" Furthermore, states Guelzo, Reconstruction “restored the Union without destroying federalism, without triggering a second civil war or a genocidal race war, and without punitive waves of executions for treason. Instead, it is one of the monumental ironies of Reconstruction that the victors—freed slaves, Northern whites—were more often the targets of violence and murder than the vanquished.” That was most certainly a dramatic departure in the history of civil conflicts. "

― Henry Louis Gates Jr. , Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow