Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy: The Civil Wars of John R. Kelso Hardcover – September 1, 2021 by Christopher Grasso

Description

Author: Grasso Christopher

Package Dimensions: 37x244x912

Number Of Pages: 544

Release Date: 01-09-2021

Details: Product Description
The epic life story of a schoolteacher and preacher in Missouri, guerrilla fighter in the Civil War, Congressman, freethinking lecturer and author, and anarchist.

A former Methodist preacher and Missouri schoolteacher, John R. Kelso served as a Union Army foot soldier, cavalry officer, guerrilla fighter, and spy. Kelso became driven by revenge after pro-Southern neighbors stole his property, burned down his house, and drove his family and friends from their
homes. He vowed to kill twenty-five Confederates with his own hands and, often disguised as a rebel, proceeded to track and kill unsuspecting victims with “wild delight.” The newspapers of the day reported on his feats of derring-do, as the Union hailed him as a hero and Confederate sympathizers
called him a monster.

Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy: The Civil Wars of John R. Kelso is an account of an extraordinary nineteenth-century American life. During Reconstruction, Kelso served in the House of Representatives and was one of the first to call for the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. Personal tragedy
then drove him west, where he became a freethinking lecturer and author, an atheist, a spiritualist, and, before his death in 1891, an anarchist. Kelso was also a strong-willed son, a passionate husband, and a loving and grieving father. The Civil War remained central to his life, challenging his
notions of manhood and honor, his ideals of liberty and equality, and his beliefs about politics, religion, morality, and human nature. Throughout his life, too, he fought private wars–not only against former friends and alienated family members, rebellious students and disaffected church
congregations, political opponents and religious critics, but also against the warring impulses in his own character.

In Christopher Grasso’s hands, Kelso’s life story offers a unique vantage on dimensions of nineteenth-century American culture that are usually treated separately: religious revivalism and political anarchism; sex, divorce, and Civil War battles; freethinking and the Wild West. A complex figure and
passionate, contradictory, and prolific writer, John R. Kelso here receives a full telling of his life for the first time.

Review
“There’s no question that Mr. Grasso has written the definitive biography of John Russell Kelso. But what are we to make of this unfulfilled life?…Grasso…admits that his subject was not a ‘Great Man’ in the traditional sense, since ‘he never achieved greatness by his exemplary accomplishments or
his historical influence.’ To broaden Kelso’s story, the author takes every opportunity to look beyond the man, with cogent discussions of national political and cultural trends and enlightening digressions on everything from phrenology to dueling. He concludes that Kelso was ‘a representative man
of nineteenth century America,’ personifying ‘modes of character’ such as the Evangelical Christian, Enlightened Critic, Sentimental Hero and Radical Reformer…. Most readers will be drawn to his story not for the archetypes he embodied, but for his amazing wartime exploits and for his striving,
searching, far-from-perfect humanity.” — Gerard Helferich,
Wall Street Journal

“Christopher Grasso has written an extraordinary work of retrieval, discovery, and exhilarating storytelling about a thoroughly American, if also eccentric, Westerner. From a solid Whig to an anarchist and from a Methodist to an atheist, the warrior and preacher John Kelso lived many lives across
the nineteenth century. The granular detail that Grasso uncovers from Kelso’s voluminous writings emerges in a gripping tale of a real man who might otherwise seem a character created by Mark Twain.” — David W. Blight, author of
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

“Equal parts adventure tale and history of ideas,
Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy traces the life of John R. Kelso, ‘a desperate yet determined man up to his neck in the churning waters’ of th