The Colonel’s Dream

This sound clip is an excerpt from Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Colonel’s Dream. In the novel, Henry French, a Confederate colonel, moves North after the Civil War. After accumulating wealth in New York, French returns to Clarendon, his Southern birthplace. He finds rampant racial injustice still prevalent in Clarendon. In the excerpt, French ponders the appropriateness of and sentiment behind a Confederate monument he finds in his hometown.