The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan
Thomas Dixon
Thomas Dixon
The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan
TO THE MEMORY OF
A SCOTCH-IRISH LEADER OF THE SOUTH
My Uncle, Colonel Leroy McAfee
GRAND TITAN OF THE INVISIBLE EMPIRE
KU KLUX KLAN
TO THE READER
“The Clansman” is the second book of a series of historical novels planned on the Race Conflict. “The Leopard’s Spots” was the statement in historical outline of the conditions from the enfranchisement of the negro to his disfranchisement.
“The Clansman” develops the true story of the “Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy,” which overturned the Reconstruction régime.
The organization was governed by the Grand Wizard Commander-in-Chief, who lived at Memphis, Tennessee. The Grand Dragon commanded a State, the Grand Titan a Congressional District, the Grand Giant a County, and the Grand Cyclops a Township Den. The twelve volumes of Government reports on the famous Klan refer chiefly to events which occurred after 1870, the date of its dissolution.
The chaos of blind passion that followed Lincoln’s assassination is inconceivable to-day. The revolution it produced in our Government, and the bold attempt of Thaddeus Stevens to Africanize ten great States of the American Union, read now like tales from “The Arabian Nights.”
I have sought to preserve in this romance both the letter and the spirit of this remarkable period. The men who enact the drama of fierce revenge into which I have woven a double love story are historical figures. I have merely changed their names without taking a liberty with any essential historic fact.
In the darkest hour of the life of the South, when her wounded people lay helpless amid rags and ashes under the beak and talon of the Vulture, suddenly from the mists of the mountains appeared a white cloud the size of a man’s hand. It grew until its mantle of mystery enfolded the stricken earth and sky. An “Invisible Empire” had risen from the field of Death and challenged the Visible to mortal combat.
How the young South, led by the reincarnated souls of the Clansmen of Old Scotland, went forth under this cover and against overwhelming odds, daring exile, imprisonment, and a felon’s death, and saved the life of a people, forms one of the most dramatic chapters in the history of the Aryan race.
В В В В Thomas Dixon, Jr.
Dixondale, Va.
December 14, 1904.
LEADING CHARACTERS OF THE STORY
Scene: Washington and the Foothills of the Carolinas
Time: 1865 to 1870
Book I – The Assassination
CHAPTER I
The Bruised Reed
The fair girl who was playing a banjo and singing to the wounded soldiers suddenly stopped, and, turning to the surgeon, whispered:
“What’s that?”
“It sounds like a mob – ”
With a common impulse they moved to the open window of the hospital and listened.
On the soft spring air came the roar of excited thousands sweeping down the avenue from the Capitol toward the White House. Above all rang the cries of struggling newsboys screaming an “Extra.” One of them darted around the corner, his shrill voice quivering with excitement:
“Extra! Extra! Peace! Victory!”
Windows were suddenly raised, women thrust their heads out, and others rushed into the street and crowded around the boy, struggling to get his papers. He threw them right and left and snatched the money – no one asked for change. Without ceasing rose his cry:
“Extra! Peace! Victory! Lee has surrendered!”
At last the end had come.
The great North, with its millions of sturdy people and their exhaustless resources, had greeted the first shot on Sumter with contempt and incredulity. A few regiments went forward for a month’s outing to settle the trouble. The Thirteenth Brooklyn marched gayly Southward on a thirty days’ jaunt, with pieces of rope conspicuously tied to their muskets with which to bring back each man a Southern prisoner to be led in a noose through the streets on their early triumphant return! It would be unkind to tell what became of those ropes when they suddenly started