654. The Ku Klux Klan: The Rise of Evil (Part 1)

19:12Dominic Sandbrook:Lester Major James R. Crow John B. Kennedy Richard R. Reed and Frank O. McCord it's a brilliant book on the first clown by Alan Trelease which is kind of the definitive book but it's been supplemented very recently by a historian called Elaine France Parsons who's looked into the backgrounds of these guys they were from what was seen as good families in the locality they were well educated they were all quite young so they're in their mid-twenties or early thirties they'd all fought for the confederacy but although they're army veterans i don't think they see this as a paramilitary organization this is not the fry corps they don't see it as a veterans organization or anything like that it's basically a local social club well i was looking at the other names

19:57Tom Holland:that they were planning on coming up with and there was the secret circle the pulaski social club and the thespians i i think the ku klux klan would have been a lot less menacing if they'd

20:08Dominic Sandbrook:been called the thespians the thespians yeah you're not wrong so it's a social club and the reason they've chosen that name obviously a really important part of it is it's exotic but it's also very much of the time so for almost a century american university fraternities had adopted greek names so the most famous phi beta kappa you know it's still going i think and one of those uh fraternities one of the best known actually in the south in the early 19th century was a fraternity called the Ku Kloss Adelphon, which was originally at the University of North Carolina, and it spread through the South, but then kind of fell away in the 1850s and 1860s.

20:46Dominic Sandbrook:Now, Ku Kloss comes from the Greek kind of ring or circle, I think it means, and that's where you get Ku Klux. And then they just chose Klan with a capital K, you know, because the alliteration, nothing, it's as simple as that. There's an element of a college fraternity from the beginning. Their meeting place is this kind of derelict house, this grove rather next to a derelict house, and they call it the den. They all give themselves titles. So that's where you get the Grand Cyclops, the Grand Magi, the Grand Turk, the Grand Exchequer, and two Lictors. And they dress up. And they dress up not just in the canonical outfit.

21:24Dominic Sandbrook:So they do wear the white mask with the holes, the pointed kind of hat and the long robe. But we know that they wore other things too. So there's an early quote, they wore Spanish jackets and wide trousers with a cap and feathers.

21:38Tom Holland:That's interesting, isn't it? The Spanish jacket, because that pointed conical white thing, I mean, it comes from Spanish Catholic practice. You wear it in Holy Week and process through the streets. Am I overthinking it? This is a big Spanish thing. I think it's just a fun, exotic costume. It's japery.

21:54Dominic Sandbrook:It is slightly public school japery. You know, they're the young bloods of the town. They've come out from the war. They've got nothing to do. They're dressing up and they are making up silly rituals themselves. And this is what a lot of people do in 19th century America.

22:09Tom Holland:So just to emphasize, it is not at this point a racist organization. It's just for fun. It's a social organization. Well, this is a complicated question.

22:18Dominic Sandbrook:It's a racist organization insofar as all the people who are in it are racists. They are white supremacists who believe that white supremacy is the cornerstone of their society. However, that's not why they've set this up. There's no doubt they would have said racist things when they're hanging around, you know, having their japes, but that's not why they've done this.

22:39Tom Holland:The equivalent of a kind of a Tory club or a Whig club in London, that kind of thing. A little bit, yeah. Your political affiliations are why you meet up, but you're not sitting there discussing politics all the time.

22:50Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, I think that's probably right. Now, how it spread, the first organisers were very vague about this. I think possibly because they were a little bit embarrassed by its later associations with violence, even though they shared the political aims of the people who practiced that violence. But what seemed to happen is other people in neighbouring counties heard about this den of these guys to dress up. And they said, oh, we'd like to do that too. And they sort of got permission, or they got probably just verbal permission from the Grand Cyclops, for the Grand Cyclops to set up their own dens.

23:21Dominic Sandbrook:And so by the late summer of 1866, there are other KKK dens. There are very, very few contemporary accounts of them but alan trelease quotes a man from alabama who says he saw them at a midnight picnic that autumn he remembered them wearing pretty and showy costumes hats decorated with stars and spangles so they're basically dressed as conjurers or something and i quote it seemed to be a thing of amusement i never heard anything in connection with it as a political organization but of course it's going to be very difficult to stay as a non-political organization in a world in which politics is so charged with menace.

24:00Tom Holland:But as you say, it's not the Fry Corps. It's not a kind of overtly paramilitary organisation. Well, not yet.

24:06Dominic Sandbrook:Not yet. I think that's the point. So across Tennessee and much of the South, the political temperature is rising. So that winter at the end of 1866, there are a lot of violent attacks on black freedmen and on white unionists, that's to say white Republicans. And by early 1867, Governor Brownlow, Parson Brownlow, who's this very stubborn man, as I already described, he issued a proclamation. I have no concessions to make to traitors, no compromises to offer to assassins and robbers. The outrages enumerated must and shall cease, shall in capital letters. And he said, I'm going to call for federal troops.

