Cullen Montgomery Baker, reconstruction desperado

In this engrossing biography, Barry A. Crouch and Donaly E. Brice sift through local folklore, legend, and fact to provide an accurate account of this southern desperado, whose exploits, if more widely publicized, "would [make] Jesse James and all the gunmen of pioneer days pale into insignificance," according to one promoter of the Baker legend.

A disillusioned former Confederate soldier, Baker gained fleeting national notoriety promoting a defeated dream in the occupied South. Sharing many white southerners' resentment toward the North, he took to murdering individuals who cooperated with reconstruction efforts. His actions encouraged the rise of outlaw bands and indirectly assisted in the formation of the Ku Klux Klan.

Influenced and led by men like Baker, the outlaw gangs brutalized Union agents and the freedmen. Locals concealed and otherwise aided gangs, making it difficult for police forces, politicians, and news agencies to gather reliable information on the "New Rebellion,"as it was termed by the New York Tribune in 1869. Numerous problems, from the powerlessness of the civil authorities to the insufficient numbers of the military, continued to weaken the Reconstruction government.

Baker and his ilk had, in effect, incited a second civil war. Cullen Montgomery Baker, Reconstruction Desperado is essential to understanding how deeply class and race divided the South during the Reconstruction era.