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Podcast: Commonwealth Club of California Podcast
Episode: Fergus Bordewich: President Grant’s War Against the Ku Klux Klan
Description: The Ku Klux Klan rose from the ashes of the Civil War. At its peak in the early 1870s, the Klan had tens of thousands of members, many of them landowners, lawmen, doctors, journalists, and churchmen, as well as future governors and congressmen. The Klan’s mission was to obliterate the democratic power of newly emancipated Black Americans and their white allies, often by the most horrific means imaginable.To repel the 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...