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The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case: Race, Law, and Justice in the Reconstruction Era by Michael A. Ross (review)

The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case: Race, Law, and Justice in the Reconstruction Era by... in a racist white judicial system. For young men like Reed, who stole flour, started fights, and roamed with gangs, incarceration was the direct out - growth of white fear of black freedom and free labor. Claims of “worse than slavery” should have astounded white residents in the Midwest, had they possessed a less myopic and xenophobic mind-set. It is curious that in this section, Bahde never directly labels the postemancipation Midwest as “Jim Crow,” although that is most certainly what it was. Similarly, in chap- ter 6, Bahde discusses late-century scientists’ insistence on “deep-seated black criminality” and their attempt to “install a scientific state” but never describes this as part of the eugenics movement (151, 153). Historians of African Americans and of emancipation will welcome The Life and Death of Gus Reed for a variety of reasons. Two themes sig- nal new approaches in nineteenth-century American social history. First, Bahde offers a more intimate portrait of the ways in which everyday individuals experienced the American Civil War. In this study, such indi- viduals included free blacks and runaway slaves, antislavery whites, pro- slavery whites, and all manner of midwesterners who found themselves at a crossroads. That Bahde chose http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Journal of the Civil War Era University of North Carolina Press

The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case: Race, Law, and Justice in the Reconstruction Era by Michael A. Ross (review)

Long, Alecia P.
The Journal of the Civil War Era , Volume 6 (1) – Mar 12, 2016
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright @ The University of North Carolina Press
ISSN
2159-9807

Abstract

in a racist white judicial system. For young men like Reed, who stole flour, started fights, and roamed with gangs, incarceration was the direct out - growth of white fear of black freedom and free labor. Claims of “worse than slavery” should have astounded white residents in the Midwest, had they possessed a less myopic and xenophobic mind-set. It is curious that in this section, Bahde never directly labels the postemancipation Midwest as “Jim Crow,” although that is most certainly what it was. Similarly, in chap- ter 6, Bahde discusses late-century scientists’ insistence on “deep-seated black criminality” and their attempt to “install a scientific state” but never describes this as part of the eugenics movement (151, 153). Historians of African Americans and of emancipation will welcome The Life and Death of Gus Reed for a variety of reasons. Two themes sig- nal new approaches in nineteenth-century American social history. First, Bahde offers a more intimate portrait of the ways in which everyday individuals experienced the American Civil War. In this study, such indi- viduals included free blacks and runaway slaves, antislavery whites, pro- slavery whites, and all manner of midwesterners who found themselves at a crossroads. That Bahde chose

Journal

The Journal of the Civil War Era – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Mar 12, 2016

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