The Price Of Forgetting: New Biography of Albion Tourgee
One of the more disturbing consequences of our tendency to interpret the Civil War and the postwar period along the lines of reunion and reconciliation and void of any references to emancipation is our failure to give credit to those who continued to push for civil rights. Even Frederick Douglass tends to be forgotten by the end of the Civil War though he continued to remind the nation of the service and sacrifice of black Americans in the Civil War until his death in 1895. Rather than waste time and ponder counterfactuals about Gettysburg I often find myself wondering what our national memory might have looked like had we decided to highlight the work of those who concerned themselves with civil rights issues rather than stories that concentrated on the mythology of the "Old South", silly tales of Christian Warriors and narratives that watered down military service to a set of innocent virtues that all Americans could identify with. Perhaps we would be able to see the modern Civil Rights Movement more as a continuation of steps taken earlier rather than as a reaction to conditions following the Second World War. Better yet, perhaps the Civil Rights Movement would not have been necessary at all. Some of the most exciting historical scholarship is now focused on uncovering the lives of Americans who worked tirelessly in the postwar period on issues related to race. Historian Mark Elliott’s Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgee and the Quest For Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson (Oxford University Press, 2006) tells the story of one of the most important civil rights advocate, lawyer, and author of the latter part of the nineteenth century. From the book description:
Civil War officer, Reconstruction "carpetbagger," best-selling novelist, and relentless champion of equal rights, Albion Tourgee battled his entire life for racial justice. Now, in this engaging biography, Mark Elliott offers an insightful portrait of a fearless lawyer, jurist, and writer, who fought for equality long after most Americans had abandoned the ideals of Reconstruction.
Elliott provides a fascinating account of Tourgee’s life, from his childhood in the Western Reserve region of Ohio (then a hotbed of abolitionism), to his years as a North Carolina judge during Reconstruction, to his memorable role as lead plaintiff’s counsel in the landmark Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson . Tourgee’s brief coined the phrase that justice should be "color-blind," and his career was one long campaign to made good on that belief. A redoubtable lawyer and an accomplished jurist, Tourgee wrote fifteen political novels, eight books of historical and social criticism, and several hundred newspaper and magazine articles that all told represent a mountain of dissent against the prevailing tide of racial oppression.
Through the lens of Tourgee’s life, Elliott illuminates the war of ideas about race that raged through the United States in the nineteenth century, from the heated debate over slavery before the Civil War, through the conflict over aid to freedmen during Reconstruction, to the backlash toward the end of the century, when Tourgee saw his country retreat from the goals of equality and freedom and utterly repudiate the work of Reconstruction. A poignant and inspiring study in courage and conviction, Color Blind Justice offers us an unforgettable portrayal of Albion Tourgee and the principles to which he dedicated his life.
I just picked up a copy and look forward to reading it over the winter break.