A Man of Bad Reputation: The Murder of John Stephens and the Contested Landscape of North Carolina Reconstruction

Author:   Drew A. Swanson
Publisher:   The University of North Carolina Press
ISBN:  

9781469674704


Pages:   220
Publication Date:   29 August 2023
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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A Man of Bad Reputation: The Murder of John Stephens and the Contested Landscape of North Carolina Reconstruction


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Overview

Five years after the Civil War, North Carolina Republican state senator John W. Stephens was found murdered inside the Caswell County Courthouse. Stephens fought for the rights of freedpeople, and his killing by the Ku Klux Klan ultimately led to insurrection, Governor William W. Holden's impeachment, and the early unwinding of Reconstruction in North Carolina. In recounting Stephens's murder, the subsequent investigation and court proceedings, and the long-delayed confessions that revealed what actually happened at the courthouse in 1870, Drew A. Swanson tells a story of race, politics, and social power shaped by violence and profit. The struggle for dominance in Reconstruction-era rural North Carolina, Swanson argues, was an economic and ecological transformation. Arson, beating, and murder became tools to control people and landscapes, and the ramifications of this violence continued long afterward. The failure to prosecute anyone for decades after John Stephens's assassination left behind a vacuum, as each side shaped its own memory of Stephens and his murder. The malleability of and contested storytelling around Stephens's legacy presents a window into the struggle to control the future of the South.

Full Product Details

Author:   Drew A. Swanson
Publisher:   The University of North Carolina Press
Imprint:   The University of North Carolina Press
Weight:   0.272kg
ISBN:  

9781469674704


ISBN 10:   146967470
Pages:   220
Publication Date:   29 August 2023
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

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Reviews

"A short, crisply written account . . . . Swanson has a feel for human drama and for Caswell County itself, set amid the ""rolling red clay hills"" of a once-prosperous tobacco-growing region whose inhabitants were divided almost equally between white and black . . . . a valuable contribution to the literature of Reconstruction.""--Wall Street Journal Drawing on personal testimony, newspaper reports, and period correspondence, Swanson attempts to reconstruct John Stephens's life--and to show how his murder shaped North Carolina politics for years to come.""--The Civil War Monitor"


Author Information

Drew A. Swanson is Jack N. and Addie D. Averitt Distinguished Professor of Southern History at Georgia Southern University.

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