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The Reconstruction Trilogy #1-3
The Reconstruction Trilogy: The Leopard's Spots / The Clansman / The Traitor
Three of Dixon's novels on the South after the Civil War, all in one volume. " The year was 1865. With the close of the Civil War, there began for the South, an era of even greater turmoil. In The Clansman, his controversial 1905 novel, later the basis of the motion picture The Birth of a Nation, Thomas Dixon, describes the social, political, and economic disintegration that plagued the South during Reconstruction, depicting the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the reactions of two families to racial conflict. This study in social history was alternatively praised and damned by contemporary critics. As historian Thomas D. Clark notes in his introduction, the novel "opened wider a vein of racial hatred which was to poison further an age already in social and political upheaval. Dixon had in fact given voice in his novel to one of the most powerful latent forces in the social and political mind of the South." For modern readers, The Clansman probes the roots of the racial violence that still haunts our society. Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. (1864-1946) was an American Baptist minister, playwright, lecturer, North Carolina state legislator, lawyer, and author, perhaps best known for writing The Clansman (1905), which was to become the inspiration for D. W. Griffith's film, The Birth of a Nation (1915). Although currently his life and works are discredited by his racism, he was among the most popular speakers and writers of his day. His brother, the popular preacher Amzi Clarence Dixon, was also famous for helping to edit The Fundamentals, a series of articles influential in fundamentalist Christianity. He was the author of 22 novels; additionally, he wrote many plays, sermons, and works of nonfiction. Most of his work centered around three major themes constant throughout his the need for racial purity, the evils of socialism, and the necessity of a stable family with a traditional role for the wife/mother.
- GenresHistorical Fiction
Paperback
First published June 28, 1994
30 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Dixon Jr.
49 books18 followersThomas Frederick Dixon Jr. was a Southern Baptist minister, playwright, lecturer, North Carolina state legislator, lawyer, and author.
(wikipedia)
(wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 20, 2017
I believe these novels are the most blatantly racist works I’ve ever read; however I did find them very informative and thought provoking, though not in the way the author intended, and would recommend them to other readers who want perspective on racial prejudice and on the legacy of slavery and abolition in the US. Thomas Dixon, Jr. makes explicit what in many other works of American fiction and history remains unspoken or even unconscious: the assumption of the complete and universal superiority of “the Anglo-Saxon” over “the Negro”.
The three novels form a trilogy in that they are thematically linked, but there are no characters or story lines shared by any of the books; each novel could be read as a stand-alone work.
The Leopard’s Spots deals with the same racial and political material as in the subsequent books: the “dreadful reconstruction period”, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the subsequent “disbanding” of the Klan (which nevertheless continued its activities). However here he also considers social phenomena which are not dealt with in later novels: the racism of Northerners who pay lip service to equality, the situation of highly educated African-Americans, and the “wage slaves” created by the highly industrialized North. The time frame of the novel, 1865 – 1900, is basically the author’s lifespan up to the time he wrote the book; the extended time span and the wide range of characters make this the most interesting book from a historical perspective, but weaken the focus of the narrative, making this is the least successful of the three books as a novel. Also the writing here is the poorest of the trio; though he shows some of his strengths in descriptions of landscape and his ability to create an exciting plot and memorable scenes, the style is clumsy at times and employs far too many exclamation points, the author not trusting the prose itself to give proper emphasis to events. A surprising element was the inclusion in the novel of some secondary characters lifted from Uncle Tom’s Cabin,an apparent attempt by Dixon to turn that novel’s sentiments against its Northern abolitionist supporters.
The Clansman is, thanks to its adaptation as Birth of a Nation, probably the best known and most widely read of the trilogy. Dixon cannily uses documented incidents of legislative abuse to portray the “dreadfulness” of the reconstruction period, the misrepresentation consisting of his letting the incidents stand for the rottenness of the whole, while of course ignoring all legislative abuses perpetrated by whites against blacks. The main villain here is a fictionalized version of Radical Republican congressman Thaddeus Stevens; the biographies of two diverge when, at the time the real-life Stevens died, shortly after his failed attempt to impeach President Andrew Johnson, the fictional Austin Stoneman retires to South Carolina in order to be personally present for the novel’s climax. Notoriously, as in the film, the night riders of the Ku Klux Klan are the heroes of the story, who save Southern whites from the Federal mandate of allowing African-Americans to exercise their civil rights. Though more focused than its predecessor, in many ways I felt this book was, overall, the weakest of the three, relying on some highly improbable events to keep its plot moving, though Dixon’s prose shows marked improvement here.
The Traitor is the most successful of the three as a novel. It starts out as a melodramatic murder mystery with Gothic trappings reminiscent of Anne Radcliffe: an old house with a secret passage and a reputation for being haunted, romantic overgrown ruins visited by moonlight, and evocative descriptions of the sights and sounds of Southern landscapes. The main link with the political themes of the earlier books is the inclusion of scalawags, carpetbaggers, and the Ku Klux Klan, here seen as a force with the capacity to both benefit and harm Southern white society.
