Thomas Dixon (1)Critiques

A tiresome melodrama trying to be a moral story and failing.

A Romance of the Real Jefferson Davis

Leopard's spots is famous for being one of the most racist novels of all times. When I heard of it I added to my queue so that I could try to see from inside someone else's head. Due to the recent political climate, I moved it to the front of the queue because I wasn't certain how much longer reading a book like this would be legal.

I was honestly surprised by how much I enjoyed the book. It was odd, I actually kept forgetting that he KKK were the protagonists. The idea that they actually justified the lynching of a black man, simply because he asked permission to kiss a white woman in the first "book" or that the red shirts beat another black man to death for brushing against a white woman, and that they seem to honestly feel this is entirely justified is flabbergasting.

That being said the story actually had me turning the page. The author claims the first "book" of the three contained within this work (the whole work is the first in a larger trilogy) is entirely true. After reconstruction the Republican Party gains complete control of the North Carolina government when former slaves get the vote. If you look past the race portion it actually becomes a universal story. Of how government corrupts. Of how those that have been oppressed so often reply to oppressions of themselves to oppressing others when they have power.

The second and third portions the author seems to agree are entirely fictional. Particularly the second "book" is focused on a romance between a rising member of the Democratic Party who had been orphaned in the first book, and the southern belle of an old guard member of the Party.

Unfortunately the conclusion was given away by simply reading the table of contents, so you may enjoy it better if you skip the table of contents.

A journey into the racist underbelly of the beast... Curious if you have strong gag reflex.

Recommend - not for literary excellence, but for seeing racism from a historical perspective. I think we forget just how truly vile (in this book, black) racism is, and tend to only see it as a dislike... "he's a racist" seems to mean nowadays that "he doesn't like XXX" and, while we think negatively of racism, the deeply reprehensible actions and opinions that go along with racism are overlooked. This book is good in that it shows the language of racism and it's difficult to read such language. Whereas nowadays the n-word or a monkey-caricature is all that is needed to incite digust, in this book the n-word is a common word and the real vileness that is racism comes out in flaming form. Definitely worth the read.

271. The Clansman An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, by Thomas Dixon (read 25 Jul 1946) I started to read this book on July 22, 1946, and on that day said: "I despise the book and its thesis." On July 23 I said: "Reading in that maddening Clansman. Author deserved shooting."½

Notorious book glorifying the KKK, basis of Griffith's film Birth of a Nation; this copy belonged to my grandfather who was the son of a Confederate veteran in NC.

I bought this edition because I luckily found a used copy for $3.00. It's hardly worth that because of the poor quality copy-editing. However, at the time I was only able to find two of the three novels in the trilogy and was interested in the literary history of post-reconstruction South.

The Leopard's Spots (1902), The Clansman (1905), and the Traitor (1907) were written partly in answer to Judge Albion Tourgee's novel The Fool's Errand (1879). This last was historical and loosely based on Tourgee's own experience as a carpetbagger in North Carolina. By the 1890's the Klan had been suppressed, but the Redshirts had arisen in North Carolina. In the North, after the failure of Reconstruction in 1877, Southern views toward the Blacks had become more fashionable, though not as widespread as in the South. In this context, Dixon's racist (actually white supremacist) novels became very popular. The first two of these were best sellers.

In 1915, D. W. Griffith produced with Dixon the movie The Birth of a Nation. It is sometimes considered the first Hollywood spectacular and gave rise to the second Ku Klux Klan of the 1920's. The novel and movie were also the main source for the traditions of the Klan's cross-burning and white robes, since the Kuklux of the 1860's wore robes of various colors, including white.

From this standpoint, the triolgy is historically interesting. Dixon's writing is not particularly good, nor are there any interesting twists or turns in the plot (IMO). But the publication of these novels is an interesting part of post-Reconstruction history.

The sub-title says it all for this book. The Leopard's Spots is the first of the so-called Clansman Triology written by Dixon at the outset of the 20th century. This first of the threesome tells the story of Hambright, North Carolina, during the Reconstruction Period and on through the end of the 19th century. In Dixon's telling, the Ku Klux Klan was composed of patriotic sons of the South whose sole aim was to protect democracy from the Negro* hordes and the dastardly betrayal of the carpetbaggers and scalawags come to let loose anarchy and hell as revenge for the war years. The war, of course, had not been fought to defend slavery, but only to defend each state's freedom to live as they saw fit. If only the great statesman Lincoln had lived! He would have been able to keep these bloodsuckers and their henchmen at bay! As the years progress, the story of North Carolina remains one of the pure and lofty Anglo-Saxons trying to protect their civilization and their ballot boxes from the Mulatto curse and the white bloodsuckers who use the Negro vote as a tool to rob the state's coffers dry.

All of this is bad enough. There's some historical germ to most of it. But what makes the narrative particularly horrible to read is the author's philosophical take-away: One drop of Negro blood makes a Negro. Once you have a Negro, you have an inferior being. And the problem with education Negroes and giving them equal social status is that there is no logical end to it but inter-marriage. Or as the protagonist says at one point: "You can't ask a man to dinner and forbid him the right to court your daughter." And the issue here, of course, is that "one drop of Negro blood makes a Negro." So you see the problem. The races cannot, therefore, live together equally. One must be master and the other subordinant. That's just nature. Therefore, we must take away the Black man's right to vote and keep it away from him forever. That's just the way it's got to be. And so forth.

As the book ends, our hero has triumphantly swept to the governorship of North Carolina with both legs firmly planted upon this platform. He has also just won the One True Love of his life. (About a third of the plot deals with this entirely over-wrought, at least by contemporary standards, romance).

So, you know, all-in-all, ugh! I felt extremely slimed while reading this book, but i pushed my way through it for its historical value. People thought this way for a long, long time. Some people still think this way. In an online biography of Dixon I found, I learned that he was very, very popular as a lecturer throughout the early part of the 20th century, although he died broke in 1939. The attitudes in this book do go a long way to explaining the hard-line segregationist policies of too many Americans as the Civil Rights battles were being fought out.

By the way, The Clansman, which is the second book of the trilogy, was made into the infamous movie, "Birth of a Nation."

I'm glad I read this book, sort of, though I don't recommend for anyone except those with a strong historical curiosity and a strong stomach.

* I used the term "negro" in this review in order to give at least some flavor of the tone of this novel. Most of the time, "negro" was not the word used.½

This is a historical novel dealing with Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. Although there is a prologue about Davis in his youth, most of the book is set during and immediately after the Civil War. Actually, for the majority of the novel, Davis is more of an important bit player who has an occasional walk-on or is talked about by others. The real plot of the novel involves a love triangle between a loyal (to the Confederacy) Southern girl, a Northern spy masquerading as a foreign diplomat and a Southern young man in love with the girl. There is intrigue, handwringing and assorted conflicts. The author uses the same plot formula with his companion novel about Abraham Lincoln: The Southerner. For the Civil War or 19th century melodrama fan.½