HOW THE SOUTH WON THE WAR

HOW THE SOUTH WON THE WAR Nicholas Lemann tells of the tragic end of Reconstruction REDEMPTION: THE LAST BATTLE OF THE CIVIL WAR BY NICHOLAS LEMANN NEW YORK: FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX. 272 PAGES. $24.

Redemption opens with a vivid description of the Colfax Massacre on Easter Sunday, 1873. When, in the aftermath of the killing, "the steamboat .. . pulled up at Colfax, some of the white men asked the crew if they wanted to 'see dead niggers.'. . . Some crewmen disembarked and crossed the levee, where they found the courthouse still smoldering, the ground littered with corpses, and the air suffused with the sickening smell of burning flesh. The whites gave them a tour of the …