Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (review)

2oo7 Book Reviews239 Banished to the West, he supervised prisoner-of-war camps and reported on Copperheads. During Reconstruction he was only somewhat effectual against unreconstructed rebels in Texas, partly because of his politics. "They can't make me a radical" (p. 308), he once defiandy asserted. Retirement soon followed. This well-written and well-researched book has the merit ofbeing both a life and a times biography. Professor Thompson should be congratulated for his perforTexas Slate University-San MarcosJames Pohl Redemption: The Last Battle ofthe Civil War. By Nicholas Lemann. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Pp. 270. Note to readers, prologue, notes, note on sources, index. ISBN 0374248559. $24.00, cloth.) Redemption: The Last Battle ofthe Civil Waris a thoroughly researched and wellwritten account of the violence diat plagued Mississippi during the final days of Reconstruction. Lemann reminds his readers that the Civil War did not end with the surrender of Robert E. Lee's command at Appomattox but rather continued for another decade in the guise of a guerilla war. During the years between 1 865 and 1875, leaders of the Democratic Party throughout the South effectively used terrorist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, Red Shirts, and White Liners, to bring Reconstruction to an inglorious end. With terrorists serving as a paramilitary arm of their party, Democrats not only gained control of the South in the mid-i87os, but they also ensured that African Americans would be relegated to a position of second-class citizenry. As some historians have eloquently put it, the northern states won the war but lost the peace. In order to place Mississippi in the context ofthe broader South, Lemann begins his study by detailing the events that took place on Easter Sunday 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana. Here ex-Confederates and conservative Democrats led a heavily armed militia against the black officials serving in the local government. In gruesome fashion the terrorists killed dozens of black men who vainly attempted to secure their rights of political participation guaranteed to them by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments ofthe Constitution. The murders committed at Colfax were not unique and only reinforced a message already clear to African Americans and their white Republican allies; white Southerners would use every means necessary to ensure that Reconstruction failed in the South. Events in Mississippi proved to bejust as unsettling as those in Louisiana. Politically , Republicans had enjoyed a measure of success in the state. Mississippi's large contingent of black voters often led to Republican victories in state and local elections , especially between 1868 and 1873. However, Republican successes in state elections only strengdiened die resolve of ex-Confederates and Democrats who hoped to regain political control of their state. Lemann convincingly argues that leading Democrats sanctioned the violent actions of the White Line organization, a name given to the domestic terrorists operating in Mississippi. Functioning as a paramilitary arm of die state party, the White Liners pursued a plan of destruction that left thousands ofAfrican Americans dead and eventually succeeded in restoring 240Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober Democratic leadership to the state. Even Republican GovernorAdelbertAmes could not thwart the Democrats and their White Line army from regaining control of the state. In the state elections of 1875, the clash between Republicans and Democrats peaked when Governor Ames pleaded with President Grant to send federal troops to ensure a fair electoral process and to prevent white terrorists from disrupting Republican rallies in the state. Grant, apparendy influenced by national political trends, ignored the governor's plea for help, effectively allowing the Democrats and White Liners to wage a bloody campaign against their political adversaries. Following one of the most violent and corrupt elections in Mississippi's history, leading Democrats successfully regained political control of the state. From dieir position of power, they hastened the end of Reconstruction and ushered in the era ofJim Crow. In his final chapter, Lemann traces die evolution ofthe myths surrounding Reconstruction and chronicles how Americans came to demonizeYankees, carpetbaggers, scalawags, and African Americans, and lionize white Southern terrorists and Democratic leaders. This is perhaps die most significant chapter in this book. Even today die myth ofReconstruction remains strong in the psyche ofthe...