The Bloody Shirt How right wing terrorists shut down reconstruction,

rewrote the history of the civil war and disenfranchised black Americans for a hundred years.

(The right wing has been at this forever, haven't they?)

July 2008

Stephen Budiansky talked about his book, The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox. The author details how from 1865 to 1876 organizations of southern whites opposed to Republican policies and the voting and political rights of ex-slaves used assassination and violence to end reconstruction. Mr. Budiansky asserts that at least 3000 people were murdered including over 100 public officials during the insurgency against the victors of the civil war. Following his talk, he responded to audience members' questions. Stephen Budiansky has written 12 books on science, history, and nature. He was a deputy editor, foreign editor, and national security correspondent for U.S. News and World Report. Currently, he is an Atlantic Monthly correspondent.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/206229-1

Video and transcript at link.

Fyi

Amazon link for browsing the content, reviews, etc.
http://www.amazon.com/Bloody-Shirt-Terror-After-Civil/dp/0452290163/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t

that then, it was the rethugs that freed the slaves. Being born in Mississippi in 1953, I saw the degree of racism in the south 70 years AFTER the war. Later, moving to VA, I saw how the Dems were like the rethugs of today. The great Harry F Byrd (D) who was a schoolmate of my mothers shut down VA public schools to protest integration. Oh how things change~

Whining about big government, check.
Revising history to deny their opponents a victory, check.
Terrorizing people of color and their supporters, check.

It's as if the last 135 years never happened for these people.

he wasn't fighting for the north he was fighting to free the slaves if you get my drift.
My great grand father was a slave owner and two of his sons, my grand dad being one, joined up with the union army because they felt they were just like they were just different color with different cultures but the same inside. We have our grand dads discharge papers in a safe deposit box and have for years now. We're all real proud of our Grand Dad and our Grand Uncle.

It would be really interesting to see them.

I have an old passport of my grandfather's when the president of Mexico gave him political asylum. His pic doesn't look like a happy camper but it beat being shot.

I read through the documents last year in advance of a family reunion, which was full of white republicans, all descendants of these KKK members in Robeson County.

I'd begun looking through lynching documentation sites online but the lynching victim's name isn't on there. He was summarily shot on the presumption that he was trying to "outrage a young white female of high character" in the nearby woods. Classic. I've wondered about trying to find his descendants.

My ancestor, a confederate army captain, was acquitted immediately after leading the lynching . . . he was quoted as proudly saying "My finger pulled the trigger that shot the n***er." He went on to serve for decades in the NC legislature. Then they named a small town in Robeson County (near Fayetteville) after him.

Nice.

You're lucky that those records were accessible. Most of ours are in other countries that I still can't get to.

I see it's available also at Audible.com. I just recently renewed my Gold Plan, and I was wondering what next to order.

And enshrined it in the schoolbooks