Stephen Budiansky sheds light on an all-too-easily misunderstood part of American history in The Bloody Shirt. Between 1867 and 1877, the period known as Reconstruction, more than three thousand African Americans and their white Republican allies were killed in terrorist violence in the South. Budiansky argues that the violence was concealed, denied, or mitigated by a white community united in their outrage at the governments attempt to enforce the equality of former slaves.