Praise for KLAN WAR: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction

PRESS RELEASE | REVIEWS

Astunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil-when Ulysses S. Grant wielded the power of the federal government to dismantle the KKK.

The Ku Klux Klan, which celebrated historian Fergus Bordewich defines as “the first organized terrorist movement in American history,” rose from the ashes of the Civil War. At its peak in the early 1870s, the Klan boasted many tens of thousands of members, no small number of them landowners, lawmen, doctors, journalists, and churchmen, as well as future governors and congressmen. And their mission was to obliterate the muscular democratic power of newly emancipated Black Americans and their white allies, often by the most horrifying means imaginable.

To repel the virulent tidal wave of violence, President Ulysses S. Grant waged a two-term battle against both armed Southern enemies of Reconstruction and Northern politicians seduced by visions of postwar conciliation, testing the limits of the federal government in determining the extent of states’ rights. In this book, Bordewich transports us to the front lines, in the hamlets of the former Confederate States and in the marble corridors of Congress, reviving an unsung generation of grassroots Black leaders and key figures such as crusading Missouri senator Carl Schurz, who sacrificed the rights of Black Americans in the name of political “reform,” and the ruthless former slave trader and Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Klan War is a bold and bracing record of America’s past that reveals the bloody, Reconstruction-era roots of present-day battles to protect the ballot box and stamp out resurgent white supremacist ideologies.

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REVIEWS: Publisher’s Weekly | Kirkus Reviews

“A critically important revisionist history... A penetrating examination of the rise of the KKK, 'the first organized terrorist movement in American history.' For Bordewich, Grant’s decisive move to take on the Klan, though it did not stop the future systematic stripping away of Blacks’ civil rights, proved that 'forceful political action can prevail over violent extremism.' ”—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“By documenting what really happened in the bloody and vicious post-Civil War South and how it nullified official government policy, this history resonates on many levels... Bordewich introduces readers to Black leaders and white supremacist ideologues, sparing no fact, however grim, in his devastating history of how domestic terrorism tore apart the social, political, and other promises of emancipation.”—Mark Knoblauch, Booklist (starred)

“Riveting... An astute assessment of an often overlooked episode in American history. ”—Publishers Weekly

“A gripping, haunting story of how America’s original white supremacist movement used terrorism to crush multiracial democracy—and how, for a time, progressive elected officials in Washington allied with grassroots African Americans and their white allies to rout the reactionaries. This is history we need to vanquish violent intimidation in our own time, this time without quitting before the work is done. ”—Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains and Behind the Mask of Chivalry

“An urgent history, in which the conception and spawning of the Klan, its anti-Black atrocities and crimes against humanity, the evolution of a General and President, and the possibilities and limits of political power all come roaring to life. As searing as it is suspenseful, Klan War delivers an incisive angle into a horrific chapter in American history, one that requires knowing today.”—Ilyon Woo, author of Master Slave Husband Wife

“Fergus Bordewich is an expert at turning momentous questions in American history into absorbing narratives. With insight and telling details, he reveals how Grant—by nature no crusader—directed federal resources against Klan attacks on African Americans, only to be undercut by political attempts to appease the hostile Liberal Republicans. A fascinating and foreboding book. ”—T.J. Stiles, author of Custer's Trials (winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

“Grippingly tells the essential story of the unsung heroes who throttled the Ku Klux Klan's murderous domestic terrorism after the Civil War, only to watch helplessly as a tragic loss of political will frittered away much of that triumph. The lessons for meeting today's challenges are unmistakable and chilling.”—David O. Stewart, author of Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy

“Bordewich has done it again—this time, resurrecting an incredible American story of one man’s determination to secure civil rights, equality, and justice for millions of African Americans. Deeply researched and delivered through magnificent and gripping prose, Klan Wars reclaims Grant’s historic battle to build a unified nation in the face of a pernicious, hate-filled movement that waged a vicious grassroots campaign to reassert white supremacy. A must read!”—Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for the Promised Land

“One of the most talented historians of our times tells the riveting story of Civil War hero President Ulysses Grant's forgotten war on the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction in this marvelous book. The ultimate failure to curb domestic terrorism in the post-war south carries an important lesson for our fraught times when some appeal to political violence to overthrow the US experiment in interracial democracy. This book should be required reading for all American citizens.”—Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition

“Klan War takes readers into the courageous struggle of the Grant administration to defeat an American domestic terrorist campaign to overthrow the achievements of Radical Reconstruction. Bordewich’s compelling narrative, by turns, frightening, bracing, and timely, will remind readers that today’s battle between white supremacy and human justice has a long history.”—Don H. Doyle, author of The Cause of All Nations and Viva Lincoln