Dominic Sandbrook

So he's kind of traveling south.

life insurance to widows or whatever.

And whenever he's there, he will meet local bigwigs and he'll meet other Confederate veterans, other officers like him who don't like what's happened to the South.

And they will set up, after he's left, other paramilitary groups like the Klan to defend the South against the horrors of radical reconstruction.

And I think I get the impression that a lot of the people who end up becoming

Grand dragons and grand titans of the southern clan are ex-drinking buddies, war comrades and whatnot of Nathan Bedford Forrest, who he's visited in his life insurance duties and then inspired them to set up their own clans.

Right, exactly.

But actually, I think the biggest influence in spreading the Klan is actually just the newspapers, Southern Democratic newspapers.

So they are regularly reporting by 1868, the Klan's activities in Tennessee.

And they're basically saying, you know, in Tennessee, there's this group called the Klan and hurrah for them.

They are fighting back against the tyrannical imposition of black rule by the Republican Party.

So this is the Richmond, Virginia Inquirer and Examiner in March 1868.

It said that the clan was behind its mask was a purpose as resolute, noble and heroic as that which Brutus concealed beneath his mask of well-dissembled idiocy.

Is that fair to Brutus?

Oh, against talking the proud.

Yes.

And the funny thing is that they don't think they're the conspirators.

They think the conspiracy is somebody else.

Because as this Richmond newspaper says, the conspiracy is a secret Negro conspiracy, which has faced objects, the establishment of Negro domination.

This is the kind of language they use all the time, by the way.