— I respected the officer and assumed he would also respect me.

This was not just the assassination of the President; it was the death of hopes and dreams.

Since retiring to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Joel Stegall has completed a family history dating from the early Colonial Era. Longer (and more interesting) than any scholarly work he ever wrote, he was pleased to find in his bloodline literary ability, ingenuity, inventiveness, devotion to duty, self-sacrifice and uncommon love. At the same time, he was taken aback to discover insanity, murder, suicide and cattle rustling.