Investigates white supremacy as it emerged from the milieu of slavery, war, politics, and Reconstruction. Tourgee argues that organizations such as the Klan appealed to the mass of white southerners as a means of ameliorating their defeat and ensuring a measure of political control. A striking, contemporary look into the mind of the carpetbagger and the genesis of both the Ku Klux Klan and the political structure of the postwar South.