Scheduled for release on May 6, 2016, Brothers of the Rogue is a historical novel loosely based on the true story of two brothers, John Edward and Moses Emerson Folsom, who met by chance on the boardwalk of Yerba Buena California in 1849. The brothers worked their way north to the Table Rock area of southern Oregon while prospecting and running freight.
This violent period just before the Civil War was fraught with political intrigue. Oregon was technically destined to be a free state, but it was governed by pro slavery Democrats. Indians were being sold into slavery in California, where it was illegal to own a black man, but lawful to enslave an Indian. In addition, Tongs were sending Chinese laborers to the mines and controlling them with terror.
In this atmosphere John and Moses began a freighting business and did a little trading with the tribes. From their point of view the settlers and the military were out of control, and the brothers did not agree with the wholesale genocide that was being perpetrated by the populace and the authorities against the natives.
During the Rogue River Indian wars the brothers were finally asked to leave the township of Jacksonville because of their stand on the matter, so they walked north to Oregon City, swimming rivers along the way.
There they met two sisters that had recently crossed the Oregon trail from Porter County Indiana. All their livestock but one horse and one ox had died shortly after fording the Snake River at American falls. The family was forced to walk the rest of the way to Oregon City. The girls and the two brothers married on May 6th 1855. A month later the U.S. military quietly suffered its greatest defeat to date at the Battle of Hungry Hill.
This is their story, and the story of many of the colorful people that helped create the Oregon Territory...