"In this biography, Ted Tunnell explores the stranger-than-fiction life of Marshall Harvey Twitchell, one of the best-known carpetbaggers in the post-Civil War South. Native New Englander, Union soldier, Louisiana planter and politician, and later American consul in Canada, Twitchell was a colorful, successful man whose experiences illuminate the tumultuous events of the mid-nineteenth century.

His story demolishes the dated stereotype of carpetbaggers as unprincipled scoundrels and serves as an excellent overview of the Civil War and Reconstruction.".

"In this first full-length study of Twitchell, Tunnell centers his sensational and engaging story in a broad social, cultural, economic, and political context and strikingly bridges the nineteenth century's two climactic events - the Civil War and Reconstruction. His analysis of Twitchell's complex interaction with northwest Louisiana's business elite - especially its pioneering Jewish merchants - is cutting-edge scholarship."--BOOK JACKET.