Enlightening cautionary tale whose fury resonates today.
A harrowing dive into Louisiana’s gubernatorial election of 1872, which pitted defenders of Reconstruction against white supremacists.
CNN journalist Bash and veteran co-author Fisher offer an elucidating case study in America’s bitter history of refusing to recognize election results. In Reconstruction-era Louisiana, election integrity was deeply compromised by vying Democratic and Republican forces. At issue was the refusal of the former Confederates, white supremacists, and Andrew Johnson Democrats to accept the civil rights of formerly enslaved people staunchly supported by Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party. The charismatic, corrupt “carpetbagger” Republican Henry Warmoth became governor of Louisiana in 1868, allying himself with President Ulysses S. Grant and African Americans and instituting a patronage system. That state’s 1868 election had been marked by violence and fraud, much of it due to the makeshift political system constructed "in the ruins of war." By the gubernatorial election of 1872, the authors comment, "at every step in the process there existed some type of intimidation, cheating or fraud intended to change the outcome.” A feud within the Louisiana Republican Party led to Warmoth backing Democrat (and Confederate war hero) John McEnery against Republican William P. Kellogg, a member of the faction that charged Warmoth with betraying the African Americans who had helped elect him. Weeks after the 1872 election, ballots were still being tabulated; observers and reporters were frequently denied access to observe the counting, and both sides claimed victory. Dueling inaugurations took place, along with open insurrection and a massacre of Blacks in Colfax County. Court cases vied to decide the issue, essentially leaving the matter up to the states in US v Cruikshank, a blow to Reconstruction that laid the foundation of Southern segregation. The authors manage to render the tortuous details of these political shenanigans engaging, and the consequences timely and fresh.
Enlightening cautionary tale whose fury resonates today.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781335081070
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2024
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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