The Cost of Compromise

Unfinished Reckoning: America’s Failure to Confront Its Past is a powerful and urgent exploration of how the United States’ refusal to fully reckon with the legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction has shaped our democracy, and continues to imperil it today.Following the Civil War, America stood at a moral crossroads. The Union had won the war, but the peace that followed was not built on justice. Instead of punishing the Confederacy for its treasonous rebellion and crimes against humanity, national leaders chose appeasement. The architects of secession were pardoned. The freedmen were abandoned. And the promise of a multiracial democracy was sacrificed in the name of reunion. Reconstruction, a brief and fragile period of progress, was dismantled through violence, voter suppression, and political compromise. The Lost Cause mythology replaced historical truth, recasting traitors as heroes and slavery as benevolence. The consequences of that failure have echoed through every generation since.This book argues that the failure to hold the South accountable after the Civil War laid the groundwork for Jim Crow, the backlash to the Civil Rights Movement, the rise of authoritarian politics, and the resurgence of political violence in the 21st century.