CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE

ral sciences as w

ell as of th

e hu

man

istic sciences in

their n

ew ex

pressio

n. H

e turn

s his b

ack o

n m

eta-

physic

s and c

oncentra

tes o

n th

e p

hilo

sophy o

f

know

ledge. K

ant is th

e most n

otab

le represen

tative

of th

is movem

ent.

Th

ou

gh

the fa

ther o

f mo

dern

ratio

nalism

cer-

tainly

cann

ot b

e blam

ed fo

r the m

ov

e away

from

Christian

ity, it is d

ifficult n

ot to

acknow

ledge th

at he

created th

e climate in

wh

ich, in

the m

od

ern era, su

ch

an estran

gem

ent b

ecame p

ossib

le. It did

not h

appen

right aw

ay, b

ut g

radually

.

In fact, ab

out i5

o y

ears after Descartes, all th

at was

fun

da

men

tally C

hristian

in th

e traditio

n o

f Eu

rop

ean.

tho

ug

ht h

ad

alrea

dy b

een p

ush

ed a

side. T

his w

as the

time o

f the E

nlig

hte

nm

ent in

Fra

nce, w

hen p

ure

ratio

na

lism h

eld sw

ay. T

he F

rench

Rev

olu

tion

, du

ring

the R

eign

of T

error, k

no

cked

do

wn

the altars d

edi-

cated to

Christ, to

ssed cru

cifixes in

to th

e streets,

intro

duced

the cu

lt of th

e goddess R

eason. O

n th

e

basis o

f this, th

ere was a p

roclam

ation o

f L

iberty,

Equality, an

d F

raternity

. The sp

iritual p

atrimony an

d,

in p

articular, th

e moral p

atrimony o

f Christian

ity

were th

us to

rn fro

m th

eir evan

gelical fo

undatio

n. In

ord

er to resto

re Christian

ity teits fu

ll vitality

, it is

essential th

at these retu

rn to

that fo

undatio

n.

Nev

ertheless, th

e pro

cess of tu

rnin

g aw

ay fro

m

the G

od

of th

e Fath

ers, from

the G

od

ofJesu

s Ch

rist,

from

the G

osp

el, and

from

the E

uch

arist did

no

t

brin

g ab

out a ru

ptu

re with

a God w

ho ex

ists outsid

e

52

CR

OS

SIN

G

T H

E

TH

RE

SH

OL

D

OF

HO

PE

by His H

oliness JO

HN

P

AU

L II

Edited by V

ittorio Messori

Alfred A

. Knopf

CA

NA

DA

1994

'

' AI* Ctzs'

HOODED AMERICANISM

The History of the Ku Klux Klan

With a New Epilogue

by the Author

DAVID M. CHALMERS

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39

MARCHING ON WASHINGTON

•

It is difficult to say when the Klan reached the peak of its power. By the time of its election successes of 1924, it was already on a greased slide downward in the Southwestern states of Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas which had been its first bastions of power. Its Louisiana realm was a shambles, California was long since past its early exuber-ant pinnacle, and Oregon was already out of its grasp. Klan power in Georgia had leveled off and the citizens of Atlanta were not com-pletely unhappy to see the imperial potentates fold their robes and ship their valises off to Washington. In Kansas, William Allen White and the state charter board were cramping the Klan's regal style. While there was much power and many members still to be reaped in the Midwest and elsewhere within the Empire, the great spectacu-far sports of growth that marked its progress in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, were over. The Hoosier realm was divided in uneasy balance between the Stephenson and Evans forces, and internal disruption was gnawing away at many state realms and local chapters.

The Klan had never seriously considered creating its own political party, and in the light of the history of third parties in America this was not an unwise decision. Despite temporary liaisons with the Re-publicans in Texas, Oklahoma, and Georgia during the 1924 elec-tions, the Southern Klans were mainly composed of Democrats. Apart from occasional maneuvers in Oregon, Iowa, Ohio, and Maine, the Invisible Empire was Republican in the North and West.

