Tales, Traditions and Romance of Border and Revolutionary Times
1863
Tales, Traditions and Romance of Border and Revolutionary Times
1863
Written in the shadow of the Civil War, when Americans were grappling with the meaning of their founding, Edward S. Ellis crafted this vivid collection of frontier and revolutionary narratives for readers hungry for tales of the country's rougher origins. The book blends documented history with the legends that had already grown up around figures like Simon Kenton, the legendary Kentucky frontiersman whose hair-raising encounters with Native Americans read like pure adventure yet carry the weight of real survival. Ellis writes with the Romantics' love of the heroic individual: the settler defending his cabin against impossible odds, the prisoner escaping through wilderness, the scout whose wit and woodcraft outmatch larger forces. These are not dry historical accounts but living traditions, stories passed down around frontier firesides and now preserved for a nation in crisis. The prose crackles with the particular energy of 1863, when the frontier was still recent memory and the Revolutionary generation still felt close. For readers who want history told as story, with all the danger, daring, and moral clarity that implies.
