Home > Authors > Gregg Cantrell > Kenneth and John B. Rayner and the limits of southern dissent
Kenneth and John B. Rayner and the limits of southern dissent
In this story of two nineteenth-century southern political mavericks, Gregg Cantrell details their fate as dissenters. The two mavericks were the slaveholding congressman and planter Kenneth Rayner of North Carolina and his illegitimate mulatto son, John B. Rayner of Texas. Born in 1808, Kenneth served in the North Carolina legislature for twenty years and in Congress for six as a Whig. In 1854 he became a major leader of the American (Know-Nothing) party. His staunch Unionism and a willingness to cooperate with Republicans incurred the wrath of his fellow southerners. After supporting secession, working for a peace settlement during the war, writing a biography of Andrew Johnson, and going broke in a cotton-planting venture, he joined the Republican parry and held federal offices in the Grant, Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur administrations. Kenneth Rayner's son, John, was born in 1850....
See on goodreads | librarything
