Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War

by Nicholas Lemann

Book Overview

Easter Sunday 1873, Colfax, Louisiana: A white militia of Confederate veterans-turned-vigilantes ousts the elected town government and, in a gruesome killing spree, attacks the black community there, massacring dozens of people. This horrifying episode began an insurgency that changed the course of American history. White Southern Democrats were emboldened to further action, and for several years they waged a campaign of political terrorism aiming...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374248559
• ISBN13: 9780374248550
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 257 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Beyond Redemption

In the decade from the end of the Civil War to the fraudulent brokered election of Rutherford Hayes, two of the most shameful crimes of American history occurred in tandem: the murderous re-establishment of White rule in the former Confederacy, initiating a century of racial oppression and apartheid enforced by lynching; and the devolution of the "Free Soil Free Labor" Republican Party into its persistent status as the factotum of the "malefactors of great wealth" as Theodore Roosevelt christened them, with the cynical abandonment of the forner slaves into the bloody hands of their former owners. Nicholas Lemann gives a vivid and believable account of both disasters, focusing his narrative on the figure of Adelbert Ames (senator and governor of Mississippi during Reconstruction) and using Ames's papers as a major source of information. Some months ago I wrote a review of the famous DW Griffith movie Birth of a Nation, in which I suggested that the craft and the content of a work of art cannot and should not be disarticulated. I received a blast of comments accusing me of calling for censorship. That ugly movie, however, was more than a bit of cinematographic innovation. It was and still is a centerpiece of the Southern apologetics for "Redemption" (the term invented by Southerners for what Northerners call Reconstruction). Lemann's book is the most vivid refutation available to general readers of that shameful collection of deliberate lies and foolish self-deceptions sometimes called the Myth of the Lost Cause. One could quibble with Lemann's subtitle, however; the butchery and terrorism of the White Liners in Mississippi was sadly NOT the Last Battle of the Civil War. As witnessed by the current events in Louisiana and the spate of noose displays in the South, the last battle of the Civil War has not yet been fought. Several previous reviewers have pointed out flaws in Mr. Lemann's efforts, including his misstatement concerning the Emancipation Proclamation. Others have challenged his legitimacy as an historian. He is indeed a mere journalist by profession, but I doubt many of his critics (short of Sean Wilentz) could produce a more thoroughly researched or better integrated account of the events and their aftermath. The book is quite well foot-noted, and the concluding "Note on Sources" is ample and useful. I've read two of Lemann's previous books and I'm prepared to congratulate him on making spectacular progress in style and methodology, from the servile popularism of mere journalism to the rarified heavens of elite historiography. Come on, guys! It's a powerful book! And it's good medicine for the recurrent fevers of an America which has never taken Socrates' injunction to Know Thyself seriously! One ironic sidelight, from the last chapter: When JFK wrote his campaign-oriented "Profiles in Courage", one of the 'courageous' whom he lauded was Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, a leader of the effort to disenfranchise Black Republicans and o

How the South Eventually Won the Civil War

Well, Nick Lemann has done it again. As he did in his groundbreaking and award winning book "The Promise Land," Professor Lemann has again burrowed deep beneath the surface of American culture into its undercurrents and subtext to mine more pure gold. Despite the fact that he is a Southerner, few historians of American culture exhibit the exquisite balance and honesty on the sensitive issue of race as does Nick Lemann. You can take his narratives of American history to the bank. He is the genuine article. Amen. In this little gem, which will inevitably become a classic of American history, Lemann tells the story of what happened after the Civil war, in fact what happened after Reconstruction. He does so at eye level and in vivid color. He tells us of how the south was "redeemed," and how America became "One Racist White Nation Under God." Leaning heavily on WEB DuBois' work, but without the socialist over and undertones, Lemann makes no mistake about the fact that the radioactive fallout, the racist culture we have today, is nothing but the background noise from America's own Cosmic Big Bang, the Civil War. Mostly through the eyes of Adelbert Ames, the Civil War hero from Maine, who served as the Governor of Mississippi, the author tells about how the 14th and 15th Amendments were declared null and void. Through unremitting murder, brutality and terror by white vigilante groups, the weak kneed Northern occupiers eventually gave in to the southern brand of terror and insurrection, which the author refers to as the "last battle of the Civil War." Neighborhood and regional terror involving the most grotesque and inhuman violence was the motif that was spread across the region and led to a reversal of the Northern victory and a win of the Civil War for the South, a victory that still reverberates through American's race-based culture. The subtext of the book is at least as important and as potent as are the details of the context. It makes clear that the real birth of the American nation occurred in the aftermath of the Civil War, when the South was Redeemed, in the ineptness and utter lack of commitment on the part of the Northern occupiers to protect what was important about the nation -- its laws and the Constitution against 911-styled terrorism. For the North, Reconstruction was just an overwhelming "mop-up" operation; for the South, it was existential, a matter of the survival of the white race and the southern way of life. The north tried to solve the daunting post-Civil War problems by "making it up on the fly" but failed miserably. Their vacillation, ineptness, and lack of commitment as overseers did little more than stoked the fires that gave full expression to the terror underlying the sentiments of DW Griffith movie "Birth of a Nation." That sentiment, basically, was (and to a large extent still is): "Get your guns, the niggers are coming to get our white women." So, in a real sense, this sentiment underlying DW Griffith's movie is

