Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan

J. Michael Martinez works as a corporate attorney and teaches political science as a part-time faculty member at Kennesaw State University. His most recent book, Life and Death in Civil War Prisons, traces the parallel lives of two Civil War prisoners. Martinez lives in Monroe, Georgia, with his wife and family.

• Prologue: "Jim Williams on His Big Muster"Chapter 1: "A Brotherhood of Property-Holders, the Peaceable, Law-Abiding Citizens of the State"Chapter 2: "The Foundations Must Be Broken Up and Relaid, or All Our Blood and Treasure Have Been Spent in Vain"Chapter 3: "The Whole Fabric of Reconstruction . . . Will Topple and Fall"Chapter 4: "It Was to Be His Life-long Complaint That His Services Were Never Properly Recognized or Rewarded"Chapter 5: "The Dagger That Was Made Illustrious in the Hands of Brutus"Chapter 6: "A Perversion of Moral Sentiment Among the Southern Whites"Chapter 7: "As Far as I Can Learn, the Prosecuting Lawyers Have Managed the Business Ably"Chapter 8: "The Causes from Which Ku Kluxism Sprung Are Still Potent for Evil"Chapter 9: "He Became So Offensive a Partisan That the Papers of That Section Applied to Him the Most Opprobrious Epithets"Epilogue: "It Is Like Writing History with Lightning"Bibliographic Essay

Michael Martinez provides a highly readable account of the Reconstruction Klan in South Carolina, based on a wide array of sources. Particularly interesting is his account of Major Lewis Merrill, who was central to bringing the South Carolina Klan to bay in 1871.