The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (Novel as American Social History) [Paperback]

Thomas Dixon (Author)

Book Description

Series: Novel as American Social History | Publication Date: December 31, 1970

" The year was 1865. With the close of the Civil War, there began for the South, an era of even greater turmoil. In The Clansman, his controversial 1905 novel, later the basis of the motion picture The Birth of a Nation, Thomas Dixon, describes the social, political, and economic disintegration that plagued the South during Reconstruction, depicting the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the reactions of two families to racial conflict. This study in social history was alternatively praised and damned by contemporary critics. As historian Thomas D. Clark notes in his introduction, the novel "opened wider a vein of racial hatred which was to poison further an age already in social and political upheaval. Dixon had in fact given voice in his novel to one of the most powerful latent forces in the social and political mind of the South." For modern readers, The Clansman probes the roots of the racial violence that still haunts our society.

Product Details

• Paperback: 392 pages
• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky; New edition edition (December 31, 1970)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813101263
• ISBN-13: 978-0813101262
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #692,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating, Important Reading of History., October 13, 2000

By 

K. L. Rouse (USA--The South!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (Hardcover)

This novel is important reading--not as a lesson in historical fact, but rather to understand and envision the power (and inherent violence) of a white supremacist worldview in American history. Dixon is careful to detail many facts about historical figures, particularly President Lincoln and Republican Congressman Thad Stevens, including many actual quotes and near-quotes of these men in their dialogue; he is meticulous and masterful with so many aspects of this novel. The Clansman (and Dixon's later novel, The Traitor) are virtually the only works of popular American literature to render a sympathetic, insider view of the Ku Klux Klan. Dixon includes so many rich and rare details of history that it's no wonder readers have been persuaded (and still are, apparently) that this is a complete and accurate picture of what is perhaps the single most tumultuous period of American history.

But it would be a gross error to assume that Dixon's portrayal of race relations is at all accurate. Dixon makes it appear that southern whites were made vulnerable (by the federal government, by military rule, and by the ravages of war) to the attacks of an animalistic race of out-of-control freedmen, but nothing can be further than the truth. White southerners inflicted violence upon blacks to maintain their brutal control over social relations and labor--and then generated a powerful, lasting mythology of black criminality and brutality to perpetuate this violence and justify it.

Any reading of first-hand accounts of black freedmen during Reconstruction is alternately chilling and saddening--particularly the Congressional testimonies of freedmen about the race riots of Memphis and New Orleans in 1866. Throughout the South freedmen were coerced into slavery-like labor; they were prevented from migrating elsewhere by vigilante groups (in many cases, the KKK); often the Freedmen's Bureau and military officials sided with the unjust practices of white planters; and Republicans in Congress seemed to manipulate freedmen's vote only to benefit themselves and turn a blind eye to the interests of freedmen. White men and women in the South had it hard after the Civil War--but black men and women, by and large, had it far harder.

Any scholarly history of Reconstruction written after 1950 (after Americans got over a long period of racist and xenophobic hysteria) will elaborate on the above details... particularly the work of Eric Foner, or the excellent account of The Trouble They Seen. Pick up one of these books as a reading companion to The Clansman!

Dixon may not accurately represent the FACTS of history, but he does accurately represent the EMOTIONS of history--the many emotions of southern whites about a newly freed population of black men and women, particularly their fears and their psychological/sociological need to keep ex-slaves in a subordinate social position--to separate black and white in a society that coexisted a little too close for comfort.

It's a fascinating book. I recommend it to every American who seeks to make sense of our complex, tragic, and gradually evolving history of race relations.

22 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Southern View of Reconstruction, May 17, 2002

By 

C. Perelli-Minetti (Old Greenwich, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (Paperback)

As a novel, The Clansman has many faults, but as a popular exposition of the Dunning interpretation of Reconstruction (pro-Southern, anti-radical republican), it is excellent. First published in 1905 (my copy has pictures from 'The Birth of a Nation' so it's post-1915), it was written by the descendent of a Klansman in the glow of the reconciliation of North and South that was finally symbolically completed in the Spanish-American War - when two former Confederate generals (Joe Wheeler and Fitzhugh Lee) returned to the National colors to serve against the Spanish.

The novel's historical significance is enhanced beause it was the basis for D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, one of the dozen or so greatest American films.

39 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Woodrow Wilson and white supremacy, December 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (Paperback)

Thomas Dixon, Jr.'s "The Clansman" is best known as the prime source for D. W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation." A bestseller in its own right, "The Clansman" presents a vision of a South overrun with lascivious black men out to rape white women unless the KKK can intercede. As a novel it is maudlin, melodramatic, and unconvincing; as a history textbook, it is damnable.

Some reviewers for the hardcover edition of this book would have you believe that, because Woodrow Wilson approved of both Dixon's novel and Griffith's film, his affirmation validates Dixon's depiction of the poor maligned white man and his sexually threatened wife and daughter. Hardly the case--in spite of history textbooks' portrayal of Wilson, he was himself a virulent racist, outmatched only, perhaps, by his wife. As James W. Loewen indicates in his review of history textbooks, "Lies My Teacher Told Me," the "filmmaker David W. Griffith quoted Wilson's two-volume history of the United States, now notorious for its racist view of Reconstruction, in his infamous masterpiece 'The Clansman' [later retitled Birth of a Nation], a paean to the Ku Klux Klan for its role in putting down 'black-dominated' Republican state governments during Reconstruction" (18). Loewen notes later that "Wilson was not only antiblack; he was also far and away our most nativist president, repeatedly questioning the loyalty of those he called 'hyphenated Americans.' 'Any man who carries a hyphen about with him,' said Wilson, 'carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready' " (19).

If you read "The Clansman," read it because it was a bestseller, was recommended by an American President, and spawned a movie which at the time was a landmark in cinematic technical achievement--facts which should shock you. It may be racist tripe, but its historical significance remains relevant--as does the continued dangerous potential for people to buy into versions of reality that bear little congruence with truth. If we've learned anything over the past few years, just because a President of the United States says something doesn't make it true, nor does it excuse you from the need to think critically for yourself.