Background
James Strange French was born in 1807.
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James French
Edit ProfileEducation
He was educated at the College of William & Mary and the University of Virginia, then read law with his uncle Robert Strange in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Career
In 1831, French represented National Turner, as well as a number of other slaves accused of participating in National Turner"s slave rebellion. In 1835, French helped secure the commutation of a sentence of a slave, Boson, who had been sentenced to death following the rebellion, then escaped from the Sussex County jail. French was the author of at least two novels.
The first, Sketches and Eccentricities of Colonel
David Crockett of West Tennessee, appeared in 1833. The second, Elkswatawa, was set in the early nineteenth century.
lieutenant was a romance set around Tecumseh"s War. Edgar Allan Poe published a critical review of it in Southern Literary Messenger in 1836.
Though they had studied together at the University of Virginia, Poe was quite critical of the plot and prose.
French married Laura J. George on June 6, 1850 in "Willow Grove", Tazewell County, Virginia. French died on February 7, 1886 in Gordonsville, Virginia.
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French was joined in defending slaves by Meriwether Brodnax, William Henry Brodnax, Thomas Ruffin Gray, who published The Confessions of National Turner and is commonly referred to as National Turner"s lawyer, and William C. Parker.
