John Murrell: bandit leader, horse thief, stealer of slaves. In the early 1830s he was kingpin of a far-flung syndicate of outlaws. But Murrell had bigger ideas. He schemed for a bloody revolution when the slaves he had "freed" would rise to make him the white emperor of a black empire throughout the Mississippi Valley. All this was before he met and became attached to a young innocent named Virgil Stewart.