Author Description

One of the elements that makes this book so interesting is the author. John L. McConnel and his father were colleagues of Abraham Lincoln in Illinois. They knew him and lived the pioneer life in that state.John studied law, fought in the Mexican-American War (twice wounded), and raised a family in Jacksonville, Illinois.He turned his perceptive and analytic mind to the human condition in this and two other books. He was obviously interested in what makes people tick and he wrote of various western "types" in a very engaging way.From pioneers to Indians to "regulators," John McConnel was a keen observer and articulate writer of the world he knew in the early West.Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of the expansion that changed the country forever.