24:42Dominic Sandbrook:I'm going to organize a state militia. This is always terrifying for former Confederates to talk of a state militia, because they know that by definition it would consist of armed black men and that is the one thing that terrifies them more than anything else going back to your point tom about the fears of black people getting weapons this is the single biggest nightmare for a white southerner and brownlow says i'm going to give make sure that all black men have the vote before the next election now instead of calming things this absolutely inflames them because the ex-confederates at this point double down as they see it browner has basically said to them i'm going to rule by military despotism i'm going to bring in more troops and i'm going to give black people the vote so you know you'll never win an election again and so at this point they say well in that case we're entitled to raise our own paramilitary opposition to you and this is the point in the spring of 1867 when the clan really evolves into a explicitly political organization and the key moment this is an incredible fact it took place at the hotel after which maxwell house coffee is named so we don't know that much about this meeting because they didn't keep records basically the grand cyclops of the pulaski den summoned some of the other clan dens now at the same time or just afterwards there was a a sort of basically a democratic state convention in nashville the Democrats at this point were calling themselves the Conservatives.

26:12Dominic Sandbrook:So confusing. So there's probably an overlap between some of these sort of mainstream political people, the Democratic Party arriving in Nashville, and the KKK delegates arriving a few days before. Because there's a huge amount of overlap actually between this first clan and the Democratic Party in the South. And the key figure seems to have been former Brigadier General in the Confederate Army called George W. Gordon. General Gordon, Tom. Surely a General Gordon can't be a bad man, Dominic. Tell me it ain't so. I know it's sad to have a General Gordon on the show who's letting the General Gordons of history down.

26:44Dominic Sandbrook:So this General Gordon, George W. Gordon, he was the youngest Confederate general at the war's end. He was 31 years old. And he came back to Pulaski to become a lawyer. And he wrote a new blueprint for the Klan. It was called its Prescript. And basically, I know you're a big fan of the Marvel superhero films. And this is like a massive administrative chart for the Avengers or something, or some for superheroes. So this is how it works. If you're an ordinary member of the Ku Klux clan, you are a ghoul and you belong to a den. And each den is headed by a Grand Cyclops and two Nighthawks. God, not two Nighthawks.

27:21Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, two Nighthawks, not just one. There is the Grand Giant of the Province and four Goblins. Then above them, there's a Grand Titan of the Dominion and four Furies. Then there's the Grand Dragon of the Realm. The Realm is the state. And there's eight hydras and then above them there is the grand wizard of the empire and his 10 genie and the

27:45Tom Holland:empire is the american south you know what it is it's people who hate tolkien and have never read him it's what they think lord of the rings is like it's more sort of cs lewis isn't it because

27:55Dominic Sandbrook:cs lewis throws everything at it he's got father christmas in there he's got satires he's got whatever that's what this is because there's also there's a whole load of other officers that i I don't really know where they fit in. There's Grand Turks, there are Grand Magi, there are Grand Sentinels. And then what I love as well, they've set up two internal tribunals, which tries you if you're an officer and you've done something wrong. And if you're just an ordinary ghoul, then you're tried by the Council of Centaurs. So they also issue a formal statement of the clan's purpose. Now you mentioned Walter Scott.

28:24Dominic Sandbrook:This is classic Walter Scott. This is an institution of chivalry, humanity, mercy, and patriotism, embodying in its genius and its principles all that is chivalric in conduct, noble in sentiment, generous in manhood and patriotic in purpose. Its goals are to protect the weak, the innocents and the defenceless from the indignities and wrongs and outrages, the lawless, the violent and the brutal.

28:49Tom Holland:But presumably when it says the weak, the innocent and the defenceless, it's not referring to former slaves.

28:54Dominic Sandbrook:No, no, no. This is defending white people from what it sees as the tyranny of the former slaves and their allies in the Republican Party and the Union Army. And it's this all textbook Southern stuff. This is what the Southerners were saying before and during the Civil War. We are the forces of nostalgia, of chivalry, the values of old England and the old country against the soulless machine of Northern capitalism. And also, we are the victims here. Oh, yeah. We are the victims is so central to, well, to all three clans, actually. And actually, some people listening to this will say, you know, they're over-egging this.

29:33Dominic Sandbrook:There's nothing very racist about this. But the 10 questions that you have to answer to become a ghoul rather give the game away. Have you ever belonged to the Republican Party? Did you serve in the Union Army in the war? Do you oppose black equality? Do you support the constitutional rights of the South? And what that basically means is, are you on board to reverse the result of the war, to reverse the process of reconstruction and to reimpose white supremacy and the subordination of African-Americans? Then a few weeks after this Maxwell House meeting, this group gets its figurehead. And the figurehead is the first and only Grand Wizard of the First Clan.

30:16Dominic Sandbrook:And this is another former Confederate general called Nathan Bedford Forrest. So he's top clansman. It's the Grand Wizard. You can't get bigger than the Grand Wizard. Who are you following that administrative chart, Tom? So there isn't a kind of Sauron equivalent. No, he is Sauron. He is Sauron. He completely is. So Nathan Bedford Forrest was from Tennessee. He's a former plantation owner. He's a former slave trader. He had really rocketed up in the Confederate Army. He'd enlisted as a private and rose to become a cavalry general. And he was nicknamed the Wizard of the Saddle for his swashbuckling style.

