The White League dominated the conversation on race in Louisiana in the mid-1870s. Their newspaper, the Opelousas Courier, provides us with access to the politics and culture of the League. In its July 4, 1874 edition, the newspaper published a poem entitled, appropriately considering the day, The Spirit of ’76. The poem foresaw a day when whites would once again control every aspect of American life.
The poem was written by James Maurice Thompson, a popular writer who had served in the Confederate Army. Thompson had been born in Indiana, but had moved to Georgia with his family when he was a boy. Several years after the war he moved back to Indiana.
You can access this issue of the newspaper at the Library of Congress.
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Many thanks for posting this. As it happens, I’m in the midst of writing a book about the federal war against the Klan in the early 1870s and am on the lookout for exactly this sort of material. It’s evidence that the Negrophobes and terrorists saw poetry and even moral grandeur in what they were doing. Much though by no means all of the KKK’s murderous activity was carried out by roughnecks, everywhere the Klan was led by educated and usually professional people who were pillars of their communities. European fascism, too, appealed to many elite types and intellectuals. (A good book on that subject, “The Appeal of Fascism”, was written by a British historian named Hamilton fifty or so years ago.)
The connection of white supremacy/white terrorism/racism with fascism is screaming out loudly in the horrific events of 2020. Anti-Black violence carried out by police departments has merged with neo-Nazis and white fascists of all stripes. It’s not a new trend, and is as old as Black enslavement in the US, but it is really virulent today.