Thomas Lanier Clingman
Fire Eater from the Carolina Mountains
Title Details
Pages: 472
Illustrations: 6 b&w illus.
Trim size: 6.120in x 9.250in
Formats
Hardcover
Pub Date: 01/01/1999
ISBN: 9-780-8203-2023-6
List Price: $55.95
Thomas Lanier Clingman
Fire Eater from the Carolina Mountains
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- Description
- Reviews
Thomas Lanier Clingman: Fire Eater from the Carolina Mountains is the first book-length biography of one of the most important, colorful, and controversial figures in nineteenth-century American life. A man of enormous intellect and intense ambition whose ultimate goal was nothing less than the presidency, Clingman was a lawyer, entrepreneur, Civil War general, inventor, amateur scientist, explorer, and, as a U.S. congressman and senator, one of the foremost champions of southern rights. Thomas E. Jeffrey's explanation of how a leading advocate of this cause could thrive within an environment where slavery was only a marginal institution provides fresh insights into the political culture of southern Appalachia, the character of the southern rights movement, and the coming of the Civil War.
A superb biography of one of the pivotal figures in southern antebellum politics.
—John Inscoe, author of Mountain Masters: Slavery and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina
This biography is based on prodigious research, particularly in private collections, newspapers, and Clingman's own writings.
—Max Williams, editor of The Papers of William Alexander Graham