Did you know that 153 years before our current president was indicted for inciting an insurrection, another US president used the Insurrection Clause to track and arrest hundreds of white terrorists in South Carolina? It was news to us, too.
Historian Fergus Bordewich will talk about that and other material in his latest book, Klan War, at a program on Sunday, March 30, at 4pm on Zoom and in-person at GROW, 1340 Elmwood Ave. in Columbia.
The program is part of the spring session of the Modjeska Simkins School, a project the SC Progressive Network launched in 2015. The school’s Deep Dive series is free and open to the public. Online participants must register HERE.
Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction is touted by Knopf as “a stunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil.”
Jennifer Szalai of The New York Times called the book a “cautionary tale,” warning that, “a premature push for conciliation and compromise can leave the roots of some very old pathologies untouched, ready to grow again when the conditions are right.”
After the Civil War ended, the 14th Amendment was passed to grant and defend equal rights to formerly enslaved people. As soon as the war ended, the Ku Klux Klan organized to terrorize them — depriving them of the rights afforded to all citizens through the 14th Amendment.
Nowhere in the country was the mayhem and murder more widespread than in South Carolina, the “cradle of secession.” In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant declared martial law in nine South Carolina counties, and hundreds of KKK members were arrested. The trials were held in Columbia and Charleston.
“My book is one of history, not present-day politics,” Borderwich said, “but a few conclusions are inescapable. The United States is not so exceptional that it is somehow absolved from the potential for organized terrorist violence of the type we have seen in other countries.
“The story of Reconstruction and the Klan war further demonstrates that rights that we take for granted — as freedmen did in the 1870s — can be taken away again. There are forces in today’s America that have the potential to undermine our most basic democratic processes and institutions, as we saw on January 6, 2021. We must remain vigilant if we are not to let our democracy slip through our fingers.”
Bordewich will appear in-person at GROW. His books will be available for purchase.