Dominic Sandbrook

There's a group called the White Brotherhood.

There's a group called the Invisible Empire in North Carolina.

The most famous one, I mean, you were saying about Walter Scott in the first half and the sort of stuff about chivalry.

That's so common in Southern kind of culture because the most famous rival is called the Knights of the White Camellias.

And that was set up in Louisiana.

They don't sound very frightening.

They're very frightening.

No, they're terribly violent.

I mean, you don't want to be on the wrong side of the Knights of the White Camellias, I can tell you.

They were founded in New Orleans, an extremely violent city in this period.

In May 1867, they had similar rituals and handshakes and passwords.

And they were explicitly devoted in their constitution to, and I quote, the supremacy of the white race.

Yeah, okay.

They are frightening.

But of all of them, it's the Klan that expands the furthest.

Part of this, I think, is because of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

He's a really good front man for it.

Not least because he's the president of the Selma, Marion, and Memphis Railroad.

So he's traveling a lot across the South in his railroad duties, especially Mississippi and Alabama.

He's also a life insurance salesman.