30:48Dominic Sandbrook:So wizardry is very much his thing then? very much his thing although there is a dark side to this guy so northerners saw him as a war criminal because there was one particular incident place called fort pillow in 1864 where the union sort of garrison or whatever had surrendered many of its troops were black and nathan bedford forest's men had allegedly tortured and then hacked them to death hundreds of them after they had surrendered historians still argue about this but my personal view is he definitely did it nathan bedford Forest had ended the war fighting down in the Deep South. He disbanded his troops when he heard about Robert E.

31:26Dominic Sandbrook:Lee's surrender. So actually, the fact that he gave up so late adds to his luster for the Southern public. Like a lot of former Confederate officers, he then put his money into railroads. Everybody does this in this period. So he's become a sort of railroad speculator. It's not clear whether he volunteered to join the Klan or he was invited, but either way, he became the perfect public face for it. Because to the white Southern public, Nathan Bedford Forrest is the incarnation of the swashbuckling Confederate officer who fights to the very end. But he's really just a figurehead. You know, that's the point with all the clans, actually, is that local groups make all the running.

32:03Dominic Sandbrook:There's never really any very strong, coherent, central organization. And so it's very decentralized, which in turn must make it hard to kind of stamp out. Yeah. How do you stamp it out when there's no one to, you know there's no single person to talk to so now we've got to the summer of 1867 just as we approach the break and the clan is still very localized but it has definitely now become much more public and much more political so the pulaski citizen newspaper for example is running regular reports on clan meetings on the 5th of june 1867 there is the first clan public parade about 75 clansmen marching through the town in costume the report in the local paper as so many of these thing sounds absolutely demented tom do you want to read it in your in your splendid southern accent

32:45Tom Holland:the column was led by the grand cyclops who had on a flowing white robe a white hat about 18 inches high he had a very venerable and benevolent looking face and long silvery locks next they followed two of the tallest men out of jail one of them had on a robe of many colors with a hideous mask and a transparent hat they conversed in dutch hebrew or some other language no two of them were dressed alike all having on masks and some sort of fanciful costume yeah interesting there that

33:30Dominic Sandbrook:they're not no two are dressed alike so there's no uniform they're not all wearing white robes they are wearing they're just basically wearing fancy dress and that is so sinister isn't it

33:39Tom Holland:i mean it's so sinister it's kind of like they're dressing up as clowns or something which they will be doing in due course but i mean it's much more frightening to be attacked i think by you know a bunch of people dressed up as clowns say than just by your everyday thug yeah i guess

33:54Dominic Sandbrook:that is true actually if a clown beat you up that'd be really terrifying that'd be absolutely frightening now at this point they haven't yet really started beating people up tennessee has elections that august but they're quite quiet now why is that it's actually because the local sort of ex-confederates are hoping madly it's a sign how much they've internalized their own rhetoric they are hoping that their former slaves will vote with their masters they sort of saying to themselves well they know what's best for them they'll they'll side they never really disliked slavery that much they'll probably vote for us anyway there's the republicans win a quick a clean sweep among the white southerners there is this sense of a terrible shock they can't believe that their african-american neighbors have voted against them and late that summer captain judd of the freedmen's bureau reports on the clan for the first time and he writes this society is very numerous and it seems to extend all over the country meaning the county they march about the streets thoroughly disguised in a uniform.

34:55Dominic Sandbrook:I'm credibly informed that they are heavily armed. I am sure they're capable of great mischief if they undertake it. The best citizens here say this Ku Klux Klan is got up by the young men merely for fun and they never intend to interfere with anyone. This may well be true but I doubt it mightily. The Klan is poised to expand now from a few counties in central Tennessee. It is then going to burst out of Tennessee to every state in the former a confederacy. And for all its talk of honour and chivalry, the Ku Klux Klan is about to unleash a reign of terror.

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38:09Tom Holland:this episode is brought to you by claude by anthropic now tom you and i when we're together

38:16Dominic Sandbrook:we always argue about one thing don't we it's the existence or otherwise of the loch ness monster but you foolishly are skeptical and you don't think that there is a monster beneath the freezing

38:27Tom Holland:waters of that scottish lock because as i know from ai a plesiosaur would not be able to survive in Scottish waters because they'd just be too cold for it.

38:36Dominic Sandbrook:Well, Tom, this back and forth is what makes studying history so fun. And actually, Claude was made for this kind of thinking.

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39:12Tom Holland:The Ku Klux Klan are called upon to castigate or kill any coloured cusses who may approve the constitution being concocted by the contemptible carpetbaggers at the Capitol. Each Klan is commanded by a carnivorous kern who collects his comrades with care and caution commensurate with the magnitude of the cause. Whenever convened, they must correctly give four countersigns. These are kill the colored cuss, clean out the carpetbaggers, crush the convention, carry conservatism, confusion to Congress, Confederates will conquer. So that is an insane article in a Virginia newspaper, the Richmond Dispatch in the spring of 1868.

