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George Q. Cannon is generally acknowledged as second only to Brigham Young as the most visible leader of Mormonism in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. He became Young’s protégé and was an influential first counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for almost twenty-five years, serving with presidents Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and Lorenzo Snow. Known as the “spokesman for the kingdom,” Cannon was the central political figure of the church, not only serving as Utah territory’s delegate to Congress for ten years but also as chief political advisor and long-term editor of the Deseret News. Cannon helped shape doctrine, church governance, and administration during a period of significant change, defending and promulgating plural marriage both before and after the 1890 Manifesto. He was at the center of business life in Salt Lake City, serving as president of the largest publishing house, banks, a railroad, mining companies, electric companies, and other businesses. Though Cannon was loved and revered by his people, controversy sometimes touched his life and family. 

A gripping firsthand account of loyalty, resistance, and survival in Confederate Tennessee, this memoir reveals the untold story of Unionist courage behind enemy lines.

Tried Men and True, or Union Life in Dixie is the memoir of a Union supporter in south-central Tennessee. In it, he chronicles in vivid and emotional detail the local tensions between Unionists and Confederates during the Civil War South and offers a rare first-person account of the guerrilla war that devastated Western Tennessee.

Thomas Jefferson Cypert (1827-1918) was a staunch Union man of Wayne County, Tennessee. In 1863, he helped organize the Second Tennessee Mounted Infantry, a regiment of loyalist Southerners enlisted to combat Confederate cavalry in West Tennessee and Northern Alabama. Tried Men and True is Cypert’s memoir of his time as Captain of Company A, including his capture by Confederate cavalry and subsequent daring escape, in which he was aided by local Union sympathizers and slaves.

After the Civil War, Cypert served two terms in the Tennessee State Senate, one of them during the heated first years of Reconstruction, when Tennessee disenfranchised former rebels and attempted to establish Unionist Republican rule in the state. Cypert clearly wrote his memoir to defend Unionism, condemn secession and rebellion, and support loyalists’ claims for post-war power through an account of their wartime sacrifices. Never before published, the manuscript has been preserved in nearly perfect condition by Cypert’s descendants over the generations. This book is a remarkable and engagingly written account of resistance to the Confederacy by a group of southwestern Tennessee loyalists.