Ulysses s grant and the battle to save reconstruction with mr. Border with he a prolific author he has written nine nonfiction books and is built on and furthers and continues the research and writing did about the radical reform. Republicans in power. I told congress at war how reformers fought the civil war. Lincoln ended slavery, remade america. That was published just three years ago in 2020. Its a narrative that continues in klan war and his earlier works include, and im sort of going to enlist a couple of these in reverse sequencing back in time time bound china, the underground railroad and for the soul of america there was great debate. Henry clay, Stephen Douglass and the compromise that preserved the the First Congress how james George Washington and a group of extraordinary women invented the government and washington the making of the american capitol and there were several earlier than that. Mr. Burdick is, a native of new york city, he is an independent writer, historian and journalist. His most recent has been on 19th century American History. He served on and chaired the awards committee of the Frederick Douglass book prize. Given by the Gilder Lehrman center for the study of slavery, resistance and abolition at yale university. Hes a member, the Advisory Council of scholars for the u. S. Capital historical society. His articles, book reviews, op eds appear regularly in National Magazine and in newspapers from the new york times, wall street journal to the l. A. Times. In earlier years, as a journalist he reported extensively politics, Economic Issues and culture from asia, the middle east, europe and africa, and worked for a time even at the united nations. Hes a genuine new yorker who did his undergraduate and graduate degrees at city college of new york, a Columbia University, and he has lived and worked actually all around world. He and his wife, jean, currently reside on capitol hill in washington, d. C. Mrs. Bordewich is a playwright, an adviser to national and international philanthropies on democratic governments. Shes with us today. And you also meet and visit with her at that signing tent after our hour or 50 minutes here is over. So i think, for starters fergus, how about opening this with a reading from the very beginning of your book . Its right at the start. His preface. Its your opening narrative about mr. Outlaw in Alamance County north, which is situated right between durham and greensboro. Sure. First, thanks for your kind introduction, mary, and thank you all being here today. Especially maybe not quite the crack of, but close enough. And on a sunday. Uh, so yes, this section im going to read and i dont know, five, 6 minutes. Uh opens the book and its kind of selfexplanatory. Um. Graham, North Carolina uh, about 11 p. M. On february 26th, 1870. The nighttime sign once was broken by wild hollering, the pounding of horses moving through the drizzly mist. The writers wore white gown and masks, and they surrounded small frame house where wyatt lived with his small children and elderly mother. 20 men burst into the house. His family name was old and familiar one in Alamance County. They had great torches. Jemima wyatts mother told state officials. First, they came in through the cover off of me. Then they said to me, where is wyatt . One says, say, say, say. There were two who had swords and. There were pistols. One said, cut head off and another said, our brains out. They went out of the room as they passed. One says to the other, let us set the house. And as they went around to the room and heard the little child cry, thats the baby. Oh, daddy. Oh, daddy. I ran and opened door. And there were all around him, all around my son. He putting on his pants and i run back and got a stick and laid away hard as i could. They on me. They did three of them. And stamped me and i rose three times and they knocked me down after they stamped, said, you, you strike a white man. And they stamped me three times in my breast and on my head and my arms. And then i hollered for murder. And they went off with him. They hollered like geese. And then they went hard as thunder riding white. Outlaw was about 50 years old, a light skinned man of mixed a mulatto in the parlance of the time with a black wavy hair and beard, an earnest and a notably bold gaze. He had escaped slavery in 1864, made way to union lines and enlisted in the cavalry, and served with it through the civil war. And for a after. When came home, he opened a woodworking shop where he repaired wagons and made coffins. And he managed to sort of informal tavern white and black workingmen gathered. He was counted among. Grahams small black middle class and quickly gained a reputation among freed people as a man knew things who could speak with who could persuade a natural leader. In 1866 he had represented Alamance County at a statewide convention. He was local leader of the union league, the organizing arm of the republican, a founder of grahams First Ame Church and elected town commissioner. And he helped an armed patrol of blacks and whites to protect against the rising threat of ku klux klan. When called for retaliation. He earned restraint, urging blacks to be as industrious as possible. Give no cause for complaint and trust in the law. Outlaws captors dragged, pushed and beat him half dressed and barefoot. A half mile down main street to the courthouse, the center of town. They strung him up with a bed cord from the branch. An elm tree that reached toward the hotel and a courthouse from which. For the past year, the republicans had governed graham if outlaw had any final words, no one recorded them. One of the klansmen slashed his mouth with a knife. A last bit of pointed savagery toward a man who had too often spoken out. Too often spoken out for the rights that black men had been told the national government. And by north embattled republican governor were now theirs. His