Upheaval in Charleston: Earthquake and Murder on the Eve of Jim Crow Review

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Upheaval in Charleston: Earthquake and Murder on the Eve of Jim Crow ReviewThis is a wonderful historical biography of 344pp that reads like a modern day murder mystery.
The natural disaster refers to the most severe earthquake on the east coast at the time, 8/31/1886 which was centered near Charleston, SC. The disaster story is interwoven with that of editor, Francis "Frank" Dawson, of the South's oldest newspaper in continuous print being the News and Courier, now called the Post and Courier.
When the Civil War, which started in Charleston on 4/20/1861, the population was about 3/5 white, while at the time of the earthquake its population was about 3/5 black. The whites saw the blacks as recipients of government financial and political largesse at their expense. Dawson, tried to play somewhat of the middle ground with his editorials, but in doing so managed to alienate both sides of this debate. However, he was largely responsible for organizing the rebuilding of Charleston in the years immediately following the earthquake. His wife Sarah Morgan Dawson, had worked as a reporter for the paper and had kept an extensive diary of the Civil War which was republished in 1991 as Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary Of A Southern Woman, which is a great book in and of itself.
The sexual part of the story evolves as a neighbor, Thomas McDow, M.D. is smitten with the Dawson's Au pair, Marie Helene Burdayron, and as the photo in the book clearly shows, she was most attractive. The main problem was that McDow was a married man with children and had yet another full time mistress named Julia Smith, a 22yo widow. Just prior to this McDow was accused of grave robbing as an insurance scam, while also asking his brother to kill his wife and father in law so he could inherit some money and marry one of his two mistresses. The murder part comes in as Dawson asks McDow to leave his help alone. The cast of characters and witnesses for the trial of McDow is at least equal to the cast from the recent Casey Anthony trial with two sets of medical experts arguing over whether Dawson was shot in the front or the back and etc.
The book is well documented with 84pp of notes and cites. I don't think you could exactly call this a beach read, but read it wherever you can. And yes, you can't begin to make this stuff up, cause no one would believe it as a work of fiction.Upheaval in Charleston: Earthquake and Murder on the Eve of Jim Crow Overview

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