Written Word

The Upcoming Book Release —

Autopsy of a Massacre

National Guard troops indiscriminately begin firing into a crowd on Friday night, March 28, 1884. Thousands of citizens pack the streets in angry protest against a broken judicial system. The guardsmen are supposed to bring order. Instead, they treat their fellow Americans like a foreign foe, rapidly escalating the violence. By Sunday, this will be the largest massacre committed by the National Guard in the nation’s history.

It should cause the nation to scrutinize how we use armed soldiers to respond to social unrest. Instead, the truth is re-written for political reasons; and a young, ambitious lawyer named William Howard Taft grandstands on the carnage, crippling a professional nemesis and catapulting his career into national politics. In the aftermath, despite a mountain of facts to the contrary, the victims are blamed, many dismissed as unruly immigrants. This helps normalize the use of deadly military force against unarmed strikers and protestors. By lionizing the National Guard troops and commanders, the lessons that should have been learned from the massacre are inverted, helping pave the way for the future murder of civilians by improperly commanded guardsmen in Pullman, Illinois in 1894, at Kent State in 1970 – and possibly on the streets of a modern America city in the near future.

This story is not a demonization of the National Guard. It is a real time breakdown of how failures in leadership, toxically divisive politics, personal enmity between rich and powerful men, and an irresponsibly polarized press corps all play a role in producing one of the deadliest, most misunderstood, and largely forgotten tragedies in American history. More importantly, the events of March 1884 have terrifying modern parallels.

After over a decade of extensive research, Autopsy of a Massacre is a fully written manuscript looking for the right publisher. Contact Michael D. Morgan for a full proposal. 

Much of Autopsy of a Massacre has been converted to podcast form, delivered by hosts Michael and Amy Morgan, produced by Dan Phenicie. You can read about the show and episode summaries on the Podcast page, and you can listen to “Truth Deferred: The National Guard Massacre” on whatever platform you listen to podcasts. SUBSCRIBE NOW!

 

Writing Samples Include:

      Books:   

  • Tanked In Cincinnati: Fortune & Calamity In The Beer Business (History Press 2024)Tanked CoverCoverOTRBookCover
  • Cincinnati Beer (History Press 2019)
  • Over-the-Rhine: When Beer Was King (History Press 2010)

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