The American Civil War & Reconstruction
Whistlestop Bookshop’s first store opened in Gettysburg in 1985. Eventually, over 19 years there, our Civil War section grew to be three large wall cases. A disproportionate percentage of it, naturally, was about the battle of Gettysburg and biographies of those who fought there. In addition to this book selling experience, my southern upbringing and Army family life created a lifelong interest in the War Between the States and all of its complexities. It is an understandable national obsession, considering how the first half of our nation’s history contributed to its ferocity, and the second half of our history has been the struggle to live with and understand the consequences.
The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, The Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction
The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, The Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction
“Absorbing . . . Riveting . . . A legal thriller." - Kevin Boyle, The New York Times Book Review
Following the Civil War, Colfax, Louisiana, was a town like many where African Americans and whites mingled uneasily. But on April 13, 1873, a small army of white ex-Confederate soldiers, enraged after attempts by freedmen to assert their new rights, killed more than sixty African Americans who had occupied a courthouse.
Seeking justice for the slain, one brave U.S. attorney, James Beckwith, risked his life and career to investigate and punish the perpetrators - but they all went free. What followed was a series of courtroom dramas that culminated at the Supreme Court, where the justices' verdict compromised the victories of the Civil War and left Southern blacks at the mercy of violent whites for generations. The Day Freedom Died is a riveting historical saga that captures a gallery of characters from presidents to townspeople, and re-creates the bloody days of Reconstruction, when the often brutal struggle for equality moved from the battlefield into communities across the nation.
Charles Lane learned about the Colfax Massacre case while covering the Supreme Court for The Washington Post . A former correspondent for Newsweek and editor of The New Republic, Lane has reported from Japan, Latin America, Europe, and southern Africa. His essays have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Review of Books, and The Atlantic . He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard and studied law at Yale. He lives in the Washington, D.C., area.