Journal of the Kentucky-Tennessee American Studies Association /r Pubiiihed by Middle Tenneiiee State Univenity 2 Kentucky-Tennessee American Studies Association CONTENTS "PRIDE 4ND DEPRAVITY" : A PRELIMINARY REEXAhIINATION OF THE BEAUCHAhlP-SHARP AFFAIR J. \V. Cooke LETTERS OF ANN COOK: FACr OR FACTOID? Fred hl. Johnson THE RESPONSE OF PHILANTI-IROPISTS TO SELF-SUPPORTING WOMEN IN AMERICA, 1880-1930 Margaret Spratt WHAT MADE SENATOR TAYLOR RUN? Robert L. Taylor PHI LANTHROPY AND ANTAGONI Shl : KENTUCKY hfOUNTAIN SCIIOOLS IN THE 1920s Nancy Forderhase ENVIRONMENTAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FORhlATIVE INFLUENCES ON CAROLINE GORDON AND EVELYN SCOTT, TMO CLARKSVILLE, TENNESSEE, WRITERS Eleanor H. Beiswenger PENHALLY AND BRACKETS: THE HOUSES THAT CAROLINE GORDON BTJI 1.T Rebecca R. Butler THE LIFE-AFFIRMING DOLLMAKER Sandra L. Ballard THE BURDEN OF SUCCESS: HIGHLANDER, 1962-1982 John hl. Glen EDITORS' NOTES The papers in this issue of Border States were made available to the editors by panelists at the last two meetings of the Kentucky-Tennessee American Studies Association, held in 1985 at Barren River State Park, Kentucky, and in 1986 at Fall Creek Falls State Park, Tennessee. Because of the unusual number of excellent presentations at these meetings, the editors were forced to exclude some papers not exclusively focused on the Kentucky-Tennessee region. In order to include as many other papers as possible, the editors asked several authors to reduce their documentation to simple bibliographical notes. The authors' prompt and courteous cooperation with these requests was deeply appreciated. The publication of this issue of Border States was made possible by financial support supplied by the following sources: Better English Fund, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Department of English, Eastern Kentucky University Department of English, Middle Tennessee State University Department of History, Eastern Kentucky University Department of History, Middle Tennessee State University Univerilty of Kentucky The editors wish to express their gratitude for this support. The editors wish also to thank Mrs. Cindy Duke for her dedication in the preparation of the manuscript. It was printed at Middle Tennessee State University under the direction of Tony Snook. "PRIDE AND DEPRAVITY": d PRELIMIKARY REEXAMINATION OF THE BEAUCIIAhIP-SHARP AFFAIR J. W. Cooke Tennessee State University This paper is a severe, bare bones reconstruction of a notably murky and gory incident that occurred during the middle 1820s in Kentucky. For those who are unacquainted with the Beauchamp-Sharp affair, this will be, 1 believe, a sufficient introduction. Those already familiar with this bloody sequence of events will note that my reconstruction modifies earlier versions in two significant ways. First, I understand the Beauchamp-Sharp affair to be an affair of honor, an affair in which politics played an important but secondary role. And second, I have shifted the locus of action away from the public acts of Colonel Solomon P. Sharp and Jereboam 0. Bcauchamp and placed it, instead, in the person of Anna Cooke Beauchamp, a diminutive Fury whose passion for revenge brought violent death to three people. Anna was the fifth child and first daughter of Giles and Alicia Payne Cooke of Fairfax County, Virginia. She was born February 7, 1785 (or 1786), and probably named for a younger sister of her mother. Giles Cooke was a moderately prosperous planter who had acquired 1,115 acres of land in Kentucky during the 1780s, probably as a result of service in the Virginia militia during the American Revolution. He died in 1805, perhaps in straitened circumstances. His family liquidated their Virginia properties and moved to Warren County, Kentucky, by stages between 1806 and 1810. The Cookes prospered modestly, but between 1817 and 1823 disaster struck. Five brothers and Anna's only sister died. She was now alone in the world except for her mother and her younger brother, Peyton. There was also a personal disaster for Anna. In May or June, 1820, she had givcn birth to a stillborn child. The reputed father was Colonel Solomon P. Sharp. Her sins were compounded because she had, perhaps justly, already acquired a reputation as a bluestocking, an intellectual with unconventional habits and ideas, at a time and in a culture that tended to regard women with intellectual pretensions skeptically. She took long walks in the fields and woods outside Bowling Green, and dismissed contemptuously those who questioned thelr propriety. She read books and "delighted to converse upon scenes of romance and fiction." IIer religious opinions were equally unorthodox. She ridiculed Christianity as a "fraud upon mankind" and rejected the ideas of Heaven and Hell. She allegedly scoffed at matrimony as well, and avowed herself a "disciple of hlary M'oolstonecraft" (sic). Anna was also accused of being sexually promiscuous. Her