Notes About the Author.
Thomas Dixon (1864—1946) was born in North Carolina and became a highly successful writer, lecturer, and preacher with prestigious churches in New York and Boston.
Abstract.
Dixon’s book The Clansman is a fictional rendering of the trials of Political Reconstruction in South Carolina and was immensely popular at the time. Dixon’s, The Leopard’s Spots, 1902, and The Traitor, 1907, are prequel and sequel to The Clansman.
Dixon’s book is an historical novel. For an accurate history and biography of Political Reconstruction in South Carolina, the Society is recommending Reconstruction in South Carolina by John S. Reynold, published in 1905 and the biography of Wade Hampton by Walter Brian Cisco, published in 2004.
Dixon’s work was made into a stage play. D. W. Griffith, son of a Confederate soldier, also made the work into a great pioneer masterpiece of American cinema, “The Birth of a Nation,” produced before the arrival of talking motion pictures.
It is worth noting that Dixon, while celebrating the role of the Ku Klux Klan in regaining Home Rule for the people of South Carolina during the 1870’s, condemned the twentieth century version of the so-called resurrected KKK, which was largely a Northern organization.
Availability of this Book.
Early printings of The Clansman are rare and hard to find. We suggest Amazon.com for reprints.
Availability of the Audio Book
Click below to obtain a free audiobook at LibriVox:
CNW, HRW