Chronicles tells the stories of individual inquests, presenting each case as a deeply-written and illustrated story of the peculiar circumstances of one human being’s demise.

Birth of a Conscience tells the story of Solomon George Washington Dill, an ex-Confederate who attempted to help create a more equal and integrated racial future for his state. His assassination marked the beginning of the end for Reconstruction in South Carolina.

In A-Hole: An Historical Meditation I attempt to defend the validity, even the necessity, of historians employing the word 'asshole' when writing about a certain social strata of American political life.

Deaths in a small community can often be linked. A single act of violence ripples out in waves of vengeance and reprisals, depression and self-harm, ruining multiple lives. Reconstruction Gothic tells the story of seven deaths -- one by assassination, two by homicide, one by suicide, one by duel, and one by execution -- that were all so different, and yet so deeply related, that together the comprise a short history of the era.

What do you do the day after a massacre? You convene a coroner's inquest -- because that is the first link in the chain of justice. The Hamburg Massacre examines the gunning down of an African-American sheriff and seven others in the predominately African American town of Hamburg, South Carolina, and the community's attempt to pick up the pieces afterward.

The Boykin Mill Pond Incident explores one of the saddest May Day parties in history. In 1860, a large group of teenagers set off on a May Day fishing party at the Boykin Mill Pond -- their raft hit a snag and twenty-four of them drowned, including four children from one family.

NEXT: Reconstruction Gothic