The Bloody Shirt: Terror after Appomattox
Written by Stephen Budiansky
Narrated by Phil Gigante
4/5
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About this audiobook
From 1866 to 1876, more than three thousand free African Americans and their white allies were killed in cold blood by terrorist organizations in the South.
Over the years this fact would not only be forgotten, but a series of exculpatory myths would arise to cover the tracks of this orchestrated campaign of atrocity and violence. Little memory would persist of the simple truth: that a well-organized and directed terrorist movement, led by ex-Confederates who refused to accept the verdict of Appomattox and the enfranchisement of the freedmen, succeeded in overthrowing the freely elected representative governments of every Southern state.
Stephen Budiansky brings to life this largely forgotten but epochal chapter of American history through the intertwining lives of five courageous men who tried to stop the violence and keep the dream of freedom and liberty alive. They include James Longstreet, the ablest general of the Confederate army, who would be vilified and ostracized for insisting that the South must accept the terms of the victor and the enfranchisement of black men; Lewis Merrill of the 7th Cavalry, who fought the Klan in South Carolina; and Prince Rivers, who escaped from slavery, fought for the Union, became a state representative and magistrate, and died performing the same menial labor he had as a slave. Using letters and diaries left by these men as well as startlingly hateful diatribes published in Southern newspapers after the war, Budiansky proves beyond a doubt that terrorism is hardly new to America.
Stephen Budiansky
Stephen Budiansky is a journalist and military historian whose writings frequently appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic Monthly. His previous books include Her Majesty’s Spymaster, Air Power, and Battle of Wits. He lives in Virginia.
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Reviews for The Bloody Shirt
11 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Just so enlightening. Hidden part of our nations history even if it is a ugly part !
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5It took about 15 minutes of listening before I stopped. If you’re going to tell history, please tell it in context. Do you really believe that people from the South were basically Hitler just because they live in the South? Come on now! To the author I say, “Try reading a book about the topic that wasn’t written by the victors of the war!” I like my history lessons raw and truthful, within the whole context of the time, no matter how much it may force me to change my own thinking.