Unpunished Murder: Massacre at Colfax and the Quest for Justice (Scholastic Focus) - Hardcover

Lawrence Goldstone has written more than a dozen books for adults, including three on Constitutional Law. Unpunished Murder is his first book on that subject for young readers. He lives in Sagaponack, New York, with his wife, medieval and renaissance historian, Nancy Goldstone.

The Redeemers had been determined to kill every black man they could find, but some survived, many of them with terrible wounds.

And thus Levi Nelson lived to bear witness to what would be known in the North as the Colfax Massacre.

But not in the South. There, and in some Democratic newspapers in the North, such as the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the incident was referred to as the Colfax Riot. The Daily Eagle, which boasted "the largest circulation of any evening newspaper published in the United States," blamed the incident entirely on the freedmen, claiming, without any proof or eyewitness testimony, that James Hadnot had been shot down in cold blood after offering a flag of truce, and that the white invaders had merely taken possession of government buildings that were rightfully theirs, all with a minimum of force. A memorial headstone was later erected in Louisiana in honor of the three Redeemers "who fell in the Colfax Riot fighting for white supremacy."

The tragedy of Colfax did not end with the massacre, however, but in the most hallowed courtroom in the land, a place where the Founding Fathers, in particular Alexander Hamilton, had promised that the rights of oppressed citizens would be protected.

The story of Colfax, then, is the story of America, and it begins where America began, in the State House in Philadelphia, now known as Independence Hall. From there, a new Constitution was issued, signed on September 17, 1787, which spawned a series of great battles that determined not only the laws of the new nation, but also its soul. Those battles continue today.