The Record of Murders and Outrages: Racial Violence and the Fight over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction (Civil War America)

A study that scholars and lay readers can follow without difficulty.The book packs a powerful punch in a short read that impels you to examine the original documents and look for the freedmen testimonials upon which the book was based. The epilogue, notes, and prologue provide readers with ample evidence on the scholarship related to racial violence against African Americans in the U.S. I highly recommend this book to those researching Freedmen’s Bureau records and the Reconstruction Era.

William Blair has used a significant amount of sources including the National Archives and the Bureau of Refugees, Freedom, and Abandoned Lands to research the topic of this book over the last thirty years. This volume provides readers with information that the government and the military uncovered during the post-Civil War period and the early years of Reconstruction concerning atrocities committed across the South toward African Americans. Many in President Johnson’s administration, Democratic Party, and conservative republicans failed to believe the racial related murders, assaults, rapes, burning down of Black churches, the white South’s rejection of the terms of reunion, and the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan often due to partisan politics and characterizing the new conflict as fake news. Many individuals blamed the radical Republicans for exaggerating the behavior perpetuated by Southerners in order to send the military into the South and to gain the support of freedmen to gain suffrage and vote Republican.Blair, makes strong arguments that critics disregarded evidence from first hand witnesses antidotal accounts, newspaper reports, military and Freedmen Bureau employee explanations, and attempted to claim that crime against African Americans was nothing more than the violence that happened across the United States. Many offered that whites were victims as well that were perpetuated by Black people. He further uses the explanations of Freedmen’s Bureau officers stationed in the South that former soldiers persecuted freed people as well as white Republicans through terrorism. An important point is made by Dr. Blair that without the familiarity of President Andrew Johnson, Freedmen's Bureau Commissioner O. O. Howard and his assistant commissioners in the readmitted states accumulated accounts of "murders and outrages" to sequence the degree of violence, to prove that the reports of a peaceful South were wrong, and helped prove to Congress that martial law was needed. Additionally, they collected statistics that often contradicted the President’s policies and supported radical Republican efforts for military rule of the South.Records show that African American supplied information to the Freedman’s Bureau’s and others at the possible expense of their own lives. White supremacists begrudged the work of the Freedom Bureau and did everything possible to stop testimony from being provided by former slaves that often resulted in state and local courts not prosecuting individuals guilty of serious wrongdoings. Additionally, they boycotted elections, attempted economic coercion, and other modes of bullying that failed to prevent progress during Reconstruction. The Freedom Bureau assessed that they only received a fraction of crimes committed against Black people. Blair shows that their efforts led to the passage of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, and slowed the readmission of Southern states, especially Georgia. Additionally, he found that their collected records included between five thousand and six thousand criminal incidents, however their records do not calculate the amount of people killed. Furthermore, Blair does an excellent job in telling the story of the massacres that took place in Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana in 1866 and goes beyond the violence committed by night riders, the KKK, and political terrorists in rural communities throughout the South. While the degree of violence against Black people remain improperly assessed by the government and historians, Blair has provided historians and students with a great deal of important information and things to further study and research.This book combines valuable and fresh historical detail with very compelling story-telling, making it enjoyable for all readers. This is an excellent book that is fast moving that includes an excellent epilogue on lynching, and the work of Ida B. Wells-Barnett. It tells stories that need to be told.This reviewer highly recommends this great book.

This is one of those books that is difficult to read, not because of the author’s writing style, but because of its presentation of horrors from our past. Author William Blair convincingly shows the breadth and depth of violence in the South during the early Reconstruction years by those who refused to accept the results of the Civil War. From simple assaults to rape, murder, and even massacres committed by White dead-enders against African-Americans and White Unionists, the scope of these crimes is horrifying. Compounding the problems was the reluctance and even refusal of local officials to bring the perpetrators to justice. Were it not for the efforts of many in the Freedmens Bureau, these horrors would have been covered up and not documented. U.S. Grant, at first reluctant to accept reports of these wrongdoings, is portrayed in a very positive light in supporting the Freedmens Bureau and directing military efforts to intervene. As if these crimes were not bad enough, the actions of pro-Southern politicians in denying the stark evidence of these atrocities without evidence to support their specious claims is sadly reminiscent of certain politicians and others today. History continues to repeat itself.