This is the story of Louis Bieral, a nineteenth-century gangster, politician, sportsman, and Civil War hero. Kidnapped from his birthplace in revolutionary South America, he doused fires in Jacksonian New York, battled Sumatran pirates with the US Navy, and panned for California gold. As a crime boss, he raced horses, boxed champions, and ran brothels. Yet Bieral's adventurous life was also steeped in the brutality of his time. He befriended rowdies like 'Butcher' Bill Poole, returned fugitives like Anthony Burns to slavery, and assaulted abolitionists such as Richard Henry Dana. As a Union officer, Bieral won fame in battle. He was a Gilded-age bodyguard for 'Boss' Tweed, William Seward, and Jim Fisk, becoming a suspect in that tycoon's murder. From the docks of Valparaíso to the dining room of Delmonico's to the cells of Auburn Prison, Bieral's remarkable journey illustrates the violence that bound nineteenth-century America together.