39:48Tom Holland:And what I could not adequately convey was the degree to which all the words which begin with C in conventional spelling, they are given K's in the printout of that section from the newspaper.

40:01Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, so we've moved on a few months now. We were in 1866, moving towards 1868. And that is from, you said it was from Virginia, Tom. So we've moved outside Tennessee. The Ku Klux virus, as some papers called it, has spread beyond the borders of its original state. And as that article shows, actually, it is much more overtly racist and violent even now than it was 18 months or so ago. Now, a lot of this is down to the fact the context is changing all the time. So I mentioned in the first episode, In 1866 and 1867, there was a power struggle in Washington between President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor from Tennessee, and the so-called radical Republicans in Congress.

40:42Dominic Sandbrook:And Congress won it. So first of all, Congress secured the passage of the 14th Amendment. So the 14th Amendment extends American citizenship to anybody born in the United States, including former slaves. They are now American citizens. The 14th Amendment mandates that no state can deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. That due process of law. I mean, so much constitutional argument in the last kind of century and a half has come down to those words and what you can and cannot do to somebody. That's the problem with the written constitution, isn't it? Bonkers.

41:23Dominic Sandbrook:I don't agree with it any more than you do. And the 14th Amendment also guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law. Again, what that means will be hotly contested in the years to come. The Radical Republicans tried to get rid of President Johnson. They impeached him, and he survived by just one vote in the Senate. So he's kind of clinging on. But they have all the momentum now and all the power. Between spring 1867 and early 1868, they went further, and they passed four Reconstruction Acts that went way beyond not just johnson's plans for the south but almost certainly what abraham lincoln was planning for the south when he died in 1865 so now 1867 68 the entire former confederacy except for tennessee which has been readmitted to the union the entire former confederacy is put under martial law and governed by the united states army and elections will be held under military supervision so that black men can vote in them.

42:26Dominic Sandbrook:So in other words, they're basically saying it's two and a half years since the end of the war. The South has proved incapable of behaving itself. We are reimposing martial law. Now, this is very exciting if you're a former slave because now you have what looks like a guarantee that you will be able to exercise your right as an American citizen if you're a man and cast your vote. And so there's a great rush to enroll and things like these union leagues and local Republican organizations on the part of the freedmen because they're like, brilliant, we can vote and nobody will stop us. So when the southern states hold elections in the first half of 1868, the results very heavily favor the Republican Party, right?

43:09Dominic Sandbrook:Abraham Lincoln's old party, the party of emancipation. Yeah, of course. And so that means that for the next two years, much of the South will be under Republican rule. and if you're a white southerner who supported the confederacy this is an absolute nightmare for you and they made no secret of their desire that they would roll this back and destroy it as one democrat newspaper put it these constitutions and governments will last just as long as the bayonets which ushered them into being shall keep them in existence and not one day longer In other words, the white southerners say, sure, you've won this, you know, you won the battle, but we will defeat you.

43:52Dominic Sandbrook:We will roll this back and undo all this and regain our form of supremacy. By extra constitutional means. if necessary right and they think they are i mean they think don't forget that they are fighting in defense of their constitutional liberties and their constitutional privileges and whatnot and they would say well you know if we have to sometimes use extra constitutional means to defend the constitution then so be it that's what they would say and they have two weapons above all right the first weapon is very simply time so if you're a white democrat a white ex-confederate you say to yourself, I will never give up.

44:28Dominic Sandbrook:This is absolutely existential for me. This is central to my way of life and my sense of myself and the reason I'm on earth. So it matters more to them than it does to the unionists. Of course, if you live in Connecticut or Ohio or whatever, ultimately, you don't really care what's going on in Georgia or in Mississippi. So over time, you will lose interest. You'll be thinking about your railroad investments and other such gilded age things. But if you're a Southerner, you will never stop thinking about this. And the second weapon they have is violence. And that will work on three levels. First of all, violence to intimidate African Americans away from the polls.

45:10Dominic Sandbrook:Secondly, violence to disrupt and destroy local Republican organizations. And finally, and I think in many ways the key thing, the more violent you are, the more it will persuade people in the North to give up. because people in the north will just say, oh, come on, we're never going to change the south. It's a morass. But you know how people think like that. People always think like that. They often don't double down and say, well, we'll send more troops. They actually say, God, what a mess and a nightmare. Let's just call it a day. Take our hand out of the magic mix. So this is the background for the expansion of the clan.

45:42Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, it started as possibly as dressing up, as having fun, as a social club, serenading girls, whatever. but by this point it has become much more a sort of association of paramilitary groups that are dedicated to overthrowing republican rule in the name of white supremacy it's not the only one actually so there are others there's a group called the white brotherhood there's a group called the invisible empire in north carolina the most famous one i mean you were saying about walter scott in the first half and the sort of stuff about chivalry that's so common in southern kind of culture because the most famous rival is called the Knights of the White Camellias.

