Editorial Wild Oats : Edward Ward Carmack and Tennessee politics
Controversial Ned Carmack embodied the very image of Mark Twain's fictional Tennessee editor who sowed “editorial wild oats” with pistol at the ready. Yet Carmack's true story, told by a master of Tennessee history, is more fascinating than any fiction. Carmack emerged from rural poverty to become a crusading editor, a Congressman and U.S. Senator, and to die in a gunfight in Nashville in 1908. His life-and his death-shaped Tennessee politics for a generation.