But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction

by George C. Rable

Overview

This is a comprehensive examination of the use of violence by conservative southerners in the post-Civil War South to subvert Federal Reconstruction policies, overthrow Republican state governments, restore Democratic power, and reestablish white racial hegemony. Historians have often stressed the limited and even conservative nature of Federal policy in the Reconstruction South. However, George C. Rable argues, white southerners saw the intent and the results of that policy as revolutionary. Violence therefore became a counterrevolutionary instrument, placing the South in a pattern familiar to students of world revolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820330112
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	10/01/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

GEORGE C. RABLE is Professor and Charles G. Summersell Chair in Southern History at the University of Alabama. His books include Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! and The Confederate Republic.

GEORGE C. RABLE is Professor and Charles G. Summersell Chair in Southern History at the University of Alabama. His books include Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! and The Confederate Republic.

Table of Contents

Preface to the New Edition     ix
Acknowledgments     xiii
Introduction     xv
American Violence, Southern Violence, and Reconstruction     1
The Specter of Saint-Domingue     16
The Memphis Race Riot     33
New Orleans and the Emergence of Political Violence     43
Military Reconstruction: The Triumph of Jacobinism     59
The Origins of the Counterrevolution     81
The Search for a Strategy     101
Counterrevolution Aborted: Louisiana, 1871-1875     122
Counterrevolution Triumphant: Mississippi, 1873-1876     144
1876: The Triumph of Reaction     163
Epilogue: On the Inevitability of Tragedy     187
Notes     193
Bibliographical Essay     247
Index     253

Editorial Reviews

An imaginative, well-written book . . . Correctly identifies conservative white resistance to Reconstruction as a counterrevolutionary movement willing to use any means necessary to eliminate Republican conrol of state and local government.

American Historical Review

Rable has done a prodigious amount of digging in the sources. . . . A useful guide to the grimmer side of Reconstruction history.

Journal of American History

Brings to us the simple and terrible reminder that there was no peace for blacks and their white supporters in Dixie . . . A well-written monograph that clarifies both the successes and failures of Reconstruction.

Journal of Southern History

"Compelling and comprehensive . . . Shows Reconstruction to have been bloodier and deadlier than many would like to concede."--Library Journal

"An imaginative, well-written book . . . Correctly identifies conservative white resistance to Reconstruction as a counterrevolutionary movement willing to use any means necessary to eliminate Republican conrol of state and local government."--American Historical Review

"Rable has done a prodigious amount of digging in the sources. . . . A useful guide to the grimmer side of Reconstruction history."--Journal of American History

"Brings to us the simple and terrible reminder that there was no peace for blacks and their white supporters in Dixie . . . A well-written monograph that clarifies both the successes and failures of Reconstruction."--Journal of Southern History

From the Publisher