46:20Dominic Sandbrook:And that was set up in Louisiana. They don't sound very frightening. They're very frightening. No, they're terribly violent. I mean, you don't want to be on the wrong side of the Knights of the White Camellias, I can tell you. They were founded in New Orleans, an extremely violent city in this period. In May 1867, they had similar rituals and handshakes and passwords. And they were explicitly devoted in their constitution to, and I quote, the supremacy of the white race. Yeah, okay. They are frightening. But of all of them, it's the clan that expands the furthest. Part of this, I think, is because of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

46:53Dominic Sandbrook:He's a really good front man for it. Not least because he's the president of the Selma, Marion and Memphis Railroad. So he's traveling a lot across the South in his railroad duties, especially Mississippi and Alabama. He's also a life insurance salesman. So he's kind of traveling. life insurance to widows or whatever. And whenever he's there, he will meet local bigwigs and he'll meet other Confederate veterans, other officers like him who don't like what's happened to the South. And they will set up, after he's left, other paramilitary groups like the Klan to defend the South against the horrors of radical reconstruction.

47:36Dominic Sandbrook:And I think I get the impression that a lot of the people who end up becoming grand dragons and grand titans of the Southern Klan are ex-drinking buddies, war comrades and whatnot of Nathan Bedford Forrest, who he's visited in his life insurance duties and then inspired them to set up their own clans.

47:56Tom Holland:Do you think he bundles in a title with the life insurance? Take it out and you can be a grand gnome.

48:03Dominic Sandbrook:Right, exactly. But actually, I think the biggest influence in spreading the Klan is actually just the newspapers, southern democratic newspapers so they are regularly reporting by 1868 the clan's activities in tennessee and they're basically saying you know in tennessee there's this group called the clan and hurrah for them they are fighting back against the tyrannical imposition of black rule by the republican party so this is the richmond virginia inquirer and examiner in march 1868 it said that the clan was behind its mask was a purpose as resolute, noble and heroic as that which Brutus concealed beneath his mask of well-dissembled idiocy.

48:42Tom Holland:Is that fair to Brutus? It's great to have Brutus back on the show, isn't it? Because he was much admired by Booth and he is the leader of the Roman Republicans who threw out the monarchy. This is the first Brutus, the Brutus who leads the rebellion against the monarchy. Oh, against talking the proud. Because he disguised himself as an idiot. So I think that's what's going on there. So the idea that they're dressing up in kind of ludicrous costumes, they're disguising the fact that secretly they're ruthless killers.

49:09Dominic Sandbrook:Yes. And the funny thing is that they don't think they're the conspirators. They think the conspiracy is somebody else. Because as this Richmond newspaper says, the conspiracy is a secret Negro conspiracy, which has for its object the establishment of Negro domination. This is the kind of language they use all the time, by the way. So two obvious questions. What kind of people join it and where? So first of all, the Klan does not thrive in places where there are lots and lots of Republicans, for obvious reasons. If it's a place that backed the Union in the Civil War, for example, in the Appalachians, in the mountains, where there are no plantations, there are never going to be many people to join the Klan.

49:48Dominic Sandbrook:There just aren't enough Confederates. Also, people aren't going to set up a clan somewhere where they are massively outnumbered by African-Americans, by freedmen. So in the Mississippi Delta, in the Mississippi Delta, black people outnumber white by three to one. You'd be mad to set up the clan there because really, you know, you'd get beaten up. You'd be on the wrong side of that fight. Basically, the clan ends up being set up where black and white populations are roughly equal or where whites are slightly outnumbered.

50:17Tom Holland:And they can do that because... the whites have ready access to weapons and the blacks don't the whites by and large they have

50:24Dominic Sandbrook:access to weapons and better weapons they are richer they are more powerful they are better connected they have more resources you know all of those kinds of things and i suppose also they

50:34Tom Holland:have control of the legal system yes of course sheriffs judges yeah all of those kinds of things

50:40Dominic Sandbrook:they have all the leaves of power because all that has changed to some degree i mean it's a massive change is that people who were once slaves are no longer slaves they're still living on the land they're still living in kind of um you know wooden cabins shacks and things land has not been redistributed they have not been given um what the the initial promise was something like three acres and a mule or something that they would be given they never were given them you know they are still very powerless so of course if there's a conflict they will always be at a massive disadvantage.

51:12Tom Holland:And the legal system, as well as weaponry, can be used to terrorise them.

51:16Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, which it will be, exactly. Now, as for the kind of people who join the Klan, probably the majority are very ordinary farmers and labourers, but there are lots of accounts of lawyers and doctors and whatnot, professional people joining. As Alan Trelease says in his brilliant book on the Klan, the thing is all classes of the white South had been complicit in slavery and they had always all classes had worked together to defend it and all classes had served in the confederate army during the civil war that i think your point about fun though is an important one so there's a republican plantation owner called charles sterns who lived in georgia he's an anomalous figure because i said he was a plantation but he's a republican and he hated the clan and he said of the clan later on he said it was men who are neither better nor worse than the average of the population but simply young men with plenty of leisure on their hands with a great love of adventure in their souls and intensely rebel in their proclivities to repeat he didn't like them but he said they're kind of they're young men who like fighting who like adventure who like dressing up who like you know beating people up i think that's definitely part of it i mean that element of it being exciting in a world that has been ripped apart by war and which there's nothing really much else to do.

