Freedom on Trial: The First Post-Civil War Battle Over Civil Rights and Voter Suppression

by Scott Farris New York Times bestselling author of Kennedy & Reagan: Why Their Legacies E

Overview

The Confederacy lost the Civil War but quickly began to win the peace when a mysterious organization arose called the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux, as it was then called, sought to restore white supremacy by terrorizing the formerly enslaved to prevent them from voting or owning firearms. To support Black resistance to the KKK’s campaign of murder and mayhem, President Ulysses S. Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus in large portions of South Carolina and sent the famed 7th Cavalry to make mass arrests.

Grant’s new attorney general, the first former Confederate to serve in a presidential Cabinet and an ardent advocate for Black equality, Amos T. Akerman, aggressively prosecuted the Ku Klux in a series of sensational trials that shocked the nation and forced a reckoning regarding just how much the Civil War and the recently enacted Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution had changed America and its notions of citizenship.

Highlighting forgotten Black and white civil rights pioneers and weaving in the story of the author’s own great-grandfather’s crimes as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Freedom on Trial tells a gripping story of a moment pregnant with promise when race relations in the United States might have taken a dramatically different turn. It is a story that also offers a sober lesson for those engaged in the ongoing work of fulfilling the American promise of equality for all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493046355
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/15/2020
Pages:	392
Sales rank:	1,088,916
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

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Scott Farris is the New York Times bestselling author of Kennedy & Reagan: Why Their Legacies Endure and Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race but Changed the Nation. A former bureau chief for United Press International and a political columnist, he has interviewed most of the men and women who have sought the presidency over the past thirty years, and has managed several political campaigns. He appeared on the 2011 C-SPAN television series The Contenders, and has appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and “Melissa Harris-Perry.” His work has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and two children.

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Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction xi

Chapter 1 "The dismal hour draws nigh" 1

Chapter 2 "No special privileges or peculiar favors" 23

Chapter 3 "Pray that God may forgive Ku Klux" 45

Chapter 4 "All kindness [is] evidence of timidity" 66

Chapter 5 "Such a state of social disorganization" 86

Chapter 6 "Teach the negro his duty to be quiet" 104

Chapter 7 "We will not be able to control the court" 126

Chapter 8 "The Constitution is on trial" 145

Chapter 9 "The right to bear arms is not a right" 163

Chapter 10 "It has got to be a bore" 183

Chapter 11 "After they got done with me, I had no sense" 200

Chapter 12 "I had [no] right to preach against [such] raids" 218

Chapter 13 "The shortest cut is the 'shanghaiing process'" 235

Chapter 14 "Freedom is not safe while we have a Supreme Court" 250

Chapter 15 "Jim Williams's truth is marching on" 276

Acknowledgments 309

Notes 313

Bibliography 337

Index 345

About the Author 361

Editorial Reviews

" A timely and timeless study, "Freedom on Trial: The First Post-Civil War Battle Over Civil Rights and Voter Suppression" is an impressively meticulous work of historical research and one that helps to explain current 2016-2020 voter suppression efforts by some southern states such as Georgia and Mississippi with respect to their black voters. Enhanced for academia with the inclusion of twenty-four pages of Notes, an eight page Bibliography, and a sixteen page Index, "Freedom on Trial" is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to community, college, and university library 19th Century American History collections in general, and Civil Right/Voter Suppression supplemental curriculum studies lists in particular. "-The Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher