Albion W. Tourgee's Books

Bricks Without Straw

A Novel

By: Albion Winegar Tourgee

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Albion W. Tourgée, a former Union officer from Ohio, came to North Carolina in search of economic opportunity after the collapse of the Confederacy. A young man and a fearless advocate of freedmen’s rights, he soon became a radical Republican leader and a prominent figure in local politics. After he quit the South in 1874, Tourgée published a succession of novels and stories which made him famous. Bricks Without Straw, one of his two best-selling novels, is not only a moving story but an important commentary on the Reconstruction process in the South. This new edition of the book remains faithful to the original, which appeared in 1880. In his introduction, Profession Otto H. Olsen gives a comprehensive evaluation of the book and its author, and their impact on the era of Reconstruction. Tourgée was an astute and reliable observer of the Reconstruction scene. In Bricks Without Straw he concentrated on the problems and the continuing dilemma of freed slaves. Led by Nimbus Ware, a “good enough nigger but might aggravating to the white folk,” and Eliab Hill, a crippled mulatto preacher, former slaves begin their postwar experience by availing themselves of the educational, economic, and political opportunities of freedom. But as soon as federal protection is withdrawn, their existence becomes precarious in the face of the Ku Klux Klan and resentful southern whites. The novel conveys a true sense of the trials and accomplishments of a severely handicapped black population caught in the oppressive racist environment of the postwar South. But, as Professor Olsen points out, the book’s pioneering—and still pertinent—literary achievement is its repudiation of racist stereotypes and its effective portrayal of the essential humanity of the freed black slaves.

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Page Count

494

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807124648

ISBN 13

9780807124642

Bricks Without Straw

A Novel

By: Albion W. Tourgée

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Bricks Without Straw

A Novel

By: Albion W. Tourgée

A classic of American political fiction first published in 1880, a mere three years after Reconstruction officially ended, Bricks Without Straw offers an inside view of the struggle to create a just society in the post-slavery South. It is unique among the white-authored literary works of its time in presenting Reconstruction through the eyes of emancipated slaves. As a leading Radical Republican, the author, Albion W. Tourgée, played a key role in drafting a democratized Constitution for North Carolina after the Civil War, and he served as a state superior court judge during Reconstruction. Tourgée worked closely with African Americans and poor whites in the struggle to transform North Carolina’s racial and class politics. He saw the ravages of the Ku Klux Klan firsthand, worked to bring the perpetrators of Klan atrocities to justice, and fought against what he called the “counter-revolution” that destroyed Reconstruction. Bricks Without Straw is Tourgée’s fictionalized account of how Reconstruction was sabotaged. It is a chilling picture of violence against African Americans condoned, civil rights abrogated, constitutional amendments subverted, and electoral fraud institutionalized. Its plot revolves around a group of North Carolina freedpeople who strive to build new lives for themselves by buying land, marketing their own crops, setting up a church and school, and voting for politicians sympathetic to their interests, until Klan terrorism and the ascendancy of a white supremacist government reduce them to neo-slavery. This edition of Bricks Without Straw is enhanced by Carolyn L. Karcher’s introduction, which sets the novel in historical context and provides an overview of Albion W. Tourgée’s career, a chronology of the significant events of both the Reconstruction era and Tourgée’s life, and explanatory notes identifying actual events fictionalized in the novel.

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Page Count

466

Publisher

Duke University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0822392348

ISBN 13

9780822392347

A Fool's Errand

A Novel of the South During Reconstruction

By: Albion Winegar Tourgee

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A Fool's Errand

A Novel of the South During Reconstruction

By: Albion Winegar Tourgee

Subtitled "A Novel of the South During Reconstruction," this 1879 bestseller, by a participant in that great social experiment, is the barely fictionalized account of the career of a Northern lawyer in North Carolina after the Civil War. A champion of the poor and landless of any race, and a keen observer of the dilemmas facing uneducated Negroes in the postwar period, Tourge offers us an important eyewitness account of one of the most tumultuous eras of American history, one that continues to influence the course of the American experiences of race and class to this day.

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Page Count

410

Publisher

Cosimo, Inc.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1616402334

ISBN 13

9781616402334

Undaunted Radical

The Selected Writings and Speeches of Albion W. Tourgée

By: Albion W. Tourgée

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Undaunted Radical

The Selected Writings and Speeches of Albion W. Tourgée

By: Albion W. Tourgée

A leading proponent of racial equality in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century, Albion W. Tourgée (1838--1905) served as the most articulate spokesman of the radical wing of the Republican party, and he continued to advocate for its egalitarian ideals long after Reconstruction ended. Undaunted Radical presents Tourgée's most significant letters, speeches, and essays from the commencement of Radical Reconstruction through the bleak days of the era of Jim Crow. An Ohioan by birth, Tourgée served in the Union army and afterwards moved to North Carolina, where he helped draft the 1868 state constitution. Within that and other documents he proposed free public education, the abolition of whipping posts, the end of property qualifications for jury duty and office holding, and the initiation of judicial reform and uniform taxation. Tourgée also served as a Republican-installed superior court judge, a position that brought him into increasing conflict with the Ku Klux Klan. In 1879, he published A Fool's Errand, a bestselling novel based on his Reconstruction experiences. Although now often overlooked, Tourgée in his lifetime offered a prominent voice of reason amid the segregation, disenfranchisement, lynching, racial propaganda, and mythologies about African Americans that haunted Reconstruction-era society and Gilded Age politics. These thirty-four documents elaborate the reformer's opinions on the Reconstruction Amendments, his generation's racial and economic theories, the cultural politics of North-South reconciliation, the ethics of corporate capitalism, the Social Gospel movement, and the philosophical underpinnings of American democratic citizenship. Mark Elliott and John David Smith, among the foremost authorities on Tourgée, have brought these writings, including the previously unpublished oral arguments Tourgée delivered before the U.S. Supreme Court as Homer Plessy's lead attorney in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), together in one volume. The book also includes an introductory overview of Tourgée's life and an exhaustive bibliography of Tourgée's writings and related works, providing an essential collection for anyone studying Reconstruction and the early civil rights movement.

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Page Count

417

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807137545

ISBN 13

9780807137543

A Fool's Errand

By: Albion W. Tourgée

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A Fool's Errand

By: Albion W. Tourgée

Though the discussion of sectional and racial problems is an important element in the book, A Fool's Errand has merit as a dramatic narrative--with its love affair, and its moments of pathos, suffering, and tragedy. This combination of tract and melodrama made it a bestseller in its day.

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