Wicked River

by Lee Sandlin

  Chapter Twelve: A Young Man of Splendid Abilities

  The story of John Murrell was told and retold throughout the nineteenth century, never the same way twice. This version is based mostly on A History of the Detection, Conviction, Life and Designs of John A. Murel, the Great Western Land Pirate (undated pamphlet); The History of Virgil A. Stewart, and His Adventure in Capturing and Exposing the Great “Western Land Pirate” and His Gang (Harper and Brothers, 1836); Proceedings of the Citizens of Madison County, in the State of Mississippi at Livingston, in July 1835, in Relation to the Trial and Punishment of Several Individuals Implicated in a Contemplated Insurrection of the Slaves in That State (undated pamphlet); A Casket of Reminiscences, by Henry Stuart Foote (Chronicle, 1874); A Stray Yankee in Texas, by Philip Paxton (Redfield, 1853); and The Great Western Land Pirate: John A. Murrell in Legend and History, by James Lal Penick Jr. (University of Missouri Press, 1981). The fullest account of the later outbreaks of the Murrell excitement is in American Negro Slave Revolts, by Herbert Aptheker (International Publishers, 1983). I’ve also used American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839); Slavery in the South: First-Hand Accounts of the Antebellum American Southland from Northern and Southern Whites, Negroes, and Foreign Observers, edited by Harvey Wish (Farrar, Straus, 1964); and Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies, edited by John W. Blassingame (Louisiana State University Press, 1977).

  Chapter Thirteen: The Oracles

  The visions troubling Calvin Stowe are recorded in Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Compiled from Her Letters and Journals, by Charles Edward Stowe (Houghton, Mifflin, 1891). The story of Herschel’s telescope and the moon creatures is told in detail in The Moon Hoax, or A Discovery That the Moon Has a Vast Population of Human Beings, by Richard Adams Locke (William Gowans, 1859). The hysteria about Millerism on the Mississippi is described in Streaks of Squatter Life, and Far-West Scenes, by John S. Robb (Carey and Hart, 1847); for general information on Miller, I’ve used God’s Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World, by David L. Rowe (Eerdmans, 2008). For showboats and theatrical boats, I’ve used Struggles and Triumphs, or Forty Years’ Recollections of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself (Warren, Johnson, 1873); Dramatic Life as I Found It: A Record of Personal Experience, with an Account of the Rise and Progress of the Drama in the West and South, by Noah Miller Ludlow (G. I. Jones, 1880); Children of Ol’ Man River: The Life and Times of a Show-Boat Trouper, by Billy Bryant (Furman, 1936); and Showboats: The History of an American Institution, by Philip Graham (University of Texas Press, 1951). For minstrel shows, I’ve relied on “Three Years as a Negro Minstrel,” by Ralph Keeler (Atlantic Monthly, July 1869); Talks, by George Thatcher, the Celebrated Minstrel (Penn Publishing, 1898); Negro Minstrels: A Complete Guide to Negro Minstrelsy, Containing Recitations, Jokes, Crossfires, Conundrums, Riddles, Stump Speeches, Ragtime and Sentimental Songs, by Jack Haverly (Frederick J. Drake, 1902); and the modern history Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America, by Robert C. Toll (Oxford University Press, 1974). James Eads’s salvage operations are described in Road to the Sea: The Story of James B. Eads and the Mississippi River, by Florence Dorsey (Rinehart, 1947). The wreck of the St. Louis levee is described by George Byron Merrick (see chapter 1).

  PART IV: BEHEMOTH

  Chapter Fourteen: The Sky Parlor

  The siege of Vicksburg, like every other event in the Civil War, has been exhaustively documented and analyzed. For the general course of the military campaign, I’ve used Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant and Memoirs of William Tecumseh Sherman (both in the recent Library of America editions) and, in particular, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, by David Porter (Appleton, 1886). For modern tactical and strategic analysis, I’ve used Triumph and Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign, by Terrence J. Winschel (Savas, 1999); and Vicksburg Is the Key: The Struggle for the Mississippi River, by William L. Shea and Terrence J. Winschel (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). The account of the town during the siege is based on My Cave Life in Vicksburg, by Mary Ann Webster Loughborough (Appleton, 1864); A Southern Record: The History of the Third Regiment, Louisiana Infantry, by W. H. Tunnard (privately printed, 1866); “A Child at the Siege of Vicksburg,” by William W. Lord Jr. (Harper’s magazine, 1909); Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861–1868, edited by John Q. Anderson (Louisiana State University Press, 1955); Vicksburg, Southern City Under Siege: William Lovelace Foster’s Letter Describing the Defense and Surrender of the Confederate Fortress on the Mississippi, edited by Kenneth Trist Urquhart (Historic New Orleans Collection, 1980); the memoirs and other testimony collected in the modern anthologies Vicksburg: 47 Days of Siege, edited by A. A. Hoehling (Prentice Hall, 1969), and The Siege of Vicksburg, edited by Richard Wheeler (Crowell, 1978); and the modern history Vicksburg: A People at War, 1860–1865, by Peter F. Walker (University of North Carolina Press, 1960).

  Chapter Fifteen: The Alligator

  The account of the Sultana disaster derives primarily from Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors, by Chester D. Berry (D. D. Thorp, 1892). I’ve also made very heavy use of Disaster on the Mississippi: The Sultana Explosion, April 27, 1865, by Gene Eric Salecker (Naval Institute Press, 1996). I also consulted Cahaba Prison and the Sultana Disaster, by William O. Bryant (University of Alabama Press, 1990); and Andersonville: The Last Depot, by William Marvel (University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

  PART V: THE GOOD AND THE THOUGHTLESS

  Chapter Sixteen: The Last of the Floating Life

  For Twain, I’ve used the Penguin American Library edition of Life on the Mississippi, edited by James M. Cox, which has substantial passages from the manuscript omitted in earlier editions. For James Eads, I’ve used Addresses and Papers of James B. Eads (Slawson, 1884); and Notes Taken in Sixty Years, by Richard Smith Elliott (Studley, 1883). The work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is described in The River We Have Wrought: A History of the Upper Mississippi, by John O. Anfinson (University of Minnesota Press, 2003); and Structures in the Stream: Water, Science, and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, by Todd Shallat (University of Texas Press, 1994).

  INTRODUCTION, PROLOGUE, AND EPILOGUE

  The description and history of the panoramas derive from The Lost Panoramas of the Mississippi, by John Francis McDermott (University of Chicago Press, 1958). John Banvard’s descriptive pamphlet for his panorama is reprinted in Before Mark Twain (see headnote above). Some details of Banvard’s later career are drawn from Pioneer Photographers from the Mississippi to the Continental Divide: A Biographical Dictionary, 1839–1865, by Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn (Stanford University Press, 2005).

  The manhole is north of the intersection of Lincoln and Belmont avenues in Chicago.

  About the Author

  Lee Sandlin is an award-winning essayist and jounalist. His essay “Losing the War” was included in the anthology The New Kings of Nonfiction. He lives in Chicago.

  www.leesandlin.com