Overview

The murder of state senator John Walter Stephens by the Ku Klux Klan in 1870 was a turning point in the fight for equal voting rights in North Carolina. This intriguing and original work is part biography (of both Stephens and his electoral opponent, former U.S. Senator Bedford Brown), part period history, part legal analysis, and part true crime thriller. The author is a retired appellate criminal defense attorney who approaches Stephens' murder as a cold case to be investigated from the ground up through exhaustive archival research and close analysis of evidence. Along the way, he reclaims Stephens and his Black supporters as courageous pioneers of interracial cooperation, and exposes the campaign against them--of propaganda, intimidation, and electoral fraud--reminding this modern age that there is nothing new under the sun. The author ""deftly dissects"" the smear on Stephens' name, ""digs deeply into the backgrounds of Stephens, his rivals, his enemies and his supporters,"" and ""makes use of court records, congressional testimony and personal correspondence to draw a more finely textured account of the political trench warfare."" -- The Wall Street Journal The book ""blends a thorough mining of the available primary sources with a careful analysis of local, state, and national politics,"" including ""trenchant analysis of the . . . legal actions that defined Reconstruction in the state."" -- The North Carolina Historical Review ""This is an important book."" -- Fergus M. Bordewich, author of Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction.

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