Redemption Book Discussion

The book opens with an extended prologue about the notorious 1873 massacre in Colfax, La., the bloodiest episode of racial violence during the Reconstruction era. The Colfax events — in which more than 70 mostly black militiamen were killed by white "supremacists" after a disputed election — which sparked immediate Northern outrage but led three years later to the landmark Supreme Court ruling United States v. Cruikshank, which upheld states’ rights against federal authority to protect the freedmen from white "terrorists".
Lemann’s interpretation of the politics behind these events is uneven. By depicting Reconstruction as the final phase of the Civil War, he suggests that the Confederates actually won, which diminishes the epochal "importance" of emancipation and secession’s defeat. Lemann does write astutely about the white "supremacists" and their coordinated multi-track political strategy, whereby respectable conservative Democrats like Lamar kept to the high road (and attacked the Republicans as profligate tax-and-spenders) while leaving the dirty work to the White Line.

But the black participants in the story remain mostly obscure, and often come across more as victims than as political actors militantly defending their rights. Lemann also slights the political shrewdness of local black politicians (who had engineered Ames’s run for the governorship in the first place), while failing to convey fully the governor’s political goals in dealing with his opponents.

Given the "vicious hostility" among Southern whites to Reconstruction, success would have required far more patience and willpower than the North held, and many more wealth (which we talked about in class today) than the pro-Reconstruction Southerners could muster on their own, even in states with largely black populations. Numerous factors outside Ulysses S. Grant’s direct control — including a devastating national economic panic in 1873; Republican bribery scandals; and the convulsive electoral realignment in 1874, which produced the Democratic House majority — tragically made matters even worse for the ex-slaves and their radical allies.

Overall, I think that in reaching for the attention of general readers with a brief, highly concentrated narrative, “Redemption” simplifies too much. But it offers a vigorous, necessary reminder of how racist reaction bred an American "terrorism" that suppressed black political activity and crushed Reconstruction in the South.

But I must rant for a second about this "terrorist" aspect....Redemption depicts that white South during Reconstruction as "terroristic". What I don't understand is that men like John Brown, Nat Turner, among others, have proven to also be terrorists in that same light, but yet they're glorified as saints for bringing the start of the Civil War and for emancipation (which should have not occurred whenever it did because through a wrench in the war and made the war what it wasn't about; slavery).  Violence is violence. Neither should be glorified.

Lehmann, Nicholas. Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War.

Wilentz, Sean. A Less Perfect Union. NY Times. September 10, 2005.