The Last Fire-Eater

“How diehard Rebels reinvented themselves as Americans after Appomattox is the inquiry that animates Link’s impressive biography of southern rights politician and Confederate soldier Roger Pryor. In the 1850s, Pryor was quick to duel when offended, and when the war came, he was just as quick in drawing his sword against the Yankees. Yet Pryor had no trouble in making peace with defeat. After the war he moved to New York City, where he became a prosperous lawyer and befriended former enemies, including General Sherman. As Link explores the twists and turns of Pryor’s political odyssey, he demonstrates that southern identity was neither static nor singular, but fluid and multilayered.” ~Peter S. Carmichael, author of The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies

“Link’s latest book is a deeply compelling portrait of one of the greatest chimeras of the Civil War era. Pryor was as slippery as an eel, as cunning as a fox, and The Last Fire-Eater shows us how with a little money, a little charm, a little brains, and a smarter wife, a white man in the era could get away with anything—even and especially treason. We need more books like this.” ~Stephen W. Berry II, author of All That Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South

“What concerns Link is not the life story of the antebellum Virginia fire-eater turned postbellum New York City proponent of national reconciliation, but the circumstances that brought about this transformation. . . . Pryor embraced the peculiar southern conception of honor, tied to defending one's ‘manliness’ against personal insults to the point of violence, particularly through duels, in which Pryor occasionally participated. This view led Pryor and other secessionists to see northern efforts to prevent the expansion of slavery outside the South as an insult to white southerners, which thus required them to withdraw—violently, if necessary—from the Union.” ~Journal of Southern History