The Confessions of Edward Isham

by Bolton, Charles C.; Bolton, Charles C.; Culclasure, Scott P.; Isham, Edward; Culclasure, Scott P.

• ISBN13: 9780820320731
• ISBN10: 0820320730
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

This compelling collection of original documents and current scholarship sheds considerable light on the underside of the poor white experience in the antebellum South. In 1859, the Georgian Edward Isham, convicted in North Carolina of murdering a Piedmont farmer, dictated his life story to his court-appointed defense attorney. The autobiography left behind provides a rare look at the world of poor whites from the viewpoint of a member of this most elusive of the Old South's social groups. A selection of essays accompanying the autobiography examines the meaning of the document from a variety of perspectives: crime, frontier life, gender relations, labor, and the genre of nineteenth-century confessional literature.

Author Biography

Charles C. Bolton is an associate professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. Scott P. Culclasure is an international baccalaureate coordinator for the Guildford County, North Carolina, schools.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction	xv
J. William Harris
Autobiography of Edward Isham, Alias ``Hardaway Bone''	1	(18)
Edward Isham and Poor White Labor in the Old South	19	(13)
Charles C. Bolton
A Stereoscopic View of the Frontier: George Swain, Edward Isham, and the Resettlement of the Cherokee Country	32	(13)
David H. Kleit
``I Have Killed a Damned Dog'': Murder by a Poor White in the Antebellum South	45	(26)
Scott P. Culclasure
Edward Isham and Criminal Justice for the Poor White in Antebellum North Carolina	71	(14)
Scott P. Culclasure
Mothers, Lovers, and Wives: Images of Poor White Women in Edward Isham's Autobiography	85	(16)
Victoria E. Bynum
The Worlds of Nineteenth-Century Condemned Men	101	(16)
Joseph P. Reidy
Appendix A: Maps	117	(4)
Appendix B: Superior Court Judge Robert R. Health's Statement of the Case State v. Hardaway Bone	121	(7)
Appendix C: Newspaper Accounts Relating to Edward Isham	128	(5)
Notes	133	(52)
Contributors	185	(2)
Index	187