The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War

The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War
by Stephen Budiansky

The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War
List Price: $16.00
Our Price: $6.75
You Save: $9.25 (58%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.94 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Stephen Budiansky
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-12-30
ISBN: 0452290163
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Plume

Book Reviews of The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War

Book Review: Ten Generations of Owning Human Slaves...
Summary: 5 Stars

... give or take, had established a peculiar culture in the ante bellum South, a culture that had become more isolated and insulated because of the steep decline of immigration to the region of white Europeans, in comparison to the North, following American Independence. It was a culture of touchy honor and mastery, of ready violence, of contempt for difference and intolerance of disagreement, of smooth deceit and hypocrisy, of self-righteousness beyond measure, of vituperation and vilification of perceived enemies, above all a culture of lazy entitlement and scorn for effort. How could it have been otherwise, since those were the "virtues" that allowed slaveholders to cow their slaves and non-slaveholders to behold themselves without sensing their picayune status?

Crushing military defeat, widespread destruction of wealth, temporary expulsion from long-held bastions of political power were inflicted upon this culture that had no pyschic means of dealing with shame, admitting guilt, or seeking reconciliation. How could the reaction have been other than it was, a manifold multiplying of all the pre-war viciousness, of violence, ruthless hypocrisy, unimaginable hatred of the victors, inhuman rage against the former victims? If "Reconstruction" of such a culture was truly intended -- and by some heroic few it was -- then prolonged military occupation at sufficient force (a Surge, shall we say?) would have been appropriate, imprisonment and confiscations justified, resettlement of peoples at least worth considering. Short of such measures, it might well have been more humane in the long run to have let the eleven states of the Confederacy go their way and meet their proper fate.

Author Stephen Budiansky portrays vividly what actually happened in the decade of "Reconstruction", ending in what Southern apologists immediately designated as "Redemption." By murder and the constant threat of murder, by terror and intimidation, by lying and cheating at every turn and every accessible level of civil society, the unrepentant secessionists and white supremacists routed the advocates of conciliation, both Southern and Northern, thwarted the purposes of the Reconstruction Amendments, made a mockery of justice and judicial process, crushed the aspirations of the freed slaves, and initiated a full century of the worst racial oppression in world history, the Jim Crow lynch-law apartheid Dixie South.

Budiansky focuses his reportage on the activities of five nobly-intended men -- two officers of the Union Army, a Confederate general, a northern businessman, and a former slave -- as well as the dastardly deeds of a flock of craven scoundrels who were the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, the White League, and Straight-Aheads, and other conspiracies of Terrorism. Adelbert Ames, Albert Morgan, and Lewis Merril, three of the heroic seekers of human decency that the South has persistently demeaned as 'carpetbaggers,' left ample memoirs and letters, and their careers are central to Budiansky's exposition. However, Budiansky backs up his depictions of the with clippings from local newspapers, court records, letters by the adversaries of equality and voting rights, a massive panoply of primary documentation that truly does speak for itself.

"The Bloody Shirt" is a book of solid scholarship, but it is not intended as a book for scholars. In tone and method, it's closer to one of the Ken Burns TV documentaries. The generous list of scholarly histories that Budiansky posts among his References and Notes will serve to satisfy readers who want more exposition and explication of the events described. This is a book intended to smack the deniers of racist atrocities in the face. It's a book to shame the shameless and to laugh to scorn the myths of the Lost Cause, the Redemption, the gracious old plantation South, and above all to refute the notion that the North simply got tired of spending money on Reconstruction that only a handful of radicals wanted anyway. The North was driven out. The South snatched victory from defeat. The former slaves paid more for their illusion of freedom than it was worth for the next hundred years.

If now, with the election of Barack Obama, it can be claimed that Reconstruction has finally arrived in the CSA, the myths should be vulnerable to reality, no? Personally, I don't yet see or hear the voices of moral/historical redemption quite loudly enough. But I have hopes that demographic change -- the infusion of Northerners, Latinos, and Asians who are not committed to honoring Dixie -- may wash out the cesspools of the Confederacy at last.

