Publishers Weekly
★ 11/27/2023
In the months leading up to the 1874 midterm elections, the White League, a racist vigilante organization, terrorized Louisiana, recounts former Wall Street Journal editor Cwiklik (House Rules) in this meticulous and propulsive blow-by-blow chronicle of the political violence and the federal government’s response. To prevent Black freedmen from being elected or reelected by majority Black populations, the White League sought to suppress Black voters and their white allies. Several massacres occurred; the largest were at Colfax and Coushatta, where more than 150 Black people were tortured and executed. In the wake of the election violence—which culminated with a White League coup attempt in New Orleans—President Ulysses S. Grant dispatched Civil War general Philip Sheridan to New Orleans, Vicksburg, and other restive locales (the White League had inspired copycat groups across the Deep South) on an undercover mission. Claiming to be on his way to vacation in Cuba, Sheridan was tasked to “devise a plan for dealing with the new paramilitary threat.” His telegrams, which described white “terrorism” in the region, were leaked to the press, causing a scandal. Cwiklik’s narrative seamlessly moves between developments in Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, while bringing into focus other events, including a state visit by the king of Hawaii, that shed light on contemporary attitudes regarding race and governance. Readers will be engrossed. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
"In Sheridan’s Secret Mission Robert Cwiklik describes in often chilling detail how the South may have lost the Civil War, but it won the next one, a guerrilla war to derail Reconstruction and hold blacks back another hundred years. It’s as enlightening as it is appalling." — John Strausbaugh, author of City of Sedition: The History of New York City During the Civil War
"Cwiklik's fast-paced narrative takes us on a harrowing journey into the aftermath of the Civil War, a largely forgotten period when the White League and other Klan-like organizations dominated the South. It was a time when threats and intimidation gave way to violence and murder as the nation, weary of Reconstruction, averted its eyes from the disenfranchisement and outright persecution of former slaves. It's a story of horrifying atrocities, arrogant villains, and compelling and tragic heroes. A stunning read." — Ben Cleary, author of Searching for Stonewall Jackson
"Anyone who thinks polarization is a recent phenomenon in American history ought to read this searing, necessary book. We have been taught that Reconstruction was a failure. In fact, it succeeded so well in bringing formerly enslaved Black people toward equality that it led to a racist backlash that has never ended. In calm, dispassionate prose, Cwiklik zeroes in on one episode of violence and the efforts of the federal government to right horrific wrongs. . . . the story told in Sheridan’s Secret Mission, and the ultimate failure of that mission, points toward the political turmoil we face today." — Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World and Revolution Song
"With propulsive storytelling and quiet conviction, Cwiklik throws open a door on an essential but little-known moment in American history. Better angels in New Orleans tried to protect the rights of freed blacks after the Civil War, only to see the movement crushed by a savage surge of white supremacy. This is history at its best: passionate, surprising, blazingly relevant, and contagiously readable." — Neil King, author of American Ramble
"Meticulous and propulsive. . . . Readers will be engrossed." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A deeply researched, narrative history recounting the little-known late-Reconstruction era mission of General Philip Sheridan, a Union Army hero dispatched to the South ten years after the Civil War to protect the rights of newly freed Black citizens, who were under siege by violent paramilitary groups like the White League intent on erasing their postwar gains." — Next Big Idea Club
"An impeccably researched, character-driven narrative history recounting the fascinating late-Reconstruction Era mission of Gen. Philip Sheridan, a Union hero dispatched to the South 10 years after the Civil War to protect the rights of newly freed Black men who were under siege by violent paramilitary groups like the White League, intent on erasing their postwar gains." — Jacksonville Journal-Courier
JANUARY 2024 - AudioFile
This audiobook focuses on one of the most contentious and misunderstood periods in American history, the reconstruction of the South after the Civil War. Rick Adamson keeps to a steady, impartial tone, carefully pacing a narrative that unties many historical knots while unfolding a sadly paradoxical series of events. The subtitle tells the tale: "How the South Won the War After the Civil War." President Grant wanted to annex Santo Domingo as a "refuge" for oppressed Blacks but was thwarted. His assignment of a stubby Union general to pacify the Louisiana legislature illustrates how united public opposition can win victories that armies cannot. Adamson is very listenable, and he effectively illuminates a dark passage in American democracy whose effects continue to reverberate today. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-10-13
A sobering history of the failure of Reconstruction in the defeated former Confederacy.
Philip Sheridan (1831-1888), writes Cwiklik, was no icon of civil rights: “He shared most of the prejudices against black people harbored by white Americans in those days.” He was, however, a fierce unionist, as well as the designer of several scorched-earth campaigns against the secessionists during the Civil War. It was for that reason that Ulysses S. Grant sent Sheridan to Texas and Louisiana under the cover of a pleasure tour in order to report on the progress of Reconstruction. There was much to report, for even as Black Americans were entering government, they were being terrorized by the newly formed KKK and the far less secretive White League, a “paramilitary group unhinged by black voting and officeholding.” The White League stormed New Orleans, murdering Black police officers, and they executed some 70 Black militiamen captured in western Louisiana. Sheridan filed a widely circulated report denouncing the killers as “banditti,” and Grant prepared to send in federal troops. However, “at every turn,” Cwiklik writes, quoting Grant, “obstacles had been thrown in the way of federal efforts to prosecute the killers, while ‘so-called conservative’ newspapers ‘justified the massacre’ and denounced U.S. law enforcement officials as agents of ‘tyranny’ and ‘despotism.’ ” It didn’t help that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of states’ rights on matters of voting, thus limiting federal jurisdiction and effectively disempowering Reconstruction. This ruling allowed the Confederacy to remain alive, at least in theory, a matter that’s playing out in the government today as white supremacists in power seek to limit civil rights. Grant later rued the “death by suffocation” of laws meant to secure Black rights as one of the great failures of his time in office.
A timely contribution to the history of Reconstruction and civil rights.
