Edge of the sword

By Ted Tunnell

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

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.