Edge of the sword : the ordeal of carpetbagger Marshall H. Twitchell in the Civil War and Reconstruction / Ted Tunnell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tunnell, Ted.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Twitchell, Marshall Harvey.

United States. Army. Vermont Brigade, 1st (1861-1865).

United States. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.

Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)--Louisiana.

Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877).

Politicians.

Louisiana.

Politicians--Louisiana--Biography.

Louisiana--Politics and government--1865-1950.

Politics and government.

United States. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands--Officials and employees--Biography.

United States.

United States. Army. Vermont Brigade, 1st (1861-1865)--Biography.

Townshend (Vt.)--Biography.

Townshend (Vt.).

Red River Parish (La.)--Biography.

Red River Parish (La.).

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xvi, 326 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2001]

Summary:

In this superb 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.

Stamped by the Puritan work ethic as a boy in Vermont, Twitchell entered the elite Vermont Brigade in 1861 and fought in most of the important battles of the Virginia theater, including the Peninsula campaign, Gettysburg, and the Battle of the Wilderness, where he suffered a terrible head wound. He recovered and in 1864 became a captain in the United States Colored Troops, serving in that post until after Appomattox.

In the fall of 1865, Twitchell began his controversial postwar career as a Freedmen's Bureau agent in northwest Louisiana. He married a local planter's daughter, convinced his extended family to move from Vermont to his new home at Starlight Plantation on the upper Red River, and built a "Yankee colony" in the heartland of the Democratic South. In the mid-1870s, when north Louisiana became a battleground between Republicans and Southern Redeemers, the well-respected Twitchell and his family became prime targets of the notorious White League.

Tunnell's account of Twitchell's life-and-death struggle with the White League has more gut-wrenching suspense than many novels. The League murdered Twitchell's brother and three brothers-in-law, and his sisters fell victim to disease and stress. Twitchell himself lost both arms to an assassin's bullets, and his land and property were expropriated. Indeed, of the nine members of the Twitchell clan who settled in Louisiana, only Twitchell and his mother survived. Yet this indomitable man endured to become the American consul in Canada, where he lived peacefully until his death in 1905.

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. Edifying and entertaining, Edge of the Sword is biography at its best.

Contents:

1 Vermont 8

2 The Vermont Brigade 21

3 The Virginia Peninsula 37

4 First Sergeant 59

5 Valley of the Shadow 72

6 A Troubled Beginning in Sparta, Louisiana 92

7 Marshall and Adele 109

8 Rough and Tumble Politics, 1867-1869 119

9 The Father of Red River Parish 138

10 Death and Hard Times 169

11 The Knife to the Hilt 184

12 Twitchell under Siege 211

13 The Stranger in the Green Eye Goggles 232

14 Condemning the Victim 251

15 The Last Battles of Coushatta 272

16 Kingston 292.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [308]-318) and index.

ISBN:

0807126594

OCLC:

45248175