body dangled in front of the courthouse the middle of the next day when it was finally cut down by the sheriff. A former member of the klan, the coroner ruled outlaw had died at the hands of persons unknown. Not long afterward, a black man named puryear claimed to know who the murderers were. A few days later, he was found floating, dead in a pond. In the months that followed, without outlaws leadership, the union league fell apart and frightened republicans fled down. White outlaw was but one victim, a grimly one of a movement that was sweeping the former confederate states. Its targets were freed. People and their white, by their words or actions however tacit, sought to transform them. The south from a region where power had been organized to protect economic engine of slavery, and now the debasement former slaves into a democracy where white and black, rich and poor, had a place in the dynamic arena. Politics with the confederacys defeat in 1865, there was reason for hope. The south seemed poised for a racial revolution that would transform former slaves into free actors and National Life and overthrow the white oligarchies that had ruled the slave states since the founding of the republic. It goes on for another 350 pages, but. So, fergus, you the point right after this lynching story that northern republicans at the time believe that the civil war was over and the south had acquiesced reconstruction had put laws and constitutional amendments in place that established new structures and processes to replace antebellum ones. And that reconstruction was accomplished. Reconstruction was irreversible. And conversely, many us those of us educated in the 20th century who studied under sort of the school of American History, generations of faculty having and products of that who taught us in school that the lost cause ideology that dominated jim crow thinking decades informed that reconstruction was a complete failure and that africanamericans had little success. But you call reconstruction a great period of American History and its aspirations and its muscular. And your two books on reconstruction want enrich our understanding of this time. So what was reconstructions arc . What were its impacts . How did reconstruction evolve . Why do we need to think about it . Sure. Yeah. Mary, as you said, i mean, most of us, at least those of us who are approximately in my age group, certainly were educated with this to believe that reconstruction was it was a dreadful failure. It wrong headed from the beginning. It was poorly carried out by corrupt people, white and black by socalled. I dont like these terms. But you know what they are scalawag turncoat traitorous southern whites and corrupt northern all of them corrupt and africanamericans were totally unready to participate in politics. Much less perhaps even even for freedom. Okay. And i mean, that was established way of presenting reconstruction about 100 years. Give or take. And it was established also within academia. The Dunning School as you mentioned, that name, by the way, was a Columbia University in new york. This isnt just a product of of of lost cause southern. It was accepted throughout the country the lost cause became kind a national myth. Okay embedded in the textbooks. Embedded in. But up to the 1960s. And it lingers some places even today. Okay. Im going to ask you for the sake of brevity. Just try to erase this for a moment. Thats a thats a tall order. I realize. But the story of reconstruction is really quite different over last generation or so. A new generation of historians, two generations, perhaps you know, rethinking re researching and re addressing reconstruction and scraping away the crust of, lost cause ideology that, by the way, is the real revision ism. Thats what revised the truth. Okay. There are those in our society who want to use revisionism as a kind of almost a swear word about by trying to tell us that what we learned wasnt really so the revered, the lost cause story is the revision. We are going back to the roots, to this to the truth of what actually happened, which was extremely bold, politically bold, and particularly on the part of africanamerican. And one of the most striking aspect of the period, and certainly it comes through great deal in what i write in this book is the alacrity the speed with which africanamerican two embraced not just freedom, the the the the opportunities democracy in political Public Participation and in a rush to become school. I mean, its not true that everything well enslaved person was not educated some not many but everybody aspired to it. And you read about the freedom schools established by the freedmens bureau, various churches and some other entities and people of formerly enslaved people young and old i mean all old people, middle aged people, kids flock. They pack in to become educated because. They understand the literacy is the root. To to to opportunity. And in addition, they flocked where possible. And this is quite over the south to to learn about the practice democracy and government. The agency for that is most frequently an Organization Called the union league which wyatt. By the way thats just a family. Nobody accused him of being an outlaw. The North Carolina family name he an organizer of the union league. The union league did many things among others was to educate people in the practice of government and the union league expanded dramatically. And it is, dare i say, to use the simplest word, a purely racist idea, that africanamericans werent either interested, ready or capable to participate. They were in did they werent did. The facts are irrefutable. Across the south. I mean, theres in here of people walking and and defying all kinds of threats, the threats of the klan and, other threats as well, to vote. I mean, the determination to vote in which i should say parenthetically began in Southern States before the 15th amendment, because states had the authority to to set voting laws before the 15th amendment, presumably guaranteed it. Those guarantees withdrawn later. But in practice. But at any rate. So you had africanamericans voting in most of the Southern States, virtually all of them before the 15th amendment beginning, mostly in 1868. Okay. So people are flocking to the polls. 