Full Title: "A History of The Detection, Conviction, Life and Designs of John A. Murel, The Great Western Land Pirate"Description: "The Making of the Modern Law: Trials, 1600-1926" collection provides descriptions of the major trials from over 300 years, with official trial documents, unofficially published accounts of the trials, briefs and arguments and more. Readers can delve into sensational trials as well as those precedent-setting trials associated with key constitutional and historical issues and discover, including the Amistad Slavery case, the Dred Scott case and Scopes "monkey" trial."Trials" provides unfiltered narrative into the lives of the trial participants as well as everyday people, providing an unparalleled source for the historical study of sex, gender, class, marriage and divorce.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++MonographNew York City BarCincinnati: Published For The Purchaser, c.1840

Virgil A. Stewart happened to be in the right place at the right time. In January 1834, he offered to help a friend in Madison County, Tennessee track down two missing slaves who were believed to have been stolen by a local thief named John A. Murrell. Posing as a man looking for a lost horse, Stewart won Murrell's confidence over the course of several days and the thief shared with him stories of his exploits and revealed various criminal acts he had committed, including robbery, slave stealing, and murder. Murrell also admitted to being the leader of a vast criminal empire with one thousand members-some of whom were well-respected men in their communities-known as the Mystic Clan of the Confederacy. He wanted to convince slaves across the South to rise up against their masters on Christmas night in 1835, during which time Murrell and his clan would rob on a grand scale. History of the Detection, Conviction, Life and Designs of John A. Murrel, the Great Western Land Pirate...To Which is Added a Biographical Sketch of Mr. Virgil A. Stewart was first published in 1835, and is the primary source for the life, crimes, and legend of John A. Murrell, a man Stewart labeled "the great Western Land Pirate." Stewart transformed a petty thief from Denmark, Tennessee into a criminal mastermind with a network of like-minded rogues that stretched across the Old Southwest.