52:38Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, that makes complete sense to me. And what drives them is the nightmare that's the back of every white Southerner's mind, which is the fact that they will be ruled by people they'd once regarded as their property. So what's it like to be in the clan? Obviously, there's the excitement of dressing up. Often they don't need to wear the disguises because, as you say, they control the legal system. That part of it, I think they're often, they really are doing it for fun. They don't just wear white. They wear black at night. They wear red. Some clans wear yellow. I mean, they must look very weird riding around in their kind of yellow robes or whatever.

53:13Dominic Sandbrook:Oh, right. Like they don't look weird if those robes are white. Well, I guess we're used to the idea of them being white robes, right? I mean, if somebody makes a film in which the Ku Klux Klan are riding around in red and yellow robes, would you not find that a bit odd? The grand banana. Exactly. Well, they don't always wear those hats. so sometimes they will wear horns or beards or they have giant tongues masks with massive tongues an important point actually their robes were generally made by their wives or their sisters or their mothers or whatever so women are involved in the clan as well but they don't have official

53:44Tom Holland:roles within it no there isn't a kind of the grand goblin s or anything in the second clan

53:50Dominic Sandbrook:next week we'll be talking about a lot of clans women but not in this clan and they recruit members through these mad notices you read one right at the beginning lots of stuff about ghosts and graveyards and kind of the hour of the sepulcher has come or whatever all of that kind of thing again i mean there's a good example here actually this this is made for you all your life you've been building towards the moment when you could do a reading from the tuscaloosa alabama

54:13Tom Holland:independent monitor make ready make ready make ready the mighty hobgoblins of the confederate dead in hellabaloo assemble revenge revenge be secret be cautious be terrible by special grant But hell freezes over for your passage. Offended ghosts, put on your skates and cross over to Mother Earth. And so it just goes on and on like that.

54:37Dominic Sandbrook:That's like about a tenth of the entire thing. It just goes on. And it's Babel.

54:42Tom Holland:I mean, what does it even mean? It's a word salad. Put on your skates and cross over to Mother Earth. Well, I suppose it said that hell has just freezed over. Oh, of course, yeah. So maybe it's that.

54:50Dominic Sandbrook:Okay. I'm just too stupid to understand a Kugus clan recruiting message. and actually the clan becomes this kind of mad popular craze as weird as that sounds so people set up ku klux junior baseball teams there is a song called the ku klux midnight roll call and there is ku klux merch so you can buy knives you can buy paint you can buy this is the maddest one a ku klux smoking tobacco pack that contains the spirits of a hundred faithful kkk's with an accurate and attractive full-length portrait of the great grand cyclops so this makes the whole thing sound like a joke and there is still an element that you describe it as japery so they they never burn crosses the clan the first clan but they do play weird practical jokes on their black neighbors so they will dress up in these weird in these sort of frames that make them look like 12-foot-tall ghostly figures, and they'll intimidate the freedmen.

55:56Dominic Sandbrook:They will do stuff like, I mean, this sounds so deranged, they will put on detachable hands and force black people to shake their hand in the street, and then their hand will come off. Or their favorite trick, just sounds so weird, they will strap a sort of bottle to their chest underneath their hood and their robes, and they will pretend to drink gigantic quantities of water. How does that work? Because basically you're pouring it into your, if you're watching on video, you can see me, I'm miming it. You're pouring this water into your hood and then you've got a kind of concealed. Oh, I see. You've got a concealed bottle.

56:31Dominic Sandbrook:So it looks like you're drinking an unearthly quantity of water. And if you forget to do it, then no wonder your robes are yellow. Right. Very good. Now, in the early 20th century, historians who were sympathetic to the lost cause of the Confederacy claimed that these tricks were brilliant. and that they terrified African-Americans and they stopped them voting and they helped redeem the South from the horrors of Reconstruction. But historians now generally say the idea that the freedmen were taken in by these sort of tricks is itself a racist myth. As Alan Trelease says, this is actually a story not about black superstition about ghosts.

57:07Dominic Sandbrook:It's a story about white superstitions about black people because it basically, the white, the clansmen are playing these tricks and laughing and saying to each other, gosh, the African-Americans are so gullible, they're taken in by my detachable hand. In reality, of course, the African-Americans aren't taken in by it at all, but they're just terrified that if they don't play up the game and if they don't pretend to be frightened... They'll be lynched. Yeah, then they'll be beaten up or killed or whatever.

57:36Tom Holland:I mean, it's bad enough meeting a practical joker, but meeting a practical joker will kill you if you don't laugh at his joke. That's the worst.

