After Appomattox

Stetson Kennedy's premise - argued and documented here as never before - is that the verdict of Appomattox was largely reversed during Reconstruction. A determined southern oligarchy, he says, wrenched political and cultural victory out of military defeat. In this dramatic contribution to the history of Reconstruction, Kennedy brings to light thirty-three long-buried testimonials from victims and perpetrators of Ku Klux Klan terror that were taken by a Joint Congressional Committee in 1871-72. They form the core of this account of the decade following the Civil War, which Kennedy describes as…