlow continued his war of words against the Confederacy through speaking tours and through the publication in 1862 of Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession; with a Narrative of Personal Adventures Among the Rebels—a best-selling but ill-organized hodgepodge of his editorials, speeches, letters, and commentary. Secessionists and Other Scoundrels, a collection of selected excerpts from Brownlow’s original, offers an accessible and powerful explication of the parson’s unionism and a moving narrative of his travails under Confederate rule, without sacrificing the vitriolic prose and scathing wit for which he was celebrated—and denounced. In these pages the inimitable parson is at his best. By turns sarcastic, angry, high-minded, informative, compassionate, and droll, he forthrightly proclaims his convictions and excoriates his foes. Every sentence exemplifies the motto that adorned the masthead of his newspaper, the Knoxville Whig: “Cry aloud and spare not.” In an informative introduction, editor Stephen V. Ash places the excerpts in context by sketching Brownlow’s career, summarizing his historical significance, and discussing the history of the book itself. Civil War scholars and enthusiasts will welcome Secessionists and Other Scoundrels as an exciting and entertaining opportunity to be reintroduced to one of the era’s most colorful and controversial characters.

The journal seems to contain information for everyone regardless of one's interest...Each page of this almost six hundred page journal is crammed with facts and descriptions. So much of interest is contained in every entry that each re-reading will reveal many interesting incidents or observations not quite grasped on the first perusal....This book will be a valuable source to all students of California or United States history and to the casual readers as well.

These warmly affectionate letters, presented here in their entirety, paint a vivid picture of California in the mid-nineteenth century, describing the new state in all its spectacular beauty."--BOOK JACKET.

"American history buffs will savor this detailed yet accessible roundup of political imbroglios." —Publishers Weekly Political scandals have become an indelible feature of the American political system since the creation of the republic more than two centuries ago. In his previous book, Libertines: American Political Sex Scandals from Alexander Hamilton to Donald Trump, Michael Martinez explored why public figures sometimes take extraordinary risks, sullying their good names, humiliating their families, placing themselves in legal jeopardy, and potentially destroying their political careers as they seek to gratify their sexual desires. In Scoundrels, Martinez examines thirteen of the most famous (or infamous) and not-so-famous political scandals of other sorts in American history, including the Teapot Dome case from the 1920s, the Watergate break-in and cover-up in the 1970s, the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, and Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Combining riveting storytelling with insights into 200 years of American political corruption, Martinez has once again written a book that will enlighten all readers interested in human nature and political history.

Hard Times in an American Workhouse, 1853–1920, is the first comprehensive examination of a workhouse in the United States, offering a critical history of the institution in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Using the Old St. Louis Workhouse as a representative example, award-winning historian Gregg Andrews brings to life individual stories of men and women sentenced to this debtors’ prison to break rocks in the quarry, sew clothing, scrub cell floors and walls, or toil in its brush factory. Most inmates, too poor to pay requisite fines, came through the city’s police courts on charges of vagrancy, drunkenness, disturbing the peace, or violating some other ordinance. The penal system criminalized everything from poverty and unemployment to homelessness and the mere fact of being Black. Workhouses proved overcrowded and inhospitable facilities that housed hardcore felons and young street toughs along with prostitutes, petty thieves, peace disturbers, political dissenters, “levee rats,” adulterers, and those who suffered from alcohol and drug addiction. Officials even funneled the elderly, the mentally disabled, and the physically infirm into the workhouse system. The torture of prisoners in the hellish chambers of the St. Louis Workhouse proved far worse than Charles Dickens’s portrayals of cruelty in the debtors’ prisons of Victorian England. The ordinance that created the St. Louis complex in 1843 banned corporal punishment, but shackles, chains, and the whipping post remained central to the institution’s attempts to impose discipline. Officers also banished more recalcitrant inmates to solitary confinement in the “bull pen,” where they subsisted on little more than bread and water. Andrews traces efforts by critics to reform the workhouse, a political plum in the game of petty ward patronage played by corrupt and capricious judges, jailers, and guards. The best opportunity for lasting change came during the Progressive Era, but the limited contours of progressivism in St. Louis thwarted reformers’ efforts. The defeat of a municipal bond issue in 1920 effectively ended plans to replace the urban industrial workhouse model with a more humane municipal farm system championed by Progressives.