He was truly one of "nature's oddities," said the eminent Bishop William Meade, referring to his clerical subordinate, Mason Locke Weems, better known as Parson Weems, itinerant preacher, book peddler, and writer of moralistic and patriotic pamphlets and biographies. Bishop Meade took a rather dim view of Weems's writings, noting that there was as much fiction as fact in them. Although Meade viewed him as an embarrassment to the Episcopal faith, his pamphlets against vice, murder, and self-indulgence and his biographies extolling the virtues of famous men in American history made Weems among the most widely read of American authors before the Civil War. As a Tractarian, the Parson enlivened his narratives with dramatic examples of debauchery and crime supposedly drawn from real life, thereby revealing in sensational detail the high wages of sin. Today Weems is best known for his biographies, especially for his portrayals of George...