The Northern Klansmen were- Unhappy enough already over Southern rule and were hardly inclined to abandon their traditional political allegiance for the opposing faith or for a new untried ven-ture. Most Southern Klansmen were no more willing. The Klan did facilitate some interparty movement, particularly from the Demo-cratic to the Republican ranks among the Oklahoma and southern Indiana Baptists, and the Invisible Empire usually had strength in

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282 EtOODED AMERICANISM

both camps. For the most part, however, the organization had enough trouble trying to unite its cohorts behind a fellow wearer of the robe, and it could not be counted on to deliver its vote, when it meant crossing party lines. Throughout its history, the Klan tended to muster its greatest strength in voting against people rather than for them.

Given the nature and rigidities of the Klan, what were its political possibilities and future? Ambitious politicians joined it. Others com-promised with the Klan in order to survive in areas where it was strong. It commanded and secured congressional as well as strictly local patronage. The Klan became tangled in the presidential hopes of William G. McAdoo as well as in the plans of Indiana Senators Ralston and Watson. D. C. Stephenson dreamed of using the Klan as a means to ride a Republic elevator to the presidency. The Klan mystery man, Gutzon Borglum, had a vision of the Klan as the in-strument of a pro-farmer, anti-tariff, Anglo-Saxon progressivism ex-pressing the "minds of the villagers and agrarians" without foreign ideologies and in opposition to the alienism of New York and the eastern cities. However, though his ideas interested Stephenson, whose Republicanism could not allow him to consider a lower tariff, Borglum did not represent the Klan's mind and heart.

Since the Klan talked so urgently about its own vital effort in de- fending an endangered nation, the future of the Klan itself depended

e'• • i at least in part on its ability to achieve something nationally. Its role was that of a pressure and veto group. In general terms, there were three facets of the Invisible Empire apart from its unofficial func-tion as a money-making machine for its owners. The Klan operated as a fraternal order, as a local vigilante organization, and as a re-sistance movement. The third role was that of defending the values of one-hundred-per-cent Americanism and was intertwined with the other two. Consciousness of oneself as a native-born, white, Protes-tant American was not only the major bond of cohesion, it was a call to action. The reality of the un-American menace and the success of the Klan's leadership were vital questions which inevitably drew the Klan into the national political arena and demanded performance. To fail of accomplishment would doom the Invisible Empire more to invisibility than imperium.

Although the Klan enjoyed the telling of horror stories about how Woodrow Wilson's evil secretary, Joseph Tumulty, filled the govern-ment with Roman Catholics, Harding and Coolidge stirred few such fears. Nor was the Congress itself dangerous or imperiled. The Klan's own congressional roundup for 1923 listed:

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10;

MARCHING ON WASHINGTON 283

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Republicans: 215 Protestants (180 of them Masons) 7 Roman Catholics 2 Jews 1 Mormon 1 Unknown

Democrats: 168 Protestants (120 of them Masons) 30 Roman Catholics 5 Jews

SENATE

Republicans: 48 Protestants (29 of them Masons) I Mormon

Democrats: 39 Protestants (31 of them Masons) 5 Roman Catholics 1 Mormon

In total, hardly a menace and more than likely a friend. Although President Coolidge was to speak out unnecessarily strongly to the American Legion in favor of toleration, diversity, and opposition to race prejudice, he had given Dunning the Savannah appointment and picked a• judge in Oregon who favored the compulsory public school bill.

The Klan's leaders were jubilant over their successes in the 1924 elections. The Imperial Wizard boarded his private railway car and made a triumphant tour of his western dominions, while Southern Klansmen gathered in Atlanta for a big Thanksgiving Day parade and a dedication ceremony on top of Stone Mountain. At the begin-ning of the new year, Klan potentates, joined by Senator Mayfield and Tennessee's Senator Kenneth McKeller gathered in Dyersburg, to celebrate the marriage of Klan lobbyist W. F. Zumbrunn to a Tennes-see girl.

In February of 1925, the Imperial. Wizard hailed the elections and the passage of the new immigration=restriction law as the Klan's most recent and important triumphs. No one represented more clearly the dominant American attitude on immigration than did the Klan. As the historian Oscar Handlin has summed it up, the philosophy that underlaid the laws of 1917-24 was that "the national origin of an immigrant was a reliable indication of his capacity for Americaniza-tion." The Klan simply made the dividing line absolute. Those who

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