Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution
Benjamin Franklin Hall 427 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19106
This event is free to attend but registration is required.
Join us for a Lunch at the Library presentation from Katherine Grandjean who will be discussing her new book: Kingdom of Devils
A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution.
The chilling true story of a brutal string of deaths on the post-Revolutionary frontier that reveal the violence at the heart of the young United States
Kentucky, 1798: A harrowing series of murders begins. The first body, discovered by cattle drovers, lies bloody at the bottom of a ridge. Then another—a dead boy staring up from a sinkhole. Bodies turn up along roadsides, stuffed into brush. They float to the surface of muddy brooks. For nine terrifying months, over hundreds of miles of Kentucky and Tennessee countryside, the terror unfolds. The killers—two men with hazy backgrounds—are brothers, named Wiley and Micajah Harp.
The Harps killed dozens, but why they did it has eluded folklorists and historians for generations. Almost every story imagines that their motive was pure bloodlust, but for historian Katherine Grandjean, that’s too simple. Instead, she uses the Harp murders to reveal the dark side of the young United States’ independence. These were uncertain and dangerous years—a time when the fledgling federal government could do little to protect its citizens. And if the American Revolution was liberating, it was also deeply destabilizing, politically and socially. Even as it built up some men, it stacked the deck against others, punishing them with volatile markets, lost safety nets, and shattered aspirations. Unspooling the mystery of what sent the Harps reeling exposes the hidden, violent legacies of the revolutionary era.
Bristling with tense, page-turning storytelling—and driven by a historian’s obsessive detective work—Kingdom of Devils recovers these long-forgotten murders as a haunting tale about the darkness at the heart of the American dream.
This event will take place on Friday, September 18, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET in Benjamin Franklin Hall and will also be livestreamed. Please register to attend this event.
Katherine Grandjean is Associate Professor of History at Wellesley College. Her research explores early American history, environmental history, and the roots of violence in American history. Her first book, American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England, was published by Harvard University Press in 2015. She has been the recipient of several major research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Antiquarian Society, and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others.