The epic life story of a schoolteacher and preacher in Missouri,
guerrilla fighter in the Civil War, Congressman, freethinking
lecturer and author, and anarchist. A former Methodist preacher and
Missouri schoolteacher, John R. Kelso served as a Union Army foot
soldier, cavalry officer, guerrilla fighter, and spy. Kelso became
driven by revenge after pro-Southern neighbors stole his property,
burned down his house, and drove his family and friends from their
homes. He vowed to kill twenty-five Confederates with his own hands
and, often disguised as a rebel, proceeded to track and kill
unsuspecting victims with "wild delight." The newspapers of the day
reported on his feats of derring-do, as the Union hailed him as a
hero and Confederate sympathizers called him a monster. Teacher,
Preacher, Soldier, Spy: The Civil Wars of John R. Kelso is an
account of an extraordinary nineteenth-century American life.
During Reconstruction, Kelso served in the House of Representatives
and was one of the first to call for the impeachment of President
Andrew Johnson. Personal tragedy then drove him west, where he
became a freethinking lecturer and author, an atheist, a
spiritualist, and, before his death in 1891, an anarchist. Kelso
was also a strong-willed son, a passionate husband, and a loving
and grieving father. The Civil War remained central to his life,
challenging his notions of manhood and honor, his ideals of liberty
and equality, and his beliefs about politics, religion, morality,
and human nature. Throughout his life, too, he fought private
wars-not only against former friends and alienated family members,
rebellious students and disaffected church congregations, political
opponents and religious critics, but also against the warring
impulses in his own character. In Christopher Grasso's hands,
Kelso's life story offers a unique vantage on dimensions of
nineteenth-century American culture that are usually treated
separately: religious revivalism and political anarchism; sex,
divorce, and Civil War battles; freethinking and the Wild West. A
complex figure and passionate, contradictory, and prolific writer,
John R. Kelso here receives a full telling of his life for the
first time.
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