A review by sinceremercy
The Revolution That Failed: Reconstruction in Natchitoches by Adam Fairclough

5.0

Rarely have I read a more important book. It's astonishing how as a person who lives in Natchitoches, who is interested in this subject, and who indeed has worked in the archives here, so much of the information in here was completely new to me. It is as if there has been a complete cultural erasure of the political struggle that existed in Natchitoches, and a sense that it always has been and always will be a conservative area-- not that there were powerful Black men who held power here in the 19th century until they were forcibly and violently opposed by a white supremacist counter-revolution. We know about the Colfax riot nearby, but "nothing like that happened here."

The book is well crafted, well written, and well researched, and is entirely comprehensible even to someone who does not know a great deal about Reconstruction already.