The Day Freedom Died

The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction

By: Charles Lane

Narrated by: Jim Bond

Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

America after the Civil War was a land of shattered promises and entrenched hatreds. In the explosive South, danger took many forms: white extremists loyal to a defeated world terrorized former slaves, while in the halls of government, bitter and byzantine political warfare raged between Republicans and Democrats.

In The Day Freedom Died, Charles Lane draws us vividly into this war-torn world with a true story whose larger dimensions have never been fully explored. Here is the epic tale of the Colfax Massacre, the mass murder of more than 60 black men on Easter Sunday, 1873, that propelled a small Louisiana town into the center of the nation's consciousness. As the smoke cleared, the perpetrators created a falsified version of events to justify their crimes.

But a tenacious Northern-born lawyer rejected the lies. Convinced that the Colfax murderers must be punished lest the suffering of the Civil War be in vain, U.S. Attorney James Beckwith of New Orleans pursued the killers despite death threats and bureaucratic intrigue - until the final showdown at the Supreme Court of the United States. The ruling that decided the case influenced race relations in the United States for decades.

An electrifying piece of historical detective work, The Day Freedom Died brings to life a gallery of memorable characters in addition to Beckwith: Willie Calhoun, the iconoclastic Southerner who dreamed of building a bastion of equal rights on his Louisiana plantation; Christopher Columbus Nash, the white supremacist avenger who organized the Colfax Massacre; William Ward, the black Union Army veteran who took up arms against white terrorists; Ulysses S. Grant, the well-intentioned but beleaguered president; and Joseph P. Bradley, the brilliant justice of the Supreme Court whose political and legal calculations would shape the drama's troubling final act.

©2008 Charles Lane (P)2008 Brilliance Audio

Critic reviews

"Tell[s] the story of the single most egregious act of terrorism during Reconstruction...in vivid, compelling prose....A gripping account." ( The Washington Post Book World)

Unfortunately some of these issues still in 2022

This story is another example of how RWS can mistreat & kill Black people with the power of government. Even with the 13th, 14th & 15th ammendments the killers still were not tried for their murders. The foundation of this country is based on race (specifically Anti-Black) that is the reason nothing solid can be sustained on it. I appreciate this story being told.

Always Learn

If you could sum up The Day Freedom Died in three words, what would they be?

Great history read

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Day Freedom Died?

Learning that Grant had to send troops in to Alabama so that elected officials could take office in 1870s. Similar to the integration of the University of Alabama in the 1960s. Attitudes are slow to change and history repeats itself.

Have you listened to any of Jim Bond’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes

Any additional comments?

We know so much about the time leading up to the Civil War and the time of the Civil War but not as much about Reconstruction. This book put a personal face on that period and has given me greater respect for President Grant.

Betrayal at its worst

Whoever still debates was the civil war fought over states rights or slavery, this book clearly answers that. 600,000+ americans die in a war and it's politics back to normal afterwards. The civil rights act should have been in place in 1868 but it took 100 years and this book explains why. I recommend

The narration if this book is a bit odd. The narrator has a good cadence to his story telling but at times quotes people in a weird voice trying to sound like a southerner I guess. However he sounds more like "FogHorn LegHorn" from old cartoons and it doesn't matter if the quoted person is white or black. Also (having grown up in central Louisiana) the narrator mispronounces Colfax and Rapides Parish through out the whole book.

still a good book

A Story That Had to Be Told

This was the best book on Reconstruction and the Supreme Court's betrayal of the Civil Right's Amendments that I've read yet.
The story of the massacre is thrilling and full of heroes, villains and anti heroes. It would make a great movie. The legal chapters are no less exciting and provide a concise explanation of how Radical Republican efforts were thwarted by violence, votes, and legal wrangling of the Southern white supremacists.
I recommend this book highly, especially to people who want to know what happened after the Civil War but aren't ready to sit through an exhaustive history.

Very detailed, fully developed, thoroughly researc

Charles Lane does a super job of presenting this Massacre as not only a horrifying instance in American history but also as a groundbreaking legal precedent that has haunted our nation ever since. It was truly spooky to read the events and headlines of the reconstruction era and wake up daily reading the same in my morning paper. We've been here before. I wonder, are we going to kowtow to the supremacists again?