Redemption: The Last Battle of the
Civil War by Nicholas Lemann
Beyond Redemption
“An arresting piece of popular history.” —Sean Wilentz, The New York
Times Book Review Nicholas Lemann opens this extraordinary book with a
riveting account of the horrific events of Easter 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana,
where a white militia of Confederate veterans-turned-vigilantes attacked
the black community there and massacred hundreds of people in a
gruesome killing spree. This began an insurgency that changed the course
of American history: for the next few years white Southern
Democrats waged a campaign of political terrorism aiming to overturn the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and challenge President Grants
support for the emergent structures of black political power. Redemption is
the first book to describe in uncompromising detail this organized racial
violence, which reached its apogee in Mississippi in 1875.

Personal Review: Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War
by Nicholas Lemann
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 one of the most repulsive hypocrites
in American history. But Kennedy needed acceptability in the South... Now

that the Party of Lincoln has reconfigured itself as the Dixiecrat Party,
perhaps Lamar can be heard laughing in his grave.
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