John R. Spears

This narrative history provides the reader with a fascinating account of the Mississippi Valley during the period of foreign control. Beginning with the discovery of the Mississippi River by De Soto of Spain in 1541, the reader is taken on a journey which describes the achievements of the men who traversed the Great Lakes in birch bark canoes or walked through the passes of the Alleghenies to reach the Mississippi Valley, and once there transformed the wilderness into "the Garden of the World." Some of the interesting topics covered include: First Exploration of the Mississippi, La Salle and Louisiana, Indians of the Mississippi Valley, Work of the French in the Valley, the French Expelled from the Valley, the Spanish in the Great Valley, Washington's First Battle, Pontiac's War, Cumberland Gap Named, Kentucky Purchased from the Iroquois, Lord Dunmore's War, On the Frontier During the Revolution, the Work of George Rogers Clark, Gnadenhutten, Frontiersmen at King's Mountain, and Frontier Home and Civil Life in War Time. This work has remarkable illustrations of period relevant landscapes and portraits. In addition, there is a vast assortment of early maps for this region. An index to names, places and subjects completes this work.(1903, 2002), 2016, 51/2x81/2, paper, index, 568 pp

"The American Slave-Trade" is a 1900 work by John R. Spears that examines in great detail the origin, growth, and ending of the slave trade from its very beginning in 1619 to the hanging of the last slaver in 1862. Contents include: "The Trade in the Earliest Days", "Old-time Slaver Captains and Their Ships", "When Voyages Went Awry", "The Slaver and her Outfit", "On the Slave Coast", "The Middle Passage", "The Slavers' Profit", "Slaver Legislation in the American Colonies", "The Early Work for Extirpation", etc. John Randolph Spears (1850-1936) was an American journalist and author. Other notable works by this author include: "The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn" (1895), "The Port of Missing Ships and Other Stories of the Sea" (1896), and "The History of Our Navy from its Origin to the Present Day" (1897-1899). Read & Co. History is republishing this historic work now in a new addition complete with the original text and artwork and introductory poems by Thomas Campbell, Sidney Lanier and Coleridge.