Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction
Fergus Bordewich
Alfred A. Knopf
In this book, Bordewich transports us to the front lines of the battle of President Ulysses S. Grant against both armed Southern enemies of Reconstruction and Northern politicians seduced by visions of postwar conciliation whose mission was to obliterate the muscular democratic power of newly emancipated Black Americans and their white allies, often by the most horrifying means imaginable.
Bordewich revives 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.