A former assistant editor for the Journal of Southern History, Bixel is coauthor of Galveston and the 1900 Storm and author of Sailing Ship Elissa.John David Smith is the Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. His previous books include Ulrich Bonnell Phillips: A Southern Historian and His Critics; An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865-1918; and Black Judas: William Hannibal Thomas and ""The American Negro,"" winner of the Mayflower Society Award for Nonfiction in 2000.