Library Lunacy, Indeed, So Many Books, So Little Time

"The Rest I Will Kill," is a true historic account of one of the first so called hero's of the Civil War states the books author, Brian McGinty.

McGinty is an attorney and writer who specializes in American history and law. McGinty  claims that recorded history, most of it was done by rulers, mostly fools and knaves. Knaves is another word for scoundrels or unprincipled people, you know, government!

"The Rest I Will Kill" is the brief history about William Tillman, a 29-year-old free black man in 1861, who was from the north.

Tillman killed three white men aboard the S.J. schooner Waring wooden ship, and justified the killings in a white court of law, and was deemed not guilty.

Tillman was employed by Jonas Smith, a wealthy white ship owner of the S.J. Waring. Tillman was a cook and steward on the Waring. In July of 1861, ocean prowlers, pirates of the confederate south captured the crew and the Waring.

The ocean prowlers bragged how they were going to take Tillman back to one of the southern states to become a slave. Tillman hid a hatched when the pirates first took over the ship and less then ten days later took a hatched to three of the captors in their sleep, and while still barley alive, Tillman threw them over board into the Atlantic ocean, hundreds of miles away from Georgia and South Carolina. With the aide of a German, William Stedding, Tillman was able to bound the other pirates, and with no navigation experience, and sail the Waring back the New York.

There are only portrait drawings of Tillman, and after he was freed, he got married and vanished from history. Reading this book, I learned that slavery in the south was much more lucrative then the north because the southern states tend to have more months of warmer weather which was good for crops, thus the need or greed for slaves. In the north, only about three months were good for cropping, so northerners deemed it not profitable to harbor slaves for nine months  out of the year without cropping.

What may have also lead to the not guilty verdict for Tillman was the fact that the Waring itself along with its cargo was worth more than $100,000, serious money in 1861.

William Tillman

Amazing how some people still call the Civil War a conflict, to me a conflict is when a wife wants to see the movie "Shoot 'Em Up" staring Clive Olson and the husband wants to watch the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes." A conflict that leaves more than 600,000 people dead sounds like a war to me, and not so civil.

This is another book I have no rating for, you be the judge if you decide to read it, I'm glad I read this book which was released on June 27.