History Of The Democrats And The KKK

Why The Democrats Started The Ku Klux Klan

By Free Republic
May 7, 2014

The original targets of the Ku Klux Klan were Republicans, both
black and white, according to a new television program and
book, which describe how the Democrats started the KKK and for
decades harassed the GOP with lynchings and threats.

An estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites died at the end of
KKK ropes from 1882 to 1964.

The documentation has been assembled by David Barton of Wallbu
More..ilders and published in his book "Setting the Record Straight:
American History in Black & White," which reveals that not only did
the Democrats work hand-in-glove with the Ku Klux Klan for
generations, they started the KKK and endorsed its mayhem.

"Of all forms of violent intimidation, lynchings were by far the
most effective," Barton said in his book.

"Republicans often led the efforts to pass federal anti-lynching
laws and their platforms consistently called for a ban on lynching.
Democrats successfully blocked those bills and their platforms
never did condemn lynchings."

Further, the first grand wizard of the KKK was honored at the 1868
Democratic National Convention, no Democrats voted for the 14th
Amendment to grant citizenship to former slaves and, to this day,
the party website ignores those decades of racism, he said.

"Although it is relatively unreported today, historical documents
are unequivocal that the Klan was established by Democrats and
that the Klan played a prominent role in the Democratic Party,"
Barton writes in his book.

"In fact, a 13-volume set of congressional investigations from
1872 conclusively and irrefutably documents that fact.

"The Klan terrorized black Americans through murders and public
floggings; relief was granted only if individuals promised not to vote
for Republican tickets, and violation of this oath was punishable by
death," he said.

"Since the Klan targeted Republicans in general, it did not limit its
violence simply to black Republicans; white Republicans were also included."

Barton also has covered the subject in one episode of his American
Heritage Series of television programs, which is being broadcast
now on Trinity Broadcasting Network and Cornerstone Television.

Barton told WND his comments are not a condemnation or
endorsement of any party or candidate, but rather a warning
that voters even today should be aware of what their parties
and candidates stand for.

His book outlines the aggressive pro-slavery agenda held by the
Democratic Party for generations leading up to the Civil War, and
how that did not die with the Union victory in that war of rebellion.

Even as the South was being rebuilt, the votes in Congress
consistently revealed a continuing pro-slavery philosophy on
the part of the Democrats, the book reveals.

Three years after Appomattox, the 14th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, granting blacks citizenship in the United States,
came before Congress: 94 percent of Republicans endorsed it.

"The records of Congress reveal that not one Democrat, either in
the House or the Senate, voted for the 14th Amendment," Barton
wrote.

"Three years after the Civil War, and the Democrats from the
North as well as the South were still refusing to recognize any
rights of citizenship for black Americans."

He also noted that South Carolina Gov. Wade Hampton at the
1868 Democratic National Convention inserted a clause in the
party platform declaring the Congress' civil rights laws were
"unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void."

It was the same convention when Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest,
the first grand wizard of the KKK, was honored for his leadership.

Barton's book notes that in 1868, Congress heard testimony
from election worker Robert Flournoy, who confessed while
he was canvassing the state of Mississippi in support of the
13th and 14th Amendments, he could find only one black, in
a population of 444,000 in the state, who admitted being a
Democrat.

Nor is Barton the only person to raise such questions.

In 2005, National Review published an article raising similar points.

The publication said in 1957 President Dwight Eisenhower, a
Republican, deployed the 82nd Airborne Division to desegregate
the Little Rock, Ark., schools over the resistance of Democrat
Gov. Orval Faubus.

Further, three years later, Eisenhower signed the GOP's 1960
Civil Rights Act after it survived a five-day, five-hour, filibuster
by 18 Senate Democrats, and in 1964, Democrat President Lyndon
Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act after former Klansman
Robert Byrd's 14-hour filibuster, and the votes of 22 other Senate
Democrats, including Tennessee's Al Gore Sr., failed to scuttle the
plan.

Dems' website showing jump in history.

The current version of the "History" page on the party website
lists a number of accomplishments from 1792, 1798, 1800, 1808,
1812, 1816, 1824 and 1828, including its 1832 nomination of
Andrew Jackson for president.

It follows up with a name change, and the establishment of
the Democratic National Committee, but then leaps over the
Civil War and all of its issues to talk about the end of the
19th Century, William Jennings Bryan and women's suffrage.

A spokesman with the Democrats refused to comment for WND
on any of the issues.

"You're not going to get a comment," said the spokesman who
identified himself as Luis.