400,000 black voters elected Ulysses Grant in 1868. Without that vote, he would not have become president and innumerable people, local offices, people, black, many of them formerly enslaved as well as white republicans. And you have a biracial, a very frail by Political Party developing the Republican Party which was the circle. So speak so to speak Progressive Party looking party of the time this the democrats in south were purely reactionary purely reactionary embraced violence. The ku klux klan was basically the paramilitary arm of the southern democratic. Sad to say, abetted politically by northern democrats, who welcomed . The alliance with southern democrats. The parties, in other words, are very roughly in opposite positions where one might say they are today. I just keep going on here. Well, as you can see, lets lets just say that what were reconstructions positive accomplishments. Okay. Well, one simply youre a lot okay. Ill try. Well, one ive already talked about empowering people to vote formerly enslaved people and creating a two party system. Bear mind that in most, not all southerners poor white people were also restricted. Many Southern States had restrictions, so reconstruction was also a liberation for. A lot of working class, poor people. Im generally saying here it varies from place to place. Theres that, too. It becomes a medium of education for people who, as a matter of policy were pretty much denied education forever. Africanamericans and poor white people who often had no opportunity to become. Reconstruction governments. Established Public School systems. They invest public works in a part of the country where there werent many public works. Railroad building and other other other kinds of investing on a northern model. Essentially. And this, of course, is outrages the oligarchy types of the south whose own power is at stake here in their control of the political systems in Southern States is at stake. So both politically, economically and in the power of the vote, african were making powerful progress during time. Very powerful progress. Its dramatic. Its dramatic. I mean, there were there were some things that should have happened that didnt land, was not widely distributed to africanamericans. It should have been radicals in Congress LikeThaddeus Stevens of pennsylvania and others, been wade of ohio in the senate, wanted to see plantation belonging to where confederates broken up and handed to freed people. This should have been done. It would created an economic base for freed people that did occur. Why . Because americans in the end, northerners valued property above. Above economic rights. The economic rights of of of poor people. All right. So given this platform of progress, tell us the klan story. Its context. We here in tennessee because olasky, were keenly interested in this how it spread and then because thats the first word of the title of your book. Lets talk about the klan. Sure. Okay. The klan, as im going to guess, most of you probably know, was founded in the small city, large town of pulaski, but 80 miles south of where we are. Very nice looking little town today. Not too prosperous, but not but kind. A nice looking place. It was there in 1866 by a small group of men, all of them college educated, by the way. All of them a newspaper editor, a couple lawyers and such who were more bored young guys. They were Confederate Army veterans who didnt know what to do in town, where nothing was happening was pretty chaotic. Half of it had been burned during the war, and they hit upon the idea of this was essentially kind of a wacky mens fraternity. Thats how it began. It was not as a terrorist organization. Okay. They they invented costumes. They invented this crazy name, as you may know, there was a fraternitys the founding of fraternities was a popular phenomenon in america the time and there were found it in tennessee and elsewhere at the time and of the early klan are klan member himself by the way who celebrated the klan. So they were just fishing, trying to come up with an interesting name. And they picked this because it sounded. It did. And he said if wed named it swastikas, which was another candidate or there was a fraternity called costume because he said, we name it, that it might have caught on. But there was something that in the ring of the kkk that did kind of catch on. But any rate. Mostly they performed sort of funky antics around town. But in their category of antics was one particular thing which had was seen as having potential. They scared black people. They dress up. Then they didnt set out to physically harm people initially. But it was kind of a jokey thing in their minds to scare black people. Within about six months, a group of higher confederate officers here in nashville got together. They what was happening down there in giles county, which is already spreading little bit and saw they saw the terrorists and right from the beginning with that meeting in nashville here, it was organized as a terrorist organization. It was the first terrorist organization, American History, that what it existed for. Thats what it was founded to do Everything Else is rubbish or anything else. You might have heard from las cosas and so on. Its rubbish. Its not because white womanhood was being threatened by by freed black people. I mean, you. Nonsense. It wasnt happening, was it. Were. Were black people asserting themselves . Yes, they were. Were black people. Charlie. Local powers. Yes, they were. Were they running for offi