Race, Culture, and Politics in the "New South"

The political terrorism was effective. While Republican gubernatorial candidate Rufus B. Bullock carried the state in April
1868 elections, by November Democratic presidential candidate Horatio Seymour was in the lead. In some counties the contrast
was incredible. In John Reed's Oglethorpe County, 1,144 people had voted Republican in April, while only 116 dared to vote
Republican in November when Reed's armed Klansmen surrounded the polls. In Columbia County armed Klansmen not only intimidated voters but even cowed federal soldiers sent to guard the polling place. Not surprisingly,
while 1,222 votes had been cast in Columbia County for Republican governor Rufus Bullock in April, only one vote was cast for Republican presidential candidate Ulysses Grant in November 1868. Similar political
terrorism and control of the polling places help account for Georgia's quick "redemption" and return to conservative white
Democratic control by late 1871.

The main components of the Lost Cause myth, repeated in writings, sermons, lectures,
and speeches by scores of postwar southern figures, are easily identified. First, the prewar South—the Old South—was a place
of nobility and chivalry. (There is no better capsule description of the Old South of the Lost Cause myth than the opening
words of the movie version of Gone With the Wind, with its elegiac reference to the now-vanished pretty world "of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields," where gallantry "took its
last bow.")

Much of the second Klan's appeal can be credited to its militant advocacy of white supremacy,
anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism, and immigration restriction, but the organization also attracted the support of many middle-class Americans
by advocating improved law enforcement, honest government, better public schools, and traditional family life.

Thomas Dixon reveled in its triumph.
"The real purpose of my film," he confessed
gleefully, "was to revolutionize Northern audiences
that would transform every man into a Southern partisan
for life."