Nicholas Lemann's Redemption: An Analysis

The United States of America is a country that was founded upon the belief that every citizen in the Union has specific, basic, human rights that no government can take away from them. Through time, this notion has not changed. Rather, the changing notion of citizenship is what is manifested as the primary motivator of the American Civil War and sequentially Reconstruction. By the end of the Civil War in 1865, slavery had been abolished. However, a new presence of darkness was revealed in the years following the war. This new darkness was the ever-growing racial discourse between Black and White southerners. This discourse was so palpable that it affected everything from family affairs to major politics. Nicholas Lemann’s Redemption: The last

Battle of the Civil War delves into the intricacies that surround the Reconstruction period in the former Confederate states of Mississippi and Louisiana. Lemann expertly portrays the severity of the radical differences during Reconstruction, which includes his imperative depiction of the violence endured and produced throughout the late nineteenth century.

His rendition of life in postbellum southern states, especially Mississippi, goes even further to describe the corruption embedded in the politics regarding formerly Confederate states. Moreover, Lemann describes the events and undertakings in postwar Mississippi and Louisiana through a masterful work that accurately exhibits the racial discourse that shaped the entire Reconstruction Era in Redemption.
The most prominent and repulsive display of violence is first discussed in the prologue of Nicholas Lemann’s Redemption. It is here that an account of the massacre in Colfax, Louisiana is recorded. Therein, the Colfax massacre is recounted as a battle; however, the slaughter of more than seventy-one black citizens compared to the controversial death of one white man suggests that there was no fight between the blacks and whites. Instead, it is rather clear that the white citizens, under the command of Christopher Columbus Nash, were motivated by pure hatred of the opposite race to butcher innocent black citizens (Prologue). This,

however, is not the most horrific aspect of the massacre in Colfax. The means by which the southern white supremacists took the lives of the helpless blacks is appalling, to say the least. Raining cannon fire from above the city, Nash’s men corralled the opposition into the courthouse, where they had gone seeking refuge from the barrage of gunfire Nash’s more powerfully armed men were exuding upon them. At this point Nash, clearly victorious at this point, enticed a black prisoner to set the courthouse ablaze, killing almost all who were inside (Prologue). Moreover, those who made it out either fled or were taken as prisoners, a rather insignificant matter as the prisoners were executed and those who fled were hunted down and killed. Colfax is only one, albeit the most detailed, instance of White Violence in the South during Reconstruction. Numerous mentions of violence throughout Southern states during reconstruction appear throughout Redemption. In many instances, they are used to more appropriately illuminate the matter of corruption that was increasingly growing throughout the Reconstruction Era. The primary intersection of violence and corruption comes in the form of “White Line” organizations and “taxpayer’s leagues.” The white men that made up these organizations were some of the main proprietors of racial violence in the South, as they were formed to suppress, by force if necessary, the votes of black men in order to return the government to the thralls of the primarily white, Democratic Party.
Lemann notes on multiple occasions the influence that White Liners and the taxpayer’s leagues had over the black voters, and even black officeholders.

The suppression of the black voters was solely done through violence and the ensuing fear caused by the whites’ terrorism of the blacks. Lemann utilizes a series of questions and answers between a congressional investigating committee and a black farmer, Moses Kellaby, to further display the constant fear in which black citizens lived under the oppression of White Liners. Kellaby is recorded to state that the “White Line” organizations purpose is to “…kill all the darkies out,” and later goes on to add that, “[I]f a man does not vote as [the White Liners] want him to, he stands a poor hack. If a man does not vote the democratic ticket, he is gone up.” (Chapter 2). This inquisition is not only representative of the fear in which the black community lived in, but also the corruption of electoral fraud perpetrated by the White Liners, and presumably the Democratic Party. However, White Liners and taxpayer’s leagues were not the only ones guilty of corruption. Adelbert Ames, the Radical Republican Governor of Mississippi (among other titles such as General and Senator), was rather new to the scene of politics when he took office in 1868. He held his governorship for two years and was succeeded by his rival, James Lusk Alcorn in 1870. Alcorn was a former Democrat who, after realizing that Mississippi’s popular vote was that of

black men, denounced his membership of the Democratic Party and became a member of the Republican Party. This, in itself, is an act of corruption, but what he did while in office is a much more intolerable act. Alcorn effectively replaced true Republican officeholders with “Republican” puppets of the Democratic party. When voters in Mississippi realized this, it was evident that Ames needed to be reelected as Governor of Mississippi in 1863. Late in the campaign, Alcorn put forth a bill to postpone the election for another year, but due to Ames’ political strategy the bill was never passed. Ames described the corruption which occurred in the weeks preceding the election day to his wife, Blanche Butler Ames, stating that, “[m]oney, threats, flattery, promises, everything is being used by the enemy” (Chapter 1). However, Alcorn and other Democrats are not the only culprits of corruption. Lemann manifests that even President Ulysses S. Grant is guilty of corruption when he refused to send federal troops to Vicksburg, Mississippi in July, 1863. Grant justified his refusal to send troops to Vicksburg by determining that he would lose voter support in southern states, if he had any at all. While this may just be terrible judgement by Grant, it classifies as corruption due to the fact that innocent citizens of the Union were slain while Grant had the power to, at least, intervene and stop the situation from escalating further. Grant’s power-driven decision not to immediately send troops to Vicksburg, in fact, furthered the rise of racial violence in the South (Chapter 2). Many more counts of corruption can be found throughout the Reconstruction Era; however, the “White Line” organizations, taxpayer’s leagues, and the Democratic Party are the most mentioned, and dangerous, culprits of corruption in Redemption.
Reconstruction was an era high in violence and corruption, primarily in the former Confederate States of America. Today, violence and corruption still plague America in a very similar fashion as it did during Reconstruction. Countless riots, shootings, and unnecessary killings have occurred across America in the last decade, and the root of the problem is still the same as it was over a century ago. The racial discourse between black and white Americans is still the plague of the egalitarian utopia that America is portrayed as. Even though time has changed its parameters, racism is still the largest obstacle America has yet to overcome. Today’s racism stems from the racial discourse of the Reconstruction Era, in which whites had a, “…deep-seated conviction of Negro inferiority with which most white Americans, no matter where they lived or how they had felt about slavery, were imbued…” (Chapter 1). Though many attempts have been made for equality between whites and blacks, and an immense amount of success has been had in doing so, racism still sadly flourishes in some parts of the country. In his Note to the Reader, Lemann quotes W.E.B. Du Bois saying that, “[t]he problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line” (A Note to the Reader). However, Du Bois overestimated the ability of America to resolve the issue of racial discourse, as today racism is still one of the largest concerns of Americans. There are countless reasons as to why History is recorded. In Lemann’s Redemption, racial discourse is the most prominently displayed theme and through this Lemann allows his readers to look upon the mistakes of the past and educate them in the hopes that these mistakes are not repeated in the future.