Carmack-Cooper Shooting

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.