Street gangs were rampant in the 1850s and nowhere more than Baltimore. Tracy Melton has gone back to the newspapers, court records and every conceivable original source to recreate this colorful period. Some of it is violent and grisly, but the reader also gets descriptions of clothing and everyday life of gang members, etc. And finally we have the spectacle of four men on the gallows in the jail yard (a yard still visible from I-83 North off Center Street) singing a farewell song to an enormous crowd of spectators on a blustery cold, gray April day. All appeals exhausted, 15,000 people on the surrounding hills, like an amphitheater.

Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore's Plug Uglies, 1854-1860

Tracy Matthew Melton

Maryland Historical Society

From his humble office at the Baltimore Court of Common Pleas, Isaac Freeman Rasin ran the city and built an envialbe fortune. This is narrative history at its best, packed with action, colorful detail and ruthless men. Melton traces how a political boss and his associates gained power-and held it-in a city noted for political violence. Rasin now takes his place beside New York's Boss Tweed and George Washington Plunkett as one of the truly memorable big-city bosses.

Old Man Rasin: Boss Politics in Gilded Age Baltimore, 1867-1907

History

Americas

Chesapeake Book Company

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Tracy Matthew Melton. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Tracy Matthew Melton

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Tracy Matthew Melton. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore's Plug Uglies, 1854-1860

Old Man Rasin: Boss Politics in Gilded Age Baltimore, 1867-1907