The Volokh Conspiracy - My New Book About the Colfax Massacre:

[Reposted, with comments now working (I hope).-EV]

I've been pleasantly surprised by the interest blawgers and other reviewers have shown so far in The Day Freedom Died, my new book about a little-known massacre of more than 60 African Americans in 1873 — and the ill-fated federal effort to bring the perpetrators to justice. The Supreme Court let the guilty parties go free in U.S. v. Cruikshank, 96 US 542 (1876).

So I am grateful for Eugene's invitation to spread the word in this forum. The point of this and subsequent posts, I hope, is to deepen the discussion to talk about just why I feel that the court got it wrong not only morally — but legally. The pinched interpretation of the 14th Amendment embodied in Cruikshank and subsequent Reconstruction-era rulings (e.g., The Civil Rights Cases) has not only had deleterious consequences for constitutional law down to the present day. It wasn't even required at the time!

My book shows that, prior to Cruikshank, lower court federal judges had upheld pretty ample federal authority to go after the Klan, ruling that the 14th Amendment did empower Congress to criminalize individual acts that violated the civil rights of others. It was only with the intervention of Justice Joseph P. Bradley, riding circuit as the trial judge in Cruikshank in 1874, that that court began to see things differently. It was Bradley's decision to toss out the Colfax Massacre convictions in mid-1874 that the court upheld in the final Cruikshank ruling in 1876.

In the intervening two years, white paramilitary organizations, green-lighted by Bradley, ran unchecked through LA, Miss., and SC, overthrowing the last three Republican governments in the South's three black-majority states.

More anon.

	[Charles Lane, guest-blogging, April 2, 2008 at 11:01am] Trackbacks My New Book About the Colfax Massacre: [Reposted, with comments now working (I hope).-EV] I've been pleasantly surprised by the interest blawgers and other reviewers have shown so far in The Day Freedom Died, my new book about a little-known massacre of more than 60 African Americans in 1873 — and the ill-fated federal effort to bring the perpetrators to justice. The Supreme Court let the guilty parties go free in U.S. v. Cruikshank, 96 US 542 (1876). So I am grateful for Eugene's invitation to spread the word in this forum. The point of this and subsequent posts, I hope, is to deepen the discussion to talk about just why I feel that the court got it wrong not only morally — but legally. The pinched interpretation of the 14th Amendment embodied in Cruikshank and subsequent Reconstruction-era rulings (e.g., The Civil Rights Cases) has not only had deleterious consequences for constitutional law down to the present day. It wasn't even required at the time! My book shows that, prior to Cruikshank, lower court federal judges had upheld pretty ample federal authority to go after the Klan, ruling that the 14th Amendment did empower Congress to criminalize individual acts that violated the civil rights of others. It was only with the intervention of Justice Joseph P. Bradley, riding circuit as the trial judge in Cruikshank in 1874, that that court began to see things differently. It was Bradley's decision to toss out the Colfax Massacre convictions in mid-1874 that the court upheld in the final Cruikshank ruling in 1876. In the intervening two years, white paramilitary organizations, green-lighted by Bradley, ran unchecked through LA, Miss., and SC, overthrowing the last three Republican governments in the South's three black-majority states. More anon.