Late on the afternoon of November 9, 1908, five shots rang out from the corner of Seventh and Union in downtown Nashville. As the echoes faded, former U.S. Senator Edward W. Carmack lay dead and Robin J. Cooper, son of prominent businessman Colonel Duncan B. Cooper, reeled from the impact of a bullet intended for his father.

Was it a planned assassination or just an unfortunate incident in an old friendship that politics had turned into bitter enmity?

Through extensive research, including a study of actual trial documents and the papers of both Cooper and Carmack, this account explores the events leading up to this deadly encounter and the resulting murder trial that has gone down in history as one of the South's most famous.

Chronicled here are Carmack's rise from destitution to high public office, his campaign for governorship against his old adversary, incumbent Malcolm Patterson, and the bitter campaign of 1908; likewise, Colonel Cooper's progression from Confederate war hero to the most powerful man in Tennessee during the Patterson administration is also detailed. An original investigation of the mysterious 1919 bludgeoning murder of Robin J. Cooper rounds out this thorough narrative.