Synopsis
Reconstruction was a time of idealism and sweeping change, as the victorious Union created citizenship rights for the freed slaves and granted the vote to black men. Sixteen black Southerners, elected to the U.S. Congress, arrived in Washington to advocate reforms such as public education, equal rights, land distribution, and the suppression of the Ku Klux Klan.
But these men faced astounding odds. They were belittled as corrupt and inadequate by their white political opponents, who used legislative trickery, libel, bribery, and the brutal intimidation of their constituents to rob them of their base of support. Despite their status as congressmen, they were made to endure the worst humiliations of racial prejudice. And they have been largely forgotten—often neglected or maligned by standard histories of the period.
In this beautifully written book, Philip Dray reclaims their story. Drawing on archival documents, contemporary news accounts, and congressional records, he shows how the efforts of black Americans revealed their political perceptiveness and readiness to serve as voters, citizens, and elected officials.
We meet men like the war hero Robert Smalls of South Carolina (who had stolen a Confederate vessel and delivered it to the Union navy), Robert Brown Elliott (who bested the former vice president of the Confederacy in a stormy debate on the House floor), and the distinguished former slave Blanche K. Bruce (who was said to possess “the manners of a Chesterfield”). As Dray demonstrates, these men were eloquent, creative, and often effective representatives who, as support for Reconstruction faded, were undone by the forces of Southern reaction and Northern indifference.
In a grand narrative that traces the promising yet tragic arc of Reconstruction, Dray follows these black representatives’ struggles, from the Emancipation Proclamation to the onset of Jim Crow, as they fought for social justice and helped realize the promise of a new nation.
Revue de presse
“Absorbing ... Dray devotes the majority of his pages to a significant minority: some of the first African Americans ever to serve in Congress. A few, such as Robert Smalls and Blanche K. Bruce, have been the subject of recent, thorough biographies. Others, such as Robert Brown Elliott and John Roy Lynch, emerge here as fascinating figures deserving full-length studies.” The Washington Post
“Dray casts fresh light on the positive aspects of Reconstruction and powerfully dramatizes its negative side. His well-researched book is both exhilarating and disturbing.” The New York Times Book Review
“Pulitzer finalist Philip Dray's Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen is a history of an often overlooked chapter. The stories of men like Hiram Revels of Mississippi, the first black senator, are all the more powerful from some 140 years before Barack Obama began his presidential quest.” —The Washingtonian
"Philip Dray's Capitol Men tells a deeply important story most Americans still do not know--how the social and political revolution of emancipation in the Civil War brought several African Americans into the U.S. Congress during Reconstruction. Some born free, some former slaves, these men, their careers, and their political acumen demonstrate both the promise and the betrayal of that era. As we contemplate the role of race in our political history anew, there is no better place to start than this impressively researched and gracefully written work." --David W. Blight, Yale University, author of A Slave No More and Race and Reunion “Absorbing ... Dray devotes the majority of his pages to a significant minority: some of the first African Americans ever to serve in Congress. A few, such as Robert Smalls and Blanche K. Bruce, have been the subject of recent, thorough biographies. Others, such as Robert Brown Elliott and John Roy Lynch, emerge here as fascinating figures deserving full-length studies.” - Washington Post Book World "Dray is an engaging writer with an eye for the dramatic incident and an ability to draw out its broader significance and relevance to our own times." -- Nation “Pulitzer finalist Philip Dray's Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen is a history of an often overlooked chapter. The stories of men like Hiram Revels of Mississippi, the first black senator, are all the more powerful from some 140 years before Barack Obama began his presidential quest.” —The Washingtonian "During Reconstruction, sixteen black men served as congressmen. They have been scorned as bumbling, corrupt, or ineffectual—former field hands in shiny suits—and even the growing recognition, in recent years, of the shamefulness of the North’s abandonment of Reconstruction has not entirely effaced that caricature. Dray’s book should do so." - The New Yorker "Impeccably written ... a welcome addition to the literature of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era." --Kirkus Reviews "Dray's triumph is to have crafted a lucid and balanced narrative, thoroughly researched and well-documented to satisfy the scholarly, while consistently fascinating and fully accessible for the casual reader." --Publishers Weekly, starred review "Philip Dray is one of the most innovative and exciting historians in America. With grace, deep research, and an implacable sense of justice, Capitol Men restores a terribly important chapter in our national epic." --Ted director, directer, John Carter Brown Library "When black men were first elected to Congress in the brutal days of Reconstruction, white critics dismissed them as 'thieves and miscreants.' With this compelling, heartbreaking new book, Philip Dray finally gives this path-breaking generation of African Americans its due. Capitol Men tells the extraordinary story of America's highest ideals made real by politicians of unbounded courage." -- Kevin Boyle, author of the National Book Award-winning Arc of Justice
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