"Why would Democrats skip over their own history from 1848
to 1900?" Barton asked.

"Perhaps because it's not the kind of civil rights history they want
to talk about, and perhaps because it is not the kind of civil rights
history they want to have on their website."

The National Review article by Deroy Murdock cited the 1866
comment from Indiana Republican Gov. Oliver Morton condemning
Democrats for their racism.

"Every one who shoots down Negroes in the streets, burns Negro
schoolhouses and meeting-houses, and murders women and children
by the light of their own flaming dwellings, calls himself a
Democrat," Morton said.

It also cited the 1856 criticism by U.S. Sen. Charles Sumner,
R-Mass., of pro-slavery Democrats.

"Congressman Preston Brooks (D-S.C.) responded by grabbing a stick
and beating Sumner unconscious in the Senate chamber. Disabled,
Sumner could not resume his duties for three years."

By the admission of the Democrats themselves, on their website,
it wasn't until Harry Truman was elected that "Democrats began
the fight to bring down the final barriers of race and gender."

"That is an accurate description," wrote Barton.

"Starting with Harry Truman, Democrats began that is, they made
their first serious efforts, to fight against the barriers of race; yet
Truman's efforts were largely unsuccessful because of his own
Democratic Party."

Even then, the opposition to rights for blacks was far from over.

As recently as 1960, Mississippi Democratic Gov. Hugh White had
requested Christian evangelist Billy Graham segregate his crusades,
something Graham refused to do.

"And when South Carolina Democratic Gov. George Timmerman
learned Billy Graham had invited African Americans to a
Reformation Rally at the state Capitol, he promptly denied use
of the facilities to the evangelist," Barton wrote.

The National Review noted that the Democrats' "Klan-coddling"
today is embodied in Byrd, who once wrote that, "The Klan is
needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth
here in West Virginia."

The article suggested a contrast with the GOP, which, when former
Klansman David Duke ran for Louisiana governor in 1991 as a
Republican, was "scorned" by national GOP officials.

Until 1935, every black federal legislator was Republican, and
it was Republicans who appointed the first black Air Force and
Army four-star generals, established Martin Luther King Jr.'s
birthday as a national holiday, and named the first black
national-security adviser, secretary of state, the research reveals.

Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has said: "The first
Republican I knew was my father, and he is still the Republican
I most admire. He joined our party because the Democrats in
Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The
Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and
neither have I."

Barton's documentation said the first opponents of slavery "and
the chief advocates for racial equal rights were the churches (the
Quakers, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc.).

Furthermore, religious leaders such as Quaker Anthony Benezet
were the leading spokesmen against slavery, and evangelical
leaders such as Presbyterian signer of the Declaration Benjamin
Rush were the founders of the nation's first abolition societies."

During the years surrounding the Civil War, "the most obvious
difference between the Republican and Democrat parties was
their stands on slavery," Barton said.

Republicans called for its abolition, while Democrats declared: "All
efforts of the abolitionists, or others, made to induce Congress to
interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient [to initiate]
steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most
alarming and dangerous consequences, and all such efforts have the
inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people."

Wallbuilders also cited John Alden's 1885 book, "A Brief History of
the Republican Party" in noting that the KKK's early attacks were
on Republicans as much as blacks, in that blacks were adopting
the Republican identity en masse.

"In some places the Ku Klux Klan assaulted Republican officials
in their houses or offices or upon the public roads; in others
they attacked the meetings of negroes and displaced them,"
Alden wrote.

"Its ostensible purpose at first was to keep the blacks in order and
prevent them from committing small depredations upon the
property of whites, but its real motives were essentially political.
The negroes were invariable required to promise not to vote the
Republican ticket, and threatened with death if they broke their
promises."

Barton told WND the most cohesive group of political supporters
in American now is African-Americans. He said most consider
their affiliation with the Democratic party long-term.

But he said he interviewed a black pastor in Mississippi, who
recalled his grandmother never "would let a Democrat in the
house, and he never knew what she was talking about."

After a review of history, he knew, Barton said.

Citing President George Washington's farewell address, Barton
told WND, "Washington had a great section on the love of party,
if you love party more than anything else, what it will do to a
great nation."

"We shouldn't love a party [over] a candidate's principles or values,"
he told WND.

Washington's farewell address noted the "danger" from parties is
serious.

"Let me now warn you in the most solemn manner against the
baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. The alternate
domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit
of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages
and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is
itself a frightful despotism," Washington said.

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