1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910155075903321

Autore

Lewis Ronald L. <1940-, >

Titolo

The Industrialist and the Mountaineer [[electronic resource] ] : The Eastham-Thompson Feud and the Struggle for West Virginia's Timber Frontier / / Ronald L. Lewis

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Morgantown, [West Virginia] : , : West Virginia University Press, , 2017

©2017

ISBN

1-943665-52-4

1-943665-53-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (313 pages) : illustrations, maps

Collana

West Virginia & Appalachia

Classificazione

HIS036040POL013000NAT038000

Disciplina

331.09

Soggetti

NATURE / Natural Resources

POLITICAL SCIENCE / Labor & Industrial Relations

HISTORY / United States / 19th Century

Trials (Murder) - West Virginia

Electronic books.

West Virginia History 19th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

The incorporation of West Virginia -- Modernizing the law -- Robert W. Eastham, the early years -- Eastham in West Virginia -- Who were the Thompsons? -- Setting the stage for trouble -- The struggle for control -- The shoot-out and "Lawyers by the dozen" -- Jury selection and the appeal -- On trial for murder.

Sommario/riassunto

"In 1897 a small landholder named Robert Eastham shot and killed timber magnate Frank Thompson in Tucker County, West Virginia, leading to a sensational trial that highlighted a clash between local traditions and modernizing forces. Ronald L. Lewis's book uses this largely forgotten episode as a window into contests over political, environmental, and legal change in turn-of-the-century Appalachia"--

"In 1897 a small landholder named Robert Eastham shot and killed timber magnate Frank Thompson in Tucker County, West Virginia, leading to a sensational trial that highlighted a clash between local traditions and modernizing forces. Ronald L. Lewis's book uses this



largely forgotten episode as a window into contests over political, environmental, and legal change in turn-of-the-century Appalachia.  The Eastham-Thompson feud pitted a former Confederate against a member of the new business elite who was, as a northern Republican, his cultural and political opposite. For Lewis, their clash was one flashpoint in a larger phenomenon central to US history in the second half of the nineteenth century: the often violent imposition of new commercial and legal regimes over holdout areas stretching from Appalachia to the trans-Missouri West. Taking a ground-level view of these so-called "wars of incorporation," Lewis's powerful microhistory shows just how strongly local communities guarded traditional relationships to natural resources. Modernizers sought to convict Eastham of murder, but juries drawn from the traditionalist population refused to comply. Although the resisters won the courtroom battle, the modernizers eventually won the war for control of the state's timber frontier"--