57:44Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly right. And actually, the emphasis on these cruel jokes is a bit misleading, because by the summer of 1868, what the Klan is really about is violence. So this is why the Klan matters. Not the dressing up, not the jokes, but because of the beating and shooting and hanging and rape and murder of thousands of people, the vast majority of them black. Like the Klan itself, the violence really begins in earnest in Tennessee in 1868 in the build-up to the county elections. And one of the best documented examples is a place called Maury County, which was south of Nashville. And the Klan had several hundred members there.

58:19Dominic Sandbrook:And they would carry out these attacks at night. There'd be about a dozen hooded men, and they would target isolated rural homes. Black residents, they would target them. sometimes they'd been accused of crimes often because they were regarded as outspoken or insolent in the kind of language of the white south because they were politically active because they were planning to vote republican or sometimes there was no reason at all the clansmen just wanted to attack a black family they'd arrive outside your house they would either call you out or they would drag you outside the victims are usually men or older boys but not always so there are attacks on children or on pregnant women often you'll be beaten with sticks hundreds of times on your bare back but sometimes the attacks would go much further so there's a story about one 20 year old black man who was dragged from his home in columbia tennessee by a clansman who garrotted him and then they tie us they tied a stone around his neck and they threw him into the river there was another man called henry fitzpatrick he'd been accused on the base of no evidence of setting fire to some barns he was lashed 200 times one night and then the next night the clansmen came back and they hanged him then a third example black veteran of the union army so i mean he ticks every clan target box he's black and he'd fought for the north in the civil war he's clinton drake and he is dragged from his house and hanged and the the Klansmen then proclaimed a warning.

59:50Dominic Sandbrook:They said, all Union veterans, you know, heed his example or you will face the same fate. And as time goes on, the Klan becomes more and more public about all this. So in July 1868, there's a parade on the 4th of July, actually, in the town of Columbia. And Klansmen ended up fighting a pitched battle, about 150 Klansmen, with 30 armed freedmen who had hidden their guns from the Klan's regular sweeps. So that goes back to your question, Tom, about are the freedmen arming themselves? Yes, some of the freedmen do have guns. The Klan will search for them. These freedmen have hidden them, and they end up having basically a pitched battle.

1:00:30Dominic Sandbrook:And the result of this is that it radicalizes the white population of the county. They all basically pile in on behalf of the Klan, and the black men flee. They flee into the countryside, and for the next few weeks, the Klan are basically scouring the countryside for these guys. when they find them, they lynch them. Some of them managed to escape to Nashville, but most of them didn't. And Dominic, are the other clan targeting black people who are literate? Yes, absolutely they are. We'll talk about this in the next episode, actually, about how the clan targets black people who can read and write, black people who want to be teachers, people who are ministers, people who are active in the community, basically anybody anybody who challenges the idea that black people are inherently subordinate and inferior.

1:01:20Dominic Sandbrook:Even if you do too well, if you're too good at farming, if you own your own livestock, they all come after you because you are challenging the principles on which their sense of the world, I guess, is based.

1:01:33Tom Holland:So it's like the Spartans and the Messenians or the Nazis with the poles. If you're literate or if you are high-ranking, you're toast.

1:01:39Dominic Sandbrook:So the million-dollar question is why the authorities don't stop it. And the obvious answer is that it's just very, very difficult. You can't rely on local law enforcement because so many sheriffs and whatnot are sympathetic to the Klan. And we know that basically in every case where black people try to go to the courts to get justice, they cannot get a sheriff to arrest, they can't get a grand jury to indict, they can't get attorneys to prosecute, and they can't get juries to convict. So all of this puts a lot of pressure on the governor of tennessee parson brownlow he's in a real bind because his republican legislature in nashville is very anxious about alienating white opinion by sending in the state militia because if they send in the state militia that means basically arming a lot of african-american volunteers which is the one thing that's guaranteed well i mean but you might say so what i mean i think you could reasonably say so what i mean i think a lot of radical republicans would say come on what are you going to lose the clan and the white and the white supremacists are in arms already i mean they're not going to vote republican so it doesn't really matter right exactly at first um his instinct is to send for federal troops so he sends for federal troops there's an infantry company of the u.s army sent to columbia tennessee but they are totally useless because washington is telling them work with the local authorities and the local authorities are of course on the side of the clan so by the summer of 1868 law and order in middle tennessee is very close to breaking down and the freemen's bureau reports to washington and i quote the colored people are leaving their homes and are fleeing to the towns and large cities for protection unless something is done immediately the cities will be flooded by poor helpless creatures the ku klux organization is so extensive and so well organized in arms that it's beyond the power of anyone to exert any moral influence over them.

1:03:32Dominic Sandbrook:Powder and ball is the only thing that will put them down. And Brownough himself has finally run out of patience. He calls for a special session of the state legislature, and he says, look, we've given them every chance, and not one of them has been punished. They've carried out thousands of crimes with impunity. So they pass a bill that makes it illegal to join a secret organization for the purpose of disturbing the peace. And they authorize Brownlow to send in the state militia to any county where 10 people, you need 10 people to say the law is not being enforced, and then you can send in the state militia.

