Bernard Powers

It was brutal.

Those places were abandoned, and they suffered tremendous damage from the bombs.

There had been a surrender, of course, in 1865 at Appomattox, but there had never been peace.

I'm Guy Gugliotta, former journalist for The Washington Post.

The South had lost one-fifth of its male population.

Its economy, based on plantation agriculture and slavery, was no more.

There was nothing to replace it.

Before the war, he was a very successful attorney in northern Georgia.

He was worried about two things, as far as I could see.

Worried about getting out of debt and worried about God.

He spent a lot of time in church.

He's really a bore.

He's just super serious.

Very, very, very dull.

He's disgusted because Confederates invaded this big federal armory and the federal government didn't do anything about it.

Akerman much later says, I like a strong government.

And this government wasn't strong.

If this government wouldn't protect itself, I wasn't going to protect it.

It was federal weakness which kind of drove him into the Confederacy.

Just because the Klan is not organized in Carolina until 1868,