This book is a biography of John Howard Payne, a playwright and actor who wrote the famous song 'Home, Sweet Home.' The author uses contemporary letters, previously unpublished, to offer new insights into Payne's early life and career. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

In Indian Justice, Grant Foreman presents John Howard Payne’s first-hand account of the trial of Archilla Smith, a Cherokee charged with the murder of John MacIntosh in the fall of 1839. The Cherokee Supreme Court at Tahlequah (in present-day Oklahoma) found Smith guilty and sentenced him to die. Occurring immediately after the Cherokee Removal to west of the Mississippi River, the trial involved people on both sides of the bitter factional controversies then raging in the Cherokee nation. Payne’s account of this important Indian case first appeared in two installments in the New York Journal of Commerce in 1841. In his foreword to this new edition, Rennard Strickland places the case in historical and contemporary context, exploring the evolution of tribal court systems and Indian justice over the past century and a half.