Klan War
Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction
A stunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil—when Ulysses S. Grant wielded the power of the federal government to dismantle the KKK
The Ku Klux Klan, which celebrated historian Fergus Bordewich defines as “the first organized terrorist movement in American history,” rose from the ashes of the Civil War. At its peak in the early 1870s, the Klan boasted many tens of thousands of members, no small number of them landowners, lawmen, doctors, journalists, and churchmen, as well as future governors and congressmen. And their mission was to obliterate the muscular democratic power of newly emancipated Black Americans and their white allies, often by the most horrifying means imaginable.
To repel the virulent tidal wave of violence,…
$27.99
March 25, 2025FERGUS M. BORDEWICH is the author of eight previous nonfiction books, including Congress at War: How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America; The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government (winner of the 2016 D.B. Hardeman Prize in American History); and America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise that Preserved the Union (named best history book of 2012 by the Los Angeles Times). He lives in Washington, DC with his wife.