History of Virgil A Stewart, And His Adventure In Capturing And Exposing The Great “Western Land Pirate” And His Gang…

Original cloth with new printed label on spine 12mo, 273[12] pp. [maybe lacking some ad pages, but this may be common for this book]. First Edition. Some staining in margins of first half of book, but not particularly conspicuous, and doesn’t affect text. Top joint just a bit loose. Overall, very good. While Stewart is the subject of the book, the real story is about John A. Murrell (1804-1844), the man he captured, by pretending to join his gang. Stewart brought Murrell in 1834 after the noted “land pirate” spent eight years as a highwayman and horse stealer in the old Southwest. However, Murrell’s particular specialty was Negro stealing. He would entice a slave to run away from his master with promises of freedom, but than sell him to someone else a few counties away. He would than repeat this process until the slave was to well know. Often, when this happened, he would have the slave killed to destroy the evidence. When Stewart brought him in to face trial, he claimed that Murrell was planning a large slave rebellion in the Southwest. While Murrell got ten years for his trouble for Negro stealing, people seemed more concerned about the rebellion talk, and when some minor outbreaks occurred in the summer of 1835, a score of people were hung for it, some of whom claimed they were part of the Murrell gang.