History Of The Democrats And The KKK.....(Why the Democrats started the KKK)

[Arthur Ellis]

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"Although it is relatively unreported today, historical
documents are unequivocal that the Klan was established by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 ? 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.

Current 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 longterm.

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.