Life as It Is: Or Matters and Things in General

Originally published in 1842, John Will M. Breazeale’s Life as It Is is an insightful—and at times chilling—collection of essays on a variety of subjects relating to life in early East Tennessee. Though little is known about the author, a frontier lawyer and editor of the Tennessee Journal from 1837 to 1838, scholars of the nineteenth-century South, Tennessee historians, and even true crime buffs will find his observations of considerable interest.

The first chapters present a history of Ten...