Dominic Sandbrook

You'll be thinking about your railroad investments and other such Gilded Age things.

But if you're a Southerner, you will never stop thinking about this.

And the second weapon they have is violence.

And that will work on three levels.

First of all, violence to intimidate African-Americans away from the polls.

Secondly, violence to disrupt and destroy local Republican organizations.

And finally, and I think in many ways the key thing, the more violent you are, the more it will persuade people in the North to give up.

Because people in the North will just say, come on, we're never going to change the South.

It's a morass.

But you know how people think like that.

People always think like that.

They often don't double down and say, well, we'll send more troops.

They actually say, God, what a mess and a nightmare.

Let's just call it a day.

Take our hand out of the Magimix.

So this is the background for the expansion of the clan.

Yes, it started as possibly as dressing up, as having fun, as a social club, serenading girls, whatever.

But by this point, it has become much more a sort of association of paramilitary groups that are dedicated to overthrowing Republican rule in the name of white supremacy.

It's not the only one, actually.

So there are others.