The premier secessionist of antebellum Mississippi, John A. Quitman was one of the half-dozen or so most prominent radicals in the entire South. In this full-length biography, Robert E. May takes issue with the recent tendency to portray secessionists as rabble-rousing, maladjusted outsiders bent on the glories of separate nationhood. May reveals Quitman to have been an ambitious but relatively stable insider who reluctantly advocated secession because of a despondency over slavery’s long-range future in the Union and a related conviction that northerners no longer respected southern claims to equality as American citizens. A fervent disciple of South Carolina “radical” John C. Calhoun’s nullification theories, Quitman also gained notoriety as his region’s most strident slavery imperialist. He articulated the case for new slaver territory, participated in the Texas Revolution, won national acclaim as a volunteer general in the Mexican War, and organized a private military—or “filibustering”—expedition with the intent of liberating Cuba from Spanish rule and making the island a new slave state. In 1850, while governor of Mississippi during the California crisis, Quitman wielded his influence in a vain attempt to induce Mississippi secession. Later, in Congress, he marked out an extreme southern position on Kansas. Mississippi’s most vehement “fire-eater,” Quitman played a significant role in the North-South estrangement that led to the American Civil War. The first critical biography of this important figure, May’s study sheds light on such current historical controversies as whether antebellum southerners were peculiarly militaristic or “antibourgeois” and helps illuminate the slave-master relations, mobility, intraregional class and geographic friction, partisan politics, and family customs of the Old South.

Here is history in the grand manner, a powerful narrative peopled with dozens of memorable portraits, telling this important story with skill and relish. Freehling highlights all the key moments on the road to war, including the violence in Bleeding Kansas, Preston Brooks's beating of Charles Sumner in the Senate chambers, the Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and much more. As Freehling shows, the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked a political crisis, but at first most Southerners took a cautious approach, willing to wait and see what Lincoln would do--especially, whether he would take any antagonistic measures against the South. But at this moment, the extreme fringe in the South took charge, first in South Carolina and Mississippi, but then throughout the lower South, sounding the drum roll for secession. Indeed, The Road to Disunion is the first book to fully document how this decided minority of Southern hotspurs took hold of the secessionist issue and, aided by a series of fortuitous events, drove the South out of the Union. Freehling provides compelling profiles of the leaders of this movement--many of them members of the South Carolina elite. Throughout the narrative, he evokes a world of fascinating characters and places as he captures the drama of one of America's most important--and least understood--stories. The long-awaited sequel to the award-winning Secessionists at Bay, which was hailed as "the most important history of the Old South ever published," this volume concludes a major contribution to our understanding of the Civil War. A compelling, vivid portrait of the final years of the antebellum South, The Road to Disunion will stand as an important history of its subject. "This sure-to-be-lasting work--studded with pen portraits and consistently astute in its appraisal of the subtle cultural and geographic variations in the region--adds crucial layers to scholarship on the origins of America's bloodiest conflict." --The Atlantic Monthly "Splendid, painstaking account...and so a work of history reaches into the past to illuminate the present. It is light we need, and we owe Freehling a debt for shedding it." --Washington Post "A masterful, dramatic, breathtakingly detailed narrative." --The Baltimore Sun

Johann Walbrecht, a young Germanic hunter/soldier, is immersed in medical training at Marburg University when he is forced to flee his country after a pistol duel with the son of the region's Baron. It is November 1840 when he boards a ship bound for America. Four months later, John arrives in New Orleans, Louisiana, aboard the slave ship he has worked on keeping the captives alive. He acquires Mississippi riverside land neighboring Joseph Davis (older brother of Jefferson Davis), completes his medical training, and is recruited as an army surgeon during the Mexican War of 1847.

Long-lost letters tell the story of an illegal slave shipment, a desperate Savannah businessman, and the lead-up to the Civil War. In 1858 Savannah businessman Charles Lamar, in violation of U.S. law, organized the shipment of hundreds of Africans on the luxury yacht Wanderer to Jekyll Island, Georgia. The four hundred survivors of the Middle Passage were sold into bondage. This was the first successful documented slave landing in the United States in about four decades, and it shocked a nation already on the path to civil war. Nearly thirty years later, the North American Review published excerpts from thirty of Lamar’s letters, reportedly taken from his letter book, which describe his criminal activities. However, the authenticity of the letters was in doubt until very recently. In the twenty-first century, researcher Jim Jordan found a cache of private papers belonging to Charles Lamar’s father, stored for decades in an attic in New Jersey. Among the documents was Charles Lamar’s letter book—confirming him as the author. The first part of this book recounts the flamboyant and reckless life of Lamar himself, including involvement in southern secession, the slave trade, and a plot to overthrow the government of Cuba. A portrait emerges at odds with Lamar's previous image as a savvy entrepreneur and principled rebel. Instead, we see a man who was often broke and whose volatility sabotaged him at every turn. His involvement in the slave trade was driven more by financial desperation than southern defiance. The second part presents the “Slave-Trader's Letter-Book.” Together with annotations, these seventy long-lost letters shed light on the lead-up to the Civil War from the remarkable perspective of a troubled, and troubling, figure.

This book embodies a desire on the part of the authors to produce a directory of haunted places around the United States that deal with food, drink, and/or accommodations. For the curious traveler, the directory integrates history, adventure, and ghosts—for an extraordinary travel experience, and adventure into the unknown. Dinner and Spirits contains over 500 well-documented listings from 50 states. Go have dinner, or a drink, or perhaps spend a comfortable night in one of the establishments listed herein. The owners of the listed establishments welcome you into a world where you may not need food, drink, or slumbering dreams, but only an open mind to encounter a spirit.