Edge of the sword

Description:

"In this biography, Ted Tunnell explores the stranger-than-fiction life of Marshall Harvey Twitchell, one of the best-known carpetbaggers in the post-Civil War South. Native New Englander, Union soldier, Louisiana planter and politician, and later American consul in Canada, Twitchell was a colorful, successful man whose experiences illuminate the tumultuous events of the mid-nineteenth century. His story demolishes the dated stereotype of carpetbaggers as unprincipled scoundrels and serves as an excellent overview of the Civil War and Reconstruction.". "In this first full-length study of Twitchell, Tunnell centers his sensational and engaging story in a broad social, cultural, economic, and political context and strikingly bridges the nineteenth century's two climactic events - the Civil War and Reconstruction. His analysis of Twitchell's complex interaction with northwest Louisiana's business elite - especially its pioneering Jewish merchants - is cutting-edge scholarship."--BOOK JACKET.

subjects: Biography,  Officials and employees,  Politicians,  Politics and government,  Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877),  United States,  United States. Army. Vermont Brigade, 1st (1861-1865),  United States. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands,  United states, army, biography,  Politicians, united states,  Louisiana, biography,  United states, history, civil war, 1861-1865,  Reconstruction

People: Marshall Harvey Twitchell

Places: Louisiana,  Red River Parish (La.),  Townshend (Vt.)

Times: 1865-1950