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Although Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in April, 1865,
some Confederates refused to abandon their cause. Fallen Guidon,
originally published in 1962 by Jack Rittenhouse's Stagecoach Press
in 1962, is the gripping story of one such group of men who, rather
than surrender, boldly decided to follow their cavalry flag or
guidon south and transplant their imperialistic vision in the
troubled soil of Mexico. This little-remembered episode of the
Trans-Mississippi Civil War was written as a popular history by the
late Edwin Adams Davis, a respected scholar of southern and Civil
War history. General Jo Shelby had led the Missouri Cavalry
Division through battles at Westport, Mine Creek, Newtonia, and
elsewhere. Shelby's men were all recruits rather than draftees,
fiercely loyal, and they followed the code of chivalry to a degree
unusual even in the old South. While preparing to march against the
Federals at Little Rock, they heard of Lee's surrender. In a
meeting at Marshall, Texas, Shelby announced, We will stand
together, we will keep our organization, our arms, our discipline,
our hatred of oppression . . . that this Missouri Cavalry Division
preferred exile to submission--death to dishonor. Having heard that
the U.S. government wanted the Habsburg emperor Maximilian out of
Mexico and that Lincoln liked the idea of ex-Confederates joining
forces with Benito Juarez to oust Maximilian and his French
military forces, Shelby formed his plan. Shelby believed he had
found a way to save their honor and at the same time spread their
lost southern empire to a new land, where riches and glory surely
awaited them. Shelby and his men marched through Texas, stopping in
Corsicana, Tyler, Waxahachie, Waco, Austin, Houston, and San
Antonio, declaring martial law and forcibly quelling local
outbreaks of looting and rioting where they found it. At the Rio
Grande, in a funereal memorial, they buried their Confederate
battle flag in the murky waters before heading into Mexico.
Shelby's men did not want to support Benito Juarez's liberal
guerrillas, however. Identifying themselves as imperialists, they
wanted to fight gloriously for Emperor Maximilian. In pitched
battles against the local Juaristas and isolated guerrillas and
bandits, they spilled blood from Piedras Negras to Mexico City and
even undertook the chivalrous and bloody rescue of a woman
imprisoned in a hacienda. Once in Mexico City, Shelby's Iron
Brigade discovered its march to have been futile, and in a
bittersweet final review, Shelby said good-bye.
In The Barber of Natchez, Edwin Adams Davis and William Ransom
Hogan tell the remarkable story of William Johnson, a slave who
rose to freedom, business success, and high community standing in
the heart of the South, all before 1850. Emancipated as a young boy
in 1820, Johnson became a barber's apprentice and later opened
several profitable barber shops of his own. As his wealth grew, he
expanded into real estate and acquired large tracts of nearby farm
and timber land. The authors explore in detail Johnson's family,
work, and social life, including his friendships with people of
both races. They also examine his wanton murder and the resulting
trial of the man accused of shooting him. More than the story of
one individual, the narrative also offers compelling insight into
the southern code of honor, the apprentice system, and the
ownership of slaves by free blacks. Based on Johnson's
two-thousand-page diary, letters, and business records, this
extraordinary biography reveals the complicated life of a freedman
in Mississippi and a new perspective on antebellum Natchez.
The discovery in 1938 of the diary and personal papers of William
Johnson (ca. 1809-1851), a free Negro of Natchez, Mississippi, made
possible the publication of this fascinating volume. Johnson's
diary offers a firsthand account of a former slave who rose from
harsh circumstances to become a successful businessman. It is also
an intimate portrait of life and social relations in a southern
town in the years leading up to the Civil War. A barber by trade,
Johnson was also a landlord, moneylender, slave owner, and small
farmer, and despite his colour he became a prominent,
well-respected citizen of Natchez. Johnson kept a ledger on the
various aspects of his thriving businesses, and in this ledger he
also recorded his impressions of the daily occurrences of life
around him. ""I am always ready for Anything,"" reads one of his
entries for 1845. This dictum is borne out in his acutely observed
accounts of births and deaths, weddings and elopements, political
campaigns and conventions, races and cockfights, concerts and
trials, balls and epidemics, all related with a naive yet
passionate curiosity and with the private frankness of a man of
colour denied a public outlet for his opinions. In a vividly
colloquial voice, Johnson set down the whole of the Natchez scene
for sixteen years. No other southern diary provides such a broad
picture of numerous aspects of everyday life or reveals so many of
the well-to-do free Negro's attitudes on timely questions. It is
one of the most remarkable documents in American historiography.
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