The Dunning School argued that African American politicians had been manipulated into supporting the Republican Party in order to enrich the North at the expense of the south.

[6] Initial reception to The Facts of Reconstruction was mixed, with the Black press generally viewing the book more positively than reviewers writing for predominantly white publications.

Du Bois, African Methodist Episcopal minister Benjamin F. Lee, and civil rights activist Monroe Alpheus Majors.

[7][8] The book received glowing reviews in The Twin City Star and the Los Angeles Evening Express, with the former praising Lynch for avoiding "any features which might be calculated to arouse racial antagonism" and the latter acknowledging it as providing a much-needed alternative viewpoint.

[9][10] The American Missionary, an abolitionist magazine, acknowledged the book as a contrast to the recently-released film The Birth of a Nation, writing that "prejudice is a bad historian.