enemy, Dr. Leander Sharp, gathered the testimonies of countless men and women in an attempt to prove that Anna was guilty of the "criminal act" with half the male population of Bowling Green. Her marriage to a man sixteen years her junior was, to say the least, unconventional, and the union evoked intense, even bizarre, emotions. Anna's tenacity in seeking Sharp's death was extraordinary. She made his death a condition for marriage. She practiced with a pistol so that she might dispatch him personally and, when this appeared impossible, she collaborated with her husband in planning the colonel's assassination. She sewed Beauchamp ' s disguise and poisoned the tip of the knife he used to kill Sharp. She brought laudanum and a file with her when she was carried to Frankfort and lodged with her husband. And it was Anna who induced Beauchamp to join her in a suicide pact. And last, she wrote poetry. Not surprisingly, her verse is marked by an obsession with the idea of honor. It is not, however, an idea of feminine honor; h,in the words of Bertram Wyatt-Brown, to be "subordinate and docile," to abjure a "revengeful spirit," and to practice "restraint and abstinence" in the face of humiliation and slander. Rather, Anna conceived of honor in masculine terms: she hated Sharp and sought to destroy him, if not by her own hand then by the hand of another. And she did. The victim, Solomon P. Sharp, was born in Washington County, Virginia, August 22, 1787. His father, Thomas, was probably Scotch-Irish. Born in Pennsylvania, Thomas emigrated to Washington County in 1770. He was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, having served with Isaac Shelby's regiment at King's Mountain. After peace returned, Thomas moved to the vicinity of Nashville, and then on to Logan County, Kentucky, where his name would appear in court rec.ords as early as 1795. Solomon received little formal education, although he may have attended Newton or Logan Academies in Russellville for a time. He was, nevertheless, admitted to the bar at nineteen and began the practice of law at Russellville in 1806. He soon dec,ided, however, that Bowling Green offered a wider scope for his ambition, and moved to the latter settlement shortly before 1810. He then entered politics and represented warren- County in the Kentucky legislature in both 3810 and 1811. Sharp next sought national office and ran successfully for a seat in the Thirteenth Congress. He was subsequently reelected to a second term. His record was respectable but unexceptionable, although President fdadison was reported to have said that Sharp was the "ablest man of his age that had ever crossed the mountains." Sharp also served his country briefly in the war of 1812. He joined Lt. Col. Young Ewing's Regiment, Kentucky Mounted Militia, in September, 1812, as a private. Later he was promoted to captain, then to major, and eventually became Adjutant-General of the state. The colonel was equally successful in acquiring land. Before 1824, he had obtained title to 11,660 acres in Narren, Logan, Christian, and Livingston Counties, and acquired another 1,870 acres in partnership with his younger brother, Dr. Leander Sharp. Following service in the militia and in Congress, Sharp returned to state politics. He was sent to the legislature twice more by the voters of Warren County in 1818 and 1819. While in Frankfort, he met his wife, Elizabeth, a daughter of Col. John Scott of the 1st Regiment, Kentucky Militia. They were married December 17, 1818. Inevitably, Sharp became embroiled in the famous Old Court-New Court controversy that dominated Kentucky politics between 1819 and 1829. "No period in all Kentucky's first hundred vears," wrote Arndt Stickles, "was more exasperating or laden with peril. ." The colonel early became a fervent New Court partisan; &, he supported the claims of those Kentuckians who sought to save their property from foreclosure by the passage of replevin laws, inllating the currency, and other expedients to avoid bankruptcy. New Court partisans also urged the abolition of the pro-creditor Court of Appeals, and the creation of a new court that would be friendly to debtors. Sharp seems to have been one of those Relief candidates (as the New Court supporters were called) who "actively cultivated the popular vote without regard to the 'propriety' of their techniques." That is, he rejected a politics of deference. In this sense, his political rise may have been perceived as a threat to the established order. Whatever the reason, by the middle 1820s Sharp was becoming what Jim Klotter calls a "high risk" politician--a man whose opinions and actions make him a possible target for violence, and a certain target for vituperation and abuse. In 1821 the colonel bec,ame a candidate for the state senate from Warren County. Two months before the election, however, Governor John Adair offered Sharp a position as Attorney General in his pro-Relief administration.