THE CONFESSIONS OF EDWARD ISHAM: A POOR WHITE LIFE OF THE OLD SOUTH

EDS. CHARLES C. BOLTON AND SCOTT P. CULCASURE

This is my tentative Amazon review, to be added to and revised. I don't think I am unreasonable in wanting a book to be ready-to-read.

I may revise my initial ranking. The problem upon starting to read the book is that the University of Georgia Press did not provide running heads in the notes so that the reader would know on page 135 notes 3 & 4 are from page 1, that notes 5-10 are on page 2, that notes 11-14 are on page 3, and so on. It will take me a long time to go through the book making it easier to locate footnotes. I want to read the book. I don't want to spend today making it easy to access.

Another problem I see right away is even more serious. The editor has shut down too soon, missing the chance to go on even a couple or three years beyond 1859 to tell some of the rest of the story. Surely it is of some importance that Taylorsville was soon torn apart, so that Waugh and Slimp could not have tied any malefactor up and carried him across state lines for punishment. Waugh's wife and son boldly stood off Union terrorists a little later and Waugh was slaughtered at home still later. Waugh's companion, my cousin Andrew Slimp, died a couple of years after he helped capture Isham (how did he die at 34?) and his executor was the man who murdered Waugh. This gets beyond the story of Edward Isham but surely the story of poor whites and race and division by Lincolnites and Rebels might have been glanced toward. What a precarious year 1859 was!

 

Andrew's brother Frederick: