John A. Murrell lived in Tennessee when Andrew Jackson was president. According to legend, he was an able man who had been raised to be a rascal by his unscrupulous mother. Flogged and imprisoned as a youth, he swore eternal vengeance against the society that had punished him. He became a highwayman and merciless killer, a horse thief, counterfeiter, and slave stealer. He often disguised himself as a clergyman and preached to congregations while confederates stole their horses. He scattered counterfeit money like confetti. This research was undertaken in a skeptical spirit akin to that of Marshall many years ago. This book is about the legend and about what really happened, but only in a secondary sense is its purpose to set the record straight. How was an indifferent thief transformed into a master criminal?

John A. Murrell lived in Tennessee when Andrew Jackson was president. According to legend, he was an able man who had been raised to be a rascal by his unscrupulous mother. Flogged and imprisoned as a youth, he swore eternal vengeance against the society that had punished him. He became a highwayman and merciless killer, a horse thief, counterfeiter, and slave stealer. He often disguised himself as a clergyman and preached to congregations while confederates stole their horses. He scattered counterfeit money like confetti. This research was undertaken in a skeptical spirit akin to that of Marshall many years ago. This book is about the legend and about what really happened, but only in a secondary sense is its purpose to set the record straight. How was an indifferent thief transformed into a master criminal?

The award-winning Beneath the American Renaissance is a classic work on American literature. It immeasurably broadens our knowledge of our most important literary period, as first identified by F.O. Matthiessen's American Renaissance. With its combination of sharp critical insight, engaging observation, and narrative drive, it represents the kind of masterful cultural history for which David Reynolds is known. Here the major works of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Dickinson receive striking, original readings set against the rich backdrop of contemporary popular writing. Now back in print, the volume includes a new foreword by historian Sean Wilentz that reveals the book's impact and influence. A magisterial work of criticism and cultural history, Beneath the American Renaissance will fascinate anyone interested in the genesis of America's most significant literary epoch and the iconic figures who defined it.

Selected as an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Selected as an Outstanding Reference Source by the Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association There are many anthologies of southern literature, but this is the first companion. Neither a survey of masterpieces nor a biographical sourcebook, The Companion to Southern Literature treats every conceivable topic found in southern writing from the pre-Columbian era to the present, referencing specific works of all periods and genres. Top scholars in their fields offer original definitions and examples of the concepts they know best, identifying the themes, burning issues, historical personalities, beloved icons, and common or uncommon stereotypes that have shaped the most significant regional literature in memory. Read the copious offerings straight through in alphabetical order (Ancestor Worship, Blue-Collar Literature, Caves) or skip randomly at whim (Guilt, The Grotesque, William Jefferson Clinton). Whatever approach you take, The Companion’s authority, scope, and variety in tone and interpretation will prove a boon and a delight. Explored here are literary embodiments of the Old South, New South, Solid South, Savage South, Lazy South, and “Sahara of the Bozart.” As up-to-date as grit lit, K Mart fiction, and postmodernism, and as old-fashioned as Puritanism, mules, and the tall tale, these five hundred entries span a reach from Lady to Lesbian Literature. The volume includes an overview of every southern state’s belletristic heritage while making it clear that the southern mind extends beyond geographical boundaries to form an essential component of the American psyche. The South’s lavishly rich literature provides the best means of understanding the region’s deepest nature, and The Companion to Southern Literature will be an invaluable tool for those who take on that exciting challenge. Description of Contents 500 lively, succinct articles on topics ranging from Abolition to Yoknapatawpha 250 contributors, including scholars, writers, and poets 2 tables of contents — alphabetical and subject — and a complete index A separate bibliography for most entries

This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Contents: Introduction Story of the Cowboy Story of the Outlaw Novels & Stories Riders of the Purple Sage Saga (Zane Grey) Ohio River Trilogy Dan Barry Series (Max Brand) The Virginian (Owen Wister) Lin McLean Leatherstocking Series (James F. Cooper) Flying U Series (B. M. Bower) Cabin Fever Rimrock Trail (J. Allan Dunn) Breckinridge Elkins Series (Robert E. Howard) In a Hollow of the Hills (Bret Harte) Roughing It (Mark Twain) Outcasts of Poker Flat Call of the Wild (Jack London) Heart of the West (O. Henry) White Fang Wolf Hunters (James Oliver Curwood) Gold Hunters Last of the Plainsmen Border Legion Smoke Bellew Country Beyond Lone Star Ranger Ronicky Doone Trilogy Riders of the Silences Three Partners Man of the Forest Lure of the Dim Trails Tennessee's Partner Covered Wagon (Emerson Hough) Luck of Roaring Camp Rustlers of Pecos County Pike Bearfield Series O Pioneers! (Willa Cather) My Ántonia Log of a Cowboy (Andy Adams) Two-Gun Man (Charles Alden Seltzer) Short Cut (Jackson Gregory) Astoria (Washington Irving) Ungava (R.M. Ballantyne) Valley of Silent Men Black Jack Whispering Smith (Frank H. Spearman) A Texas Cow Boy (Charles Siringo) Trail Horde Golden Dream (Ballantyne) Blue Hotel (Stephen Crane) Long Shadow Girl from Montana (Grace Livingston Hill) Hidden Children (Robert W. Chambers) Where the Trail Divides Desert Trail (Dane Coolidge) Bride Comes to Yellow Sky Hidden Water...

