The Colonel's Dream portrays the continuing oppression and racial violence prominent in the Southern United States after the American Civil War.

In the novel, it is shown how white people have a general "fear of 'nigger domination'" specifically in politics, possibly giving reason for black oppression.

To the great number of those who are seeking, in whatever manner or degree, from near at hand or far away, to bring the forces of enlightenment to bear upon the vexed problems which harass the South, this volume is inscribed, with the hope that it may contribute to the same good end.

He runs into his old slave, Peter French, who is finding it difficult to make a living due to his skin color and age under the post-war conditions.

During his stay, the Colonel sees continuing economic isolation and repression of the black population and is bothered by the racism that is still very prominent in Clarendon.

The editor of the local newspaper talked to him about Clarendon having "so many idle, ignorant Negroes that something must be done to make them work, or else they'll steal, and to keep them in their place, or they would run over us".

[3] Driven by a desire for more equality between blacks and whites, he also pursues owning parts of Clarendon by purchasing additional properties, such as a run down cotton mill and his childhood home, for which he pays a mulatto barber named William Nichols well over the actual price.

)[4] Filled with abhorrence for the strength and prominence of the white supremacy of his childhood town, the Colonel works to undo the efforts of William Fetters.

These mishaps finally cause the Colonel to see the hopelessness of trying to change the "violence, cruelty, and race hatred" of the South, and that segregation would always be ingrained.

This implies that the only way for black people to escape the racial cruelty of the South was by fleeing from it and, in Henry Taylor's case, taking a lesser position in society.

The primary theme of The Colonel's Dream is the strength of racial prejudice and white supremacy that overcame the South after the Civil War where black oppression was still clearly present.

The Colonel's Dream uses the story of a man who wants to return to his childhood home of Clarendon, North Carolina and make a new living there to illustrate the racial problems that pervaded the South during the beginning of the 20th century.

"The art of The Colonel's Dream, however, lies in Charles W. Chesnutt's greater willingness and ability to broach a radical solution to White violence in a New South setting".

[11] Colonel French is a man who once fought for the South but saw a more free and equal society when he moved north to New York City after the Civil War.

[13] Even Chesnutt accepted The Colonel's Dream as a failure, as he wrote in one letter to a Mr. Benjamin G. Brawley on July 29, 1914, that the book "was not a pronounced success".