1:04:10Dominic Sandbrook:And those people can be black. Yes, exactly. So this is now the great nightmare for the white people of Middle Tennessee, what Alan Trelease calls the ultimate horror, that their towns are going to be patrolled by black men with guns who are going to get revenge for all the years of slavery. And actually, the funny thing is they blink. It's their white supremacist ex-Confederates who crack because Nathan Bedford Forrest and George Gordon lead all their mates to go to Nashville and to see the governor. and they say, fine, we'll call off the dogs, as it were. There'll be no more violence. And they make a public promise that they will help the authorities maintain the peace and order of the state.

1:04:57Dominic Sandbrook:And actually, Gordon, General Gordon, gives a rally in Pulaski, the homeland of the clan, and he says, in future, we should obey the laws and uphold a spirit of peace and harmony. And actually, at first, it seems to work. So it seems that the tension dissipates and actually Brownlow's hard line has paid off. However, in the other states of the Confederacy, all this time, clan support has been building. So the clan is now heading towards having dens in perhaps a quarter of all counties in the former Confederate South and probably about 150 ,000 members. And don't forget, we're in the summer of 1868 at this point.

1:05:42and now the stakes are becoming very high a reminder the future of the republic for the

1:05:49Dominic Sandbrook:last year or so has been in the hands of the radical republicans in congress and the whole confederacy with the exception of tennessee has been under military occupation but on the 3rd of november 1868 the american people will have a chance to turn back the clock because this will be the first presidential election since the civil war so the republicans as their candidate have chosen general ulysses s grant so he is the ultimate northern war hero and he is going to stand on an explicit platform of equal and civil political rights for all but the democrats have chosen as their candidate governor horatio seymour of new york and he is an outspoken critic of radical reconstruction and his campaign slogan is and i quote this is a white man's country let white

1:06:43Tom Holland:men rule chilling stuff dominic and uh what is to come is going to be even more chilling members of the rest of history club can hear that right away of course the battle for the future of the south and the fate of the first incarnation of the ku klux klan and what you can also hear if you are a member of the rest of history club of the next two episodes after those two so episodes three and four which take the story into the 20th century so to join them if you're not a member you know what you've got to do restishistory.com and sign up there thank you dominic thank you everyone for listening bye bye bye

1:07:24Dominic Sandbrook:tom i have to say when i look at the sheer sweep and scope here everything we've done on the rest is history it starts to look a little bit like the library of alexandria doesn't it yeah and of

1:07:33Tom Holland:course the problem with the library of alexandria was that it's gone so whether it was destroyed by the romans or the christians or the muslims or by entropy who can say but that is a fate that we do not want to see visited on the rest is history library and so we have built an enormous and exceedingly impressive digital monument to house all our episodes in we have and it is of course

1:07:58Dominic Sandbrook:the official The Rest is History website. And I don't know about you, Tom, but when I look at that website, I don't think anything in my life has ever given me greater pleasure.

1:08:08Tom Holland:Well, you'll know, Dominic, I have been so excited about this and particularly about the curated collections. So this features series and episodes organised by theme. So there's ancient history or conquistadors and explorers and so on. And my favourite one is the history of Britain, which goes all the way from Stonehenge up to the fall of Liz Truss in chronological order.

1:08:33Dominic Sandbrook:But Tom, I know you love the curated collections, but for me, the real highlight, the jewel in the crown, no less, is the Rest is History archive. So it is the complete official catalogue of every single episode that we have ever done.

1:08:47Tom Holland:And it is so unbelievably high tech. It's been built by one of our beloved Athelstans, Matt Povey, with the help of AI. so ai not just in sinister it's it does good as well and this high tech allows you to search by era or by person or by event or by guest so if you wanted to find out for instance every time that we've mentioned um i don't know henry the eighth or cromwell or whatever then the search function will take you straight there yeah it's a brilliant thing but it's not the only thing that

1:09:20Dominic Sandbrook:we have on the website there is a special book section if you're a book lover there's all the details about our live events including the very exciting rest is history festival at hampton court and of course there is a place where you can buy yourself our exclusive rest is history merch and

1:09:39Tom Holland:if you are a member of the rest is history club then you can log into our exclusive members area where you can find all of your account details your members exclusive merch and most excitingly the videos of our members only mini series.

1:09:56Dominic Sandbrook:Now, I guess there are people here who are watching this who are not yet members. Madness. It is madness. So the good news for you is the website also has its very own membership sign up page. So you can go to the website, you can explore all the tremendous highlights and then you can go to the sign up page and sign up, become a member and then go to the members exclusive area and then buy yourself some merch to celebrate. Brilliant.

1:10:21Tom Holland:The whole way through our career as advertisers on this podcast, we have been saying there's never been a better time to sign up. But on this occasion, it is literally true. There never has been a better time. So head to therestishistory.com, check out our new website and then do what you've got to do. Sign up. It's great. And I genuinely, truly, authentically mean that.

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