The End of Reconstruction

In order to place Nicholas Lemann's fine book "Redemption: the Last Battle of the Civil War" in context, a bit of background is necessary. With the end of the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the United States faced the daunting tasks of reintegrating the defeated South into the Union and providing for the rights of the African Americans freed from slavery. The period from 1865 -- 1876 is generally described as the "Reconstruction" era, and it includes, broadly, three separate efforts at Reconstruction. The first, Presidential Reconstruction, involved Andrew Johnson's efforts to admit the Southern states on easy terms under its former leaders, with all the oppression of African Americans that this implied. Under Congressional Reconstruction, the military governed the defeated South, as Congress attempted as well to impeach Johnson for obstructing its policy. Congress provided for readmimission of the Southern States upon the adoption of Constitutions that provided African American men as well as white men the right to vote. Each of the Confederate States ultimately enacted a Congressionally-approved constitution and was readmitted to the Union, with an ever-diminishing role for Federal troops. The Reconstruction Era came to an end in 1876 with the disputed election of Rutherford B Hayes to the Presidency and the removal of the last of the Federal troops from the Southern States. Now to Lemann's study. Lemann is the dean of the school of Journalism at Columbia University and the author of a number of earlier books, including, most importantly, "The Promised Land: the Great Black Migration and How it Changed America", the story of how African Americans migrated North in the mid-twentieth Century. His book, "Redemption" takes only a short glance at the early stages of Reconstruction. Its focus is on the final years of Reconstruction, 1873 -- 1875, in two States, Louisiana and Mississippi, and how events in these States set the stage for the end of Reconstruction and the ultimate "redemption" of the South through the reinstitution of white supremacy and Jim Crow. The failed hero of Lemann's account is Adelbert Ames (1835 -- 1933). Ames served as a Union general in almost all the important battles of the Army of the Potomac, including Gettysburg. Following the war, he was appointed Military governor of Mississippi where he oversaw the adoption of Mississippi's constitution and its readmission to the Union. He married the daughter of another important Union General, Ben Butler, served as one of the first two senators of the readmitted State of Mississippi and became the Governor of Mississippi where he tried, under the standards prevailing at the time, to administer the State with honesty and probity and to protect the civil rights of the freed African Americans. Ames was opposed by the organized Democratic party in Mississippi. More importantly, he was opposed by a group of terrorist, paramilitary organizations known a

LeMann's no southern apologist, offers important perspective

Important book, with candor and openminded analysis from an unexpected source. LeMann chronicles an ugly period in american history and reveals the barbaric nature of american racism against blacks as reconstruction came to a close in the south. I'm so weary of southern secessionists and Jim Crow apologists of the likes of Shelby Foote and Herman Belz (check out the LeMann's CSPAN BookTV interview). Thank you, Mr. LeMann, for a fresher, less self-serving version of US history.

The Racists Win In Mississippi

Eric Foner in his "Reconstruction : America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877" (1988) wrote the definative account of the post-Civil War South. Mr. Lemann is focusing on one small rural state (Mississippi) in its struggles for racial equality during Reconstruction as opposed to Mr. Foner's big picture approach. In contrast to the images of vile carpetbaggers from "Gone with the Wind", it was southern whites terrorizing newly freed slaves to keep them from political power. The Union army was attempting to be the equalizer as it fought with the KKK, the White Line and other white supremacy groups. The author tends to idealize the Reconstruction politicians (like Adelbert Ames) and demonize the Southern whites (some of whom rightly earned demonization for their violence tactics). Still, it is a good read and a good story to know.