Fine book, "The Bloody Shirt"! Read it and mourn!

Summary of The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War

A gripping look at terrorist violence during the Reconstruction era

Between 1867, when the defeated South was forced to establish new state governments that fully represented both black and white citizens, and 1877, when the last of these governments was overthrown, more than three thousand African Americans and their white allies were killed by terrorist violence. Drawing on original letters and diaries as well as published racist diatribes of the time, acclaimed historian Stephen Budiansky concentrates his vivid, fast paced narrative on the efforts of five heroic men?two Union officers, a Confederate general, a Northern entrepreneur, and a former slave?who showed remarkable idealism and courage as they struggled to establish a ?New South? in the face of overwhelming hatred and organized resistance. The Bloody Shirt sheds new light on the violence, racism, division, and heroism of Reconstruction, a largely forgotten but epochal chapter in American history.

19th Century Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in 19th Century Books
Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (Galaxy Books) ImageAndrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (Galaxy Books)
by John William Ward
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1962-12-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops: $19.99
The Oregon Trail (Oxford World's Classics) ImageThe Oregon Trail (Oxford World's Classics)
by Francis Parkman Jr.
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2000-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops: $11.95
A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation ImageA Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation
by David W. Blight Ph. D.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 2007-11-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1.00
Price in other shops: $25.00
Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 ImageSea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842
by Nathaniel Philbrick
Penguin Audio; Published: 2003-11-10; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $1.07
Price in other shops: $39.95
The Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends, and Lore ImageThe Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends, and Lore
by David Dary
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2002-02-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.33
Price in other shops: $17.00
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text ImageThe Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text
by Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Arnold Douglas, Harold Holzer
Harpercollins; Published: 1993-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $49.79
The War With Spain in 1898 (The Macmillan Wars of the United States) ImageThe War With Spain in 1898 (The Macmillan Wars of the United States)
by David F. Trask
Free Pr; Published: 1981-06; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops: $45.00
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Old West ImageThe Complete Idiot's Guide to the Old West
by Mike Flanagan
Alpha; Published: 1999-07-13; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $57.44
Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State ImageGone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State
by Randolph B. Campbell
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2004-02-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $26.00
Price in other shops: $44.95
Roughing It (The Penguin American Library) ImageRoughing It (The Penguin American Library)
by Mark Twain
Penguin Classics; Published: 1981-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.65
Price in other shops: $16.00
Similar Books and other products
Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy ImageOverlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy
by Max Hastings
Vintage; Published: 2006-01-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.00
Price in other shops: $16.95
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age ImageArc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
by Kevin Boyle
Holt Paperbacks; Published: 2005-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.82
Price in other shops: $17.00
The Confederate War ImageThe Confederate War
by Gary W. Gallagher
Harvard University Press; Published: 1999-03-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.00
Price in other shops: $19.95
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War ImageConfederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
by Tony Horwitz
Vintage; Published: 1999-02-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.76
Price in other shops: $16.00
The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930 (Circles of the Twentieth Century) ImageThe Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930 (Circles of the Twentieth Century)
by Steven Watson
Pantheon; Published: 1996-08-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.88
Price in other shops: $22.00
The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection ImageThe Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2001-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $23.00
Half Slave and Half Free, Revised Edition: The Roots of Civil War ImageHalf Slave and Half Free, Revised Edition: The Roots of Civil War
by Bruce Levine
Hill and Wang; Published: 2005-05-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.97
Price in other shops: $16.95
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Vintage Civil War Library) ImageThis Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Vintage Civil War Library)
by Drew Gilpin Faust
Vintage; Published: 2009-01-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.06
Price in other shops: $16.95
A People's Contest: The Union and Civil War 1861-1865 (Modern War Studies) ImageA People's Contest: The Union and Civil War 1861-1865 (Modern War Studies)
by Phillip Shaw Paludan
Univ Pr of Kansas; Published: 1996-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.78
Price in other shops: $16.95
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States) ImageBattle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States)
by James M. McPherson
Spring Arbor/Ingram; Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-12-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops: $19.95
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories