Top Tweets for #trueHistory

THE KLAN WAS OPPOSED BY CONFEDERATE LEADERSHIP The idea that postwar Confederate soldiers were all klansmen is a complete lie. Everyone knows the KKK was founded by low-ranking Confederate soldiers (a major, a captain, three privates and an adjutant) who later recruited Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest as their first Grand Wizard. But these few were thoroughly outranked by the Confederate leadership that REJECTED the Klan. Confederate President Jefferson Davis: Correctly predicted that the Klan's lawlessness would give the United States Congress the perfect justification to clamp down on the South. While opposed to Reconstruction, Davis rejected the terrorist guerrilla resistance of the Klan in favor of peaceful, legal means. Confederate Vice President Alexander H Stephens: Publicly rejected the activities of the Ku Klux Klan because he believed their extrajudicial violence and vigilantism operated entirely outside the law. General Robert E. Lee: Refused to support or join the Klan. Before his death in 1870, he publicly advocated for white Southerners to submit to federal authority, obey local laws, and avoid the chaotic insurgency and lawlessness championed by the Klan Confederate General James Longstreet: Did not support the Ku Klux Klan. During Reconstruction, he actively opposed the KKK and similar white supremacist groups. Living in New Orleans, he led a militia to fight against the White League—a paramilitary group aligned with the KKK—during the Battle of Liberty Place in 1874. General P.G.T. Beauregard: The general who ordered the first shots at Fort Sumter later became a leader of the Louisiana Unification Movement in 1873, explicitly trying to offer a peaceful alternative to the escalating violence of the Klan and white league militias. John S. Mosby ("The Gray Ghost"): Mosby strongly condemned Southern vigilante groups, believing that the Klan's violence was destroying the South's economy and social fabric. His opposition to the Klan made him such a target that he survived an assassination attempt by white supremacists. And wouldn't you know it... General Nathan Bedford Forrest: Forrest was the original Grand Wizard and leader of the first Klan, but by 1869, he became deeply disturbed by the out-of-control, sadistic violence of local chapters. He ordered the Klan to disband, distance himself from it, and spent his final years publicly advocating for racial peace There were CERTAINLY Confederate supporters of the klan in the postwar years, but postwar Confederates had a spectrum of opinion on the Klan, with much of the highest leadership rejecting the organization entirely, if not fighting actively against it. Modern voices that claim Confederates were ideologically aligned with the klan have their own reasons for doing so, but accurate history is NOT among those reasons. THE CONFEDERACY IS NOT THE KLAN.