In March 1856, a dead body washed onto the shore of the Mississippi
River. Nothing out of the ordinary. In those days, people fished corpses
from the river with alarming frequency. But this body, with its arms and
legs tied to a chair, struck an especially eerie chord. The body
belonged to a man who had been a passenger on the luxurious steamboat
known as the Ohio Belle, and he was the son of a southern planter. Who
had bound and pitched this wealthy man into the river? Why? As reports
of the killing spread, one newspaper shuddered, "The details are truly
awful and well calculated to cause a thrill of horror."
Drawing on eyewitness accounts, Murder on the Ohio Belle uncovers the
mysterious circumstances behind the bloodshed. A northern vessel
captured by secessionists, sailing the border between slave and free
states at the edge of the frontier, the Ohio Belle navigated the
confluence of nineteenth-century America's greatest tensions. Stuart W.
Sanders dives into the history of this remarkable steamer-a story of
double murders, secret identities, and hasty getaways-and reveals the
bloody roots of antebellum honor culture, classism, and vigilante
justice.