THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE: The Southern Rationale

The Great Chicago Fire is generally viewed as if it took place within a historical vacuum, completely devoid of any outside influences, however, nothing could be further from the truth. Few that were present in the city at the time had any doubt as to its cause, almost all believed that it was of an incendiary origin. Furthermore, it was not just thought to be the work of “an incendiary” but rather “incendiaries.” There is absolutely no mystery as to why people would have believed such a thing because, that is precisely what the evidence suggests did happen.

Part I of The Great Chicago Fire: The Southern Rationale, looks at the fire, how it spread, its aftermath and subsequent investigation. It then finishes up with what one newspaper headline called the “Discovery of an Infernal Plot to Start Another Conflagration”. According to the investigation's official report, the fire, like the Almighty himself ascending into the sky upon the cherubim, was carried aloft across the city “literally, on the wings of the wind”. While the fire may have been biblical in proportion, that was the extent of its divine nature, everything else about it, from start to finish, was strictly anthropogenic.

Part II, of the book it takes a step back and looks at this event within the historical context in which it actually did take place and the result is quite surprising.

Major players in this historical whodunit include former President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, Jacob Thompson of the Confederate Secret Service, generals; Jubal Early, P.G.T. Beauregard and Nathan Bedford Forrest from the South. Northern participants include President Ulysses S. Grant, Secretary of War W.W. Belnap, generals, Philip Sheridan, William T. Sherman along with Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and elements of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment.

The Great Chicago Fire: The Southern Rationale is fully documented with 733 endnotes virtually 100% of which, are primary source citations.