Introduction; 1 Reconstruction as Redemption; 2 The Politics of Suffering; 3 Wounds and Scars; 4 The Militarization of Freedom; 5 Ballots and Bullets; 6 The Violent Bear It Away; Epilogue; Acknowledgments; Notes; Index
Summary
In the months after the end of the Civil War, there was one word on everyone's lips: redemption. From the fiery language of Radical Republicans calling for a reconstruction of the former Confederacy to the petitions of those individuals who had worked the land as slaves to the white supremacists who would bring an end to Reconstruction in the late 1870s, this crucial concept informed the ways in which many people-both black and white, northerner and southerner-imagined the transformation of the American South. Beyond Redemption explores how the violence of a protracted civil war shaped the meaning of freedom and citizenship in the new South