The history of Jackson is filled with gripping tales of horrors and heroism. Join Ryan Starrett and Josh Foreman as they reveal the hidden past of the City with Soul. A recording company founded in the mid-1960s with the expectation of competing with New Orleans and Memphis was a national success, outlasting its better-funded rivals. Known as the "Devil's Backbone," the Natchez Trace is the graveyard for countless travelers slain by the road's numerous serial killers, brigands and land pirates. Yet one mass grave stands above the others: the Boyd Mounds, which hold the remains of thirty-one Choctaws. Although legend has it that the father of Jackson, Louis LeFleur, was a Canadian trapper famous in high society for his dancing, the truth is even stranger.

Winner, 2020 Booker Worthen Literary Prize During the antebellum years, over 750,000 enslaved people were taken to the Lower Mississippi Valley, where two-thirds of them were sold in the slave markets of New Orleans, Natchez, and Memphis. Those who ended up in Louisiana found themselves in an environment of swamplands, sugar plantations, French-speaking creoles, and the exotic metropolis of New Orleans. Those sold to planters in the newly-opened Mississippi Delta cleared land and cultivated cotton for owners who had moved west to get rich as quickly as possible, driving this labor force to harsh extremes. Like enslaved people all over the South, those in the Lower Mississippi Valley left home at night for clandestine parties or religious meetings, sometimes “laying out” nearby for a few days or weeks. Some of them fled to New Orleans and other southern cities where they could find refuge in the subculture of slaves and free blacks living there, and a few attempted to live permanently free in the swamps and forests of the surrounding area. Fugitives also tried to returnto eastern slave states to rejoin families from whom they had been separated. Some sought freedom on the northern side of the Ohio River; othersfled to Mexico for the same purpose. Fugitivism provides a wealth of new information taken from advertisements, newspaper accounts, and court records. It explains how escapees made use of steamboat transportation, how urban runaways differed from their rural counterparts, how enslaved people were victimized by slave stealers, how conflicts between black fugitives and the white people who tried to capture them encouraged a culture of violence in the South, and how runaway slaves from the Lower Mississippi Valley influenced the abolitionist movement in the North. Readers will discover that along with an end to oppression, freedom-seeking slaves wanted the same opportunities afforded to most Americans.

Mississippi’s foundational epoch—in which the state literally took shape—has for too long remained overlooked and shrouded in misunderstanding. Yet the years between 1798, when the Mississippi Territory was created, and 1840, when the maturing state came into its own as arguably the heart of the antebellum South, was one of remarkable transformation. Beginning as a Native American homeland subject to contested claims by European colonial powers, the state became a thoroughly American entity in the span of little more than a generation. In Old Southwest to Old South: Mississippi, 1798–1840, authors Mike Bunn and Clay Williams tell the story of Mississippi’s founding era in a sweeping narrative that gives these crucial years the attention they deserve. Several key themes, addressing how and why the state developed as it did, rise to the forefront in the book’s pages. These include a veritable list of the major issues in Mississippi history: a sudden influx of American settlers, the harsh saga of Removal, the pivotal role of the institution of slavery, and the consequences of heavy reliance on cotton production. The book bears witness to Mississippi’s birth as the twentieth state in the Union, and it introduces a cast of colorful characters and events that demand further attention from those interested in the state’s past. A story of relevance to all Mississippians, Old Southwest to Old South explains how Mississippi’s early development shaped the state and continues to define it today.

Examining the role of violence in America's past, this collection of essays explores its history and development from slave patrols in the colonial South to gun ownership in the 20th century. The contributors focus not only on individual acts such as domestic violence, murder, duelling, frontier vigilantism and rape, but also on group and state-led acts such as lynchings, slave uprisings, the establishment of rifle clubs, legal sanctions of heterosexual aggression, and invasive medical experiments on women's bodies.