A stunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil—when Ulysses S. Grant wielded the power of the federal government to dismantle the KKK The Ku Klux Klan, which celebrated historian Fergus Bordewich defines as “the first organized terrorist movement in American history,” rose from the ashes of the Civil War. At its peak in the early 1870s, the Klan boasted many tens of thousands of members, no small number of them landowners, lawmen, doctors, journalists, and churchmen, as well as future governors and congressmen. And their mission was to obliterate the muscular democratic power of newly emancipated Black Americans and their white allies, often by the most horrifying means imaginable. To repel the virulent 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 postwar conciliation, testing the limits of the federal government in determining the extent of states’ rights. In this book, Bordewich transports us to the front lines, in the hamlets of the former Confederate States and in the marble corridors of Congress, reviving an unsung generation of grassroots Black leaders and key figures such as crusading Missouri senator Carl Schurz, who sacrificed the rights of Black Americans in the name of political “reform,” and the ruthless former slave trader and Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. Klan War is a bold and bracing record of America’s past that reveals the bloody, Reconstruction-era roots of present-day battles to protect the ballot box and stamp out resurgent white supremacist ideologies. "Best Books of 2023" — The New Yorker "Editor's Choice, 2023" — Booklist "A vivid and sobering account of Grant’s efforts to crush the Klan in the South [that] gestures toward the fractured political landscape of the present day . . . Bordewich focuses on Grant’s antiterror policies, conveying the panoply of factors that led to their initial success and, later, to their tragic demise, [and] includes some heart-rending testimony from freedmen who were too terrified to go to the ballot box." —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times "[A] compelling chronicle [detailing] the astonishing brutality of the Klan . . . Bordewich is especially good on the origins of the Klan . . . [He] presents a convincing case that, left to their own devices, Southern whites were not about to confer real freedom on the freedmen. He is equally persuasive that by the end of Grant’s second term, Northerners were unwilling to commit the guns to police the South, much less the butter to rebuild it." —Roger Lowenstein, The Wall Street Journal "This essential history details Ulysses S. Grant’s fight to dismantle the Ku Klux Klan during the course of his Presidency . . . Though his efforts were later gutted by a series of disastrous Supreme Court decisions, Grant’s victory, Bordewich argues, serves as a potent reminder that 'forceful political action can prevail over violent extremism.'" —The New Yorker "Bordewich brings to life in painstaking detail the reign of terror that the Klan wrought. . . adds greatly to the growing literature on the Civil War’s aftermath. . . . a sobering reminder that rights gained can be easily taken away." —Riley Sullivan, The Civil War Monitor "The first large-scale attempt to restore Grant’s presidency to a position of nobility for his campaign to suppress the Klan. It joins the shelf of Bordewich’s political histories, which have made him one of the outstanding independent scholars of American history. But Klan War outdoes them all, in terms of both the depth of its research and the passionate pace of its vivid storytelling . . . Bordewich’s Grant is determined, idealistic, and generous, and on those terms, it would not be too much to describe him as the first civil rights president." — Washington Monthly, Allen C. Guelzo " Klan War is deftly written, and its pages are alight with rich details drawn from original sources. The book tells a heroic American story and reminds us, as Bordewich observes, that 'barbarism may lie only a small distance beneath the skin of a civilization.'" —Kevin R. Kosar, National Review “[A] gripping account . . . Bordewich’s book should serve as a cautionary tale to keep us alert to the modern incarnation of the KKK, which has traded its bed sheets and hoods for coats and ties.” —Mark I. Pinsky, New York Journal of Books “Gripping . . . Bordewich, drawing from a vast array of sources, recounts the Klan’s activities in appalling detail [and] brings to life a number of forgotten civil rights figures . . . In the latest experts’ poll, conducted in February 2024 by the American Political Science Association, Grant ranked seventeenth out of forty-five presidents, just below Ronald Reagan. Readers of Bordewich’s outstanding Klan War will agree that he may well be headed even higher in the future.” —David