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OverviewFive 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 DetailsAuthor: Drew A. SwansonPublisher: The University of North Carolina Press Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press Weight: 0.272kg ISBN: 9781469674711ISBN 10: 1469674718 Pages: 220 Publication Date: 29 August 2023 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Manufactured on demand  We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier. Table of ContentsReviews"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 InformationDrew A. Swanson is Jack N. and Addie D. Averitt Distinguished Professor of Southern History at Georgia Southern University. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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