Murder in Lexington

VMI, Honor and Justice in Antebellum Virginia

Ranked #53 in Lexington

In 1853 Lexington, Virginia, Mary Evelyn Anderson, one of the most beautiful women in the Commonwealth, spurned the advances of a young law student named Charles Burks Christian. Humiliated and heartbroken, Christian confronted, stabbed and killed the man he believed responsible for Anderson's decision. The man was her cousin, Thomas Blackburn, a VMI cadet and student of Stonewall Jackson. What followed was a circus of inept and brilliant lawyers dragging members of the most prominent families in antebellum Virginia through and all-too-public discussion of seduction, courtship, honor and... more

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