Sign-In
Cart
Pen of Fire: John Moncure Daniel
Hardcover
Biographies GeneralLiterary Figures
Publisher Price: $28.00
ISBN13: 9780873387361
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Published: Oct 8 2002
Pages: 296
Weight: 1.35
Height: 0.98 Width: 6.16 Depth: 9.74
Language: English
During his short and stormy life, John Moncure Daniel served as U.S. diplomat, journalist, Confederate officer, and conscience of the Confederacy. Strongly pro-slavery, fiercely loyal to the Confederacy, and an outspoken opponent of Jefferson Davis, Daniel made many enemies and fought as many as nine duels. Douglas Southall Freeman called him a strange blend of genius and misanthropy.
John Daniel became a leading Richmond editor and a force in the Democratic party by his early twenties. President Franklin Pierce rewarded Daniel for his support in the 1852 campaign by making him American envoy to the kingdom of Sardinia at Turin. There Daniel weathered serious scandals but won high praise for his reporting on Italy's unification. Daniel returned to Richmond after South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860.
Resuming editorship of the Examiner, he pushed successfully for the secession of Virginia (leaving the paper twice to serve as a Confederate officer) and attacked Jefferson Davis as timid, incompetent, and corrupt. Wounded in 1864 in a duel with the Treasurer of the Confederacy, Daniel died in Richmond in March 1865, at age 39, just days before Union troops took the city.
This fascinating first biography of Daniel incorporates much new research, including correspondence between foreign ministers in Turin and their envoys in Washington and a series of private letters between John Daniel and his great uncle Peter Vivian Daniel of the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Secretary of War John Floyd, and others. Pen of Fire fills a gap in general American historiography, in published works dealing with nineteenth-century American diplomacy, and in studies of the Civil War.
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Toby Byron (ED.)
Pete Welding (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Kinney, David
Wittman, Robert K.
Paperback
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII
Warnicke, Retha M.
Paperback
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Hardcover
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
Gift of Power: The Life and Teachings of a Lakota Medicine Man
Erdoes, Richard
Lame Deer, Chief Archie Fire
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
Kuehn, Christine
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
Through Mom's Eyes: Simple Wisdom from Mothers Who Raised Extraordinary Humans
Jones, Sheinelle
Hardcover