“The president is shot! He has killed the president!”
—from The Clansman
Beginning with Lee’s surrender and the subsequent assassination of Abraham Lincoln, The Clansman describes the anxiety and confusion of the years immediately after the South’s defeat. Between 1865 and 1870, the whole nation struggled with questions of justice and revenge, forgiveness and reparation. With 350,000 Southern soldiers dead, ensuring the welfare of their widows and orphans, as well as the rest of the population, was of paramount concern to the survivors.
Faced with a total breakdown of law and order, some Southern leaders called upon the spirits of their ancestors, the clansmen of Old Scotland. The Ku Klux Klan was conceived as an “Invisible Empire” pledged to protect the people of the South. This novel tells its story.
About the Author
Thomas Dixon Jr. was born in rural North Carolina during the Civil War. Educated at Wake Forest and Johns Hopkins Universities, Mr. Dixon was, among other things, a novelist, preacher, lecturer, lawyer, and state legislator. During his lifetime, he published twenty-two novels and several essays, plays, and sermons. His “Trilogy of Reconstruction” also includes The Traitor and The Leopard’s Spots and was made into D. W. Griffith’s cinema masterpiece, Birth of a Nation. Mr. Dixon has been named among both the most dated and most contemporary Southern writers.
THE CLANSMAN
An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan
By Thomas Dixon Jr.
Illustrated by Arthur I. Keller
FICTION / Historical
392 pp. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
8 b/w illus.
ISBN: 9781589800106 pb