“The Tall Four” is a melodrama that takes place in 1872-3 during post-Civil War confusion in which mistaken identities, false names, and false deaths all play a role. Four characters, Frederick Briggs, Higby or John Diggs, Robert Ralston, and Charles Moffet, were known as “the tall four” when they fought together in the war. Some of the other characters named include Maud Ireton, Kate Harris, Belle Clayton, Lulu, Betsy Jane, Fred Ireton, Harry Clifton, Watts Butterworth, Miss Lyte and Miss Harris.

Characters live, travel, and correspond between fictional Metropolis and Cincinnati, Washington, and other cities in the United States. They attend large dinner parties, costumed community gatherings and square dances, and recite popular songs, sayings and couplets. The drama culminates with the four couples (Diggs, Ralston, Ireton and Moffet) married, each with a baby boy.

Despite including internal and external dialogue, the novel is framed as if it is being reported to a newspaper, sometimes by different reporters, often assuring the reader that the reporter is accurate down to the exact hour of events, including long lists of detail.

The novel was published as “Unfortunate Entanglements” in the St. Joseph Herald as a weekly serial that ran from Sunday, May 2, 1880, through Sunday, November 21, 1880. The newspaper clippings pasted into the first few pages of the first volume are laudatory, but the Atchison Globe noted in October that the serial continued “much to the consternation of the readers.”

The two volumes are handwritten with pages numbered 1-675. Items found in the volumes, including a note about the volumes, a blue Civil War commemoration ribbon, newspaper clippings, a Ben-Hur program and pressed vines, have been removed to a separate folder at RH MS P998.