Murder and Madness: The Myth of the Kentucky Tragedy (Topics in Kentucky History) Review

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Murder and Madness: The Myth of the Kentucky Tragedy (Topics in Kentucky History) ReviewThe "Kentucky Tragedy" --the 1825 alleged "honor killing" of Kentucky Attorney General Solomon P. Sharp by Jereboam O. Beauchamp for the debauching of Beauchamp's wife, the former Anna Cooke, before their marriage, coupled with the subsequent suicide of Anna and judicial hanging of Jereboam, has long been a burr under the saddle of Kentucky and Southern historians. Most writers of both fiction and nonfiction who have attempted to relate and interpret the tale have concluded that the whole sordid affair is explainable and understandable under the horrible old Code of Southern Honor or "Fool's Code," as it was some time later nicknamed. In this book, Matthew Schoenbachler has done Kentucky history a great service by exploding the "honor" myth, not only by the exhaustive use of reference material contemporary to the murder and hanging, but with the keen application of interpretive principles. Herein he argues that Jereboam and Anna more or less let themselves be drawn into an imaginary world created by their respective literary influences, on Anna's part the writings of Mary Wollestonecraft and the English "seduction novels" of the late eighteenth century, and for Jereboam the anti-heroic protagonists of so many of Lord Byron's poems. Sharp's murder by Beauchamp was not so much the result of a desire for revenge on the part of Anna Beauchamp for the stillborn illegitimate child she had "laid to" the attorney as it was enraged retribution for the suggestion, most likely made by one of Sharp's political supporters, that Anna's child was bi-racial. And in the end, Beauchamp's written "Confession" was nowhere so near an honest and forthright account of events as it was a romantic literary creation of both Jereboam and Anna, based on a bizarre combination of Lord Byron and seduction novels and originally intended (or at least hoped by the couple, if only they could find a publisher in time) to provide a groundswell of popular support for an executive pardon for the condemned man. Modern readers cannot help thinking of the manipulation of truth regularly practiced in reality television shows even though the Beauchamps' escapades antedated television by a hundred and twenty years or so, and perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is humankind's tendency (seemingly throughout history) to try to manipulate truth in this fashion.Murder and Madness: The Myth of the Kentucky Tragedy (Topics in Kentucky History) OverviewThe "Kentucky Tragedy" was early America's best known true crime story. In 1825, Jereboam O. Beauchamp assassinated Kentucky attorney general Solomon P. Sharp. The murder, trial, conviction, and execution of the killer, as well as the suicide of his wife, Anna Cooke Beauchamp -- fascinated Americans. The episode became the basis of dozens of novels and plays composed by some of the country's most esteemed literary talents, among them Edgar Allan Poe and William Gilmore Simms. In Murder and Madness, Matthew G. Schoenbachler peels away two centuries of myth to provide a more accurate account of the murder. Schoenbachler also reveals how Jereboam and Anna Beauchamp shaped the meaning and memory of the event by manipulating romantic ideals at the heart of early American society. Concocting a story in which Solomon Sharp had seduced and abandoned Anna, the couple transformed a sordid murder -- committed because the Beauchamps believed Sharp to be spreading a rumor that Anna had had an affair with a family slave -- into a maudlin tale of feminine virtue assailed, honor asserted, and a young rebel's revenge. Murder and Madness reveals the true story behind the murder and demonstrates enduring influence of Romanticism in early America.

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