Non-Fiction

Fergus M. Bordewich

Latest Title: Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction

Genre: non-fiction

Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • 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, President Ulysses S. Grant waged a two-term battle against both armed Southern enemies of Reconstruction and Northern politicians seduced by visions of postwar conciliation, testing the limits of the federal government in determining the extent of states’ rights. In this book, Bordewich transports us to the front lines, in the hamlets of the former Confederate States and in the marble corridors of Congress, reviving an unsung generation of grassroots Black leaders and key figures such as crusading Missouri senator Carl Schurz, who sacrificed the rights of Black Americans in the name of political “reform,” and the ruthless former slave trader and Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Klan War is a bold and bracing record of America’s past that reveals the bloody, Reconstruction-era roots of present-day battles to protect the ballot box and stamp out resurgent white supremacist ideologies.

About Fergus M. Bordewich

Fergus M. Bordewich is the author of nine non-fiction books: “Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction;” “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 D.B. Hardeman Prize in American History); “America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise that Preserved the Union” (winner of the 2012 Los Angeles Times History Prize); “Washington: The Making of the American Capital;” and “Bound for Canaan,” a history of the Underground Railroad. His articles have appeared in many national magazines. His book reviews appear regularly in The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Washington, D.C.

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