The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War - Stephen Budiansky
The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War - Stephen Budiansky
Non-Fiction
Pages: 352
I feel as though through the subject matter alone I should give this book five stars, if only so people might be more inclined to read it and realise the true horrors of Reconstruction in the post-Civil War South. This sad recounting of misery, brutality, murder and sheer inhumanity of the Southern whites towards the freed slaves was truly monstrous to read: if the brutalised freedmen had risen up and massacred every last one of their persecutors it would have been justifiable homicide. Truly, it can be said that the Northern states won the war and lost the peace. Sadly, it was the freed slaves who paid the price, not the North.
But I would not give this book five stars. I found it a frustrating read, not because of the content (although heaven knows that was painful reading), but because of Budiansky's chosen narrative style. At times this book reads very much like History, and it skips along in a readable authoritative style. But particularly when it comes to recounting particular events (usually, murders, massacres and lynchings) he switches to an almost folksy, down-home style, full of references to people's 'daddies', with long run-on sentences and irreverent asides, as though one could imagine an old-timer recounting the tale to wide-eyed audience. It's clearly meant to impart emotion and drama to the tale, but I found it had the opposite effect on me.
I also found it a shame that whilst Budiansky hinges his narrative on the lives of a number of individuals, all bar one were white. Personalising the story certainly gives it weight, and I can understand the approach, but one cannot help but feel the absence of those freed slaves' voices - White Saviour narratives are ten-a-penny even in the post-Civil War South. But he has clearly done his homework, and whilst this is no scholarly authoritative history text, it sure packs a punch.