Description
Book SynopsisProvides a comprehensive account of the brief life and exploits of John Yates Beall, a Confederate soldier, naval officer, and guerrilla in the Chesapeake Bay and Great Lakes region. Though little remembered today, Beall was a legendary figure in the Civil War South.
Trade ReviewThe events recounted here provide the makings of a good spy novel: conspirators hoping to free rebel prisoners of war near the Canadian border, terrorists burning New York hotels, bandits robbing banks in Vermont, and pirates raiding a U.S. warship on Lake Erie by drugging the crew with tainted wine. Yet, this is not the stuff of racy fiction: these incidents happened. Through the story of John Yates Beall—one of the men behind Confederate terrorist plots in the upper North—William C. Harris acquaints us with one of the lesser-known areas of irregular warfare during America's Civil War." - William A. Blair, author of
With Malice toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era"John Yates Beall's story is a fascinating Civil War tale, and no one tells it better than Harris, who enlightens us about just how significant a character Beall was for the Confederate war effort. With a deft pen and using colorful detail, Harris creates a luminous portrait that brings to life one of the war's most daring crusaders who ranks with Morgan and Mosby but who died on the gallows for his exploits." - Stephen D. Engle, author of
Gathering to Save a Nation: Lincoln and the Union's War Governors"Few southern rebels earned the wartime infamy of privateer John Yates Beall, whose clandestine attempts to liberate Confederate prisoners from Johnson's Island resulted in his late-war execution. In this gripping account, one of the Civil War's most careful and prolific historians pulls back the veil on the 'terror of the Chesapeake and Lake Erie.'" - Brian Matthew Jordan, Pulitzer Prize finalist for
Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War and coeditor of
The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans"John Yates Beall—planter, naval officer, privateer, and commando—finally gets his due in this thoughtfully written biography by acclaimed historian William C. Harris. As the Civil War proved, the South was full of determined people, and Beall, who died on the gallows for spreading the war to the North, was not (as friends said) 'one of the giving up kind.'" - Terry Alford, author of
Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth
