Carpetbaggers, Cavalry and the Ku Klux Klan: Exposing the Invisible Empire During Reconstruction
Author(s): J. Michael Martinez (Author)
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (UK)
Publication Date: 1 Mar. 2007
Language: English
Print length: 286 pages
ISBN-10: 074255077X
ISBN-13: 9780742550773
Book Description
In some places, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was a social fraternity whose members enjoyed sophomoric hijinks and homemade liquor. In other areas, the KKK was a paramilitary group intent on keeping former slaves away from white women and Republicans away from ballot boxes. South Carolina saw the worst Klan violence and, in 1871, President Grant sent federal troops under the command of Major Lewis Merrill to restore law and order. Merrill did not eradicate the Klan, but they arguably did more than any other person or entity to expose the identity of the Invisible Empire as a group of hooded, brutish, homegrown terrorists. In compiling evidence to prosecute the leading Klansmen and by restoring at least a semblance of order to South Carolina, Merrill and his men demonstrated that the portrayal of the KKK as a chivalric organization was at best a myth, and at worst a lie.
This is the story of the rise and fall of the Reconstruction-era Klan, focusing especially on Major Merrill and the Seventh Cavalry’s efforts to expose the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan to the light of day.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Michael Martinez provides a highly readable account of the Reconstruction Klan in South Carolina, based on a wide array of sources. Particularly interesting is his account of Major Lewis Merrill, who was central to bringing the South Carolina Klan to bay in 1871. — Allen W. Trelease, author of White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction
Offers an exploratory study into the hidden world of the Klan and the men who attempted to bring it down. . . . A highly readable introduction to the making of the Klan. Recommended.
Martinez”s book is a welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship that presents the human face of this gallant and arduous era of experimentation and progress.
A well researched account of the attempt to counter the Ku Klux Klan in post-Civil War South Carolina that provides an object lesson on the difficulty of an indecisive government in countering a popularly supported insurgency, and the efforts of a dedicated U.S. cavalry officer who tried. — David Chalmers, author of Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan
About the Author
J. Michael Martinez is the author or editor of 20 books on American history and law including the Rowman & Littlefield titles A Long Dark Night: Race in America from Jim Crow to World War II (2016), Terrorist Attacks on American Soil: From the Civil War Era to the Present (2012), Coming for to Carry Me Home: Race in America from Abolitionism to Jim Crow (2011), and Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux, Klan: Exposing the Invisible Empire during Reconstruction (2007). He teaches political science at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia.
Wow! eBook
