In 1888 a group of armed and masked Democrats stole a ballot box from a small town in Conway County, Arkansas. The box contained most of the county’s black Republican votes, thereby assuring defeat for candidate John Clayton in a close race for the U.S. Congress. Days after he announced he would contest the election, a volley of buckshot ripped through Clayton’s hotel window, killing him instantly. Thus began a yet-to-be-solved, century-old mystery.

More than a description of this particular event, however, Who Killed John Clayton? traces patterns of political violence in this section of the South over a three-decade period. Using vivid courtroom-type detail, Barnes describes how violence was used to define and control the political system in the post-Reconstruction South and how this system in turn produced Jim Crow. Although white Unionists and freed blacks had joined under the banner of the Republican Party and gained the upper hand during Reconstruction, during these last decades of the nineteenth century conservative elites, first organized as the Ku Klux Klan and then as the revived Democratic Party, regained power—via such tactics as murdering political opponents, lynching blacks, and defrauding elections.

This important recounting of the struggle over political power will engage those interested in Southern and American history.

"“[T]his fascinating study . . . is much more than simply an examination of murder. Barnes uses this incident as the entry into the world of a post-Civil War Southern community, scrutinizing Conway County’s social drama, discovering the tensions that made possible the murder of a highly visible public figure. . . . Barnes’s close-up look at this community is a jarring reminder of the fragility of life in the postwar South. . . . Anyone interested in the development of the South from the years of the Civil War to the end of the nineteenth century will find this study worth examining.”" - Civil War History

"“Barnes has written the story of the Clayton assassination and cover-up in admirably accessible prose, brilliantly organized. He makes clear the significance of this single event and the place of violence in the Reconstruction metanarrative. Students. . .will find it riveting and [will] come away with a clearer understanding of what happened during Reconstruction.”" - American Historical Review

"“The circumvention of democracy in Conway County, Arkansas, in the late 1880s is a sad and sordid tale, well-told in this elegantly crafted book.”" - Journal of Southern History

"“This is a gem of a monograph, well-researched, written in plain English, and a work whose broad import extends beyond one county or one state.”" - Journal of American History

"“This superb book is a model of what local history can and ought to be. . . . [It] is essential reading for all those interested in the history of Arkansas and the South. It not only reveals who killed Clayton and why but also explains the consequences of this premeditated act and reveals much about the role of violence in the nation’s political process.”" - Arkansas Historical Quarterly