Dixon, for all his failings as a stylist, two dimensional characters, and contrived plot developments, not to mention the highly offensive nature of his racial theories and stereotypes to modern readers (or even progressive readers of his own time), managed to produce three “page turners” which kept me reading using the most basic lure of the story-teller’s art: the creation of the desire on the reader’s part to find out what happens next.
This is an influential trio of novels which helped to propagate and popularize the “Lost Cause” version of Civil War history. They are unfortunately relevant not only to their own time, but illuminating of the assumptions of white supremacy, often unconscious and almost instinctual, that have continued to exist in America to this day, and that lie behind the rhetoric of the “I want my country back” branch of opposition to President Obama. It is the reflexive assumption of white superiority that allows white critics of the president to use the terms “oppression” to describe the political and social equality of African-Americans, and “tyranny” the attainment of an African-American to a position of authority.
In a way the most distressing element in my reading experience was the fact that the Noontide Press edition I read explicitly endorses Dixon’s white supremacist vision in the 1993(!) introduction by Sam Dickson; evidently this publisher specializes in racist and anti-Semitic books. I would like to see these novels presented with something like the scholarly apparatus of a Norton Critical Edition, with notes and essays recounting and correcting the history they purport to represent, putting the books within the cultural framework of the time they were written, and analyzing their subsequent influence. These books will not disappear – it is only a matter of whether scholars and historians will acknowledge and deal with them or they will continue to exist as a sort samizdat of the racist fringe.
The three novels form a trilogy in that they are thematically linked, but there are no characters or story lines shared by any of the books; each novel could be read as a stand-alone work.
The Leopard’s Spots deals with the same racial and political material as in the subsequent books: the “dreadful reconstruction period”, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the subsequent “disbanding” of the Klan (which nevertheless continued its activities). However here he also considers social phenomena which are not dealt with in later novels: the racism of Northerners who pay lip service to equality, the situation of highly educated African-Americans, and the “wage slaves” created by the highly industrialized North. The time frame of the novel, 1865 – 1900, is basically the author’s lifespan up to the time he wrote the book; the extended time span and the wide range of characters make this the most interesting book from a historical perspective, but weaken the focus of the narrative, making this is the least successful of the three books as a novel. Also the writing here is the poorest of the trio; though he shows some of his strengths in descriptions of landscape and his ability to create an exciting plot and memorable scenes, the style is clumsy at times and employs far too many exclamation points, the author not trusting the prose itself to give proper emphasis to events. A surprising element was the inclusion in the novel of some secondary characters lifted from Uncle Tom’s Cabin,an apparent attempt by Dixon to turn that novel’s sentiments against its Northern abolitionist supporters.
The Clansman is, thanks to its adaptation as Birth of a Nation, probably the best known and most widely read of the trilogy. Dixon cannily uses documented incidents of legislative abuse to portray the “dreadfulness” of the reconstruction period, the misrepresentation consisting of his letting the incidents stand for the rottenness of the whole, while of course ignoring all legislative abuses perpetrated by whites against blacks. The main villain here is a fictionalized version of Radical Republican congressman Thaddeus Stevens; the biographies of two diverge when, at the time the real-life Stevens died, shortly after his failed attempt to impeach President Andrew Johnson, the fictional Austin Stoneman retires to South Carolina in order to be personally present for the novel’s climax. Notoriously, as in the film, the night riders of the Ku Klux Klan are the heroes of the story, who save Southern whites from the Federal mandate of allowing African-Americans to exercise their civil rights. Though more focused than its predecessor, in many ways I felt this book was, overall, the weakest of the three, relying on some highly improbable events to keep its plot moving, though Dixon’s prose shows marked improvement here.
The Traitor is the most successful of the three as a novel. It starts out as a melodramatic murder mystery with Gothic trappings reminiscent of Anne Radcliffe: an old house with a secret passage and a reputation for being haunted, romantic overgrown ruins visited by moonlight, and evocative descriptions of the sights and sounds of Southern landscapes. The main link with the political themes of the earlier books is the inclusion of scalawags, carpetbaggers, and the Ku Klux Klan, here seen as a force with the capacity to both benefit and harm Southern white society.
Dixon, for all his failings as a stylist, two dimensional characters, and contrived plot developments, not to mention the highly offensive nature of his racial theories and stereotypes to modern readers (or even progressive readers of his own time), managed to produce three “page turners” which kept me reading using the most basic lure of the story-teller’s art: the creation of the desire on the reader’s part to find out what happens next.
This is an influential trio of novels which helped to propagate and popularize the “Lost Cause” version of Civil War history. They are unfortunately relevant not only to their own time, but illuminating of the assumptions of white supremacy, often unconscious and almost instinctual, that have continued to exist in America to this day, and that lie behind the rhetoric of the “I want my country back” branch of opposition to President Obama. It is the reflexive assumption of white superiority that allows white critics of the president to use the terms “oppression” to describe the political and social equality of African-Americans, and “tyranny” the attainment of an African-American to a position of authority.
In a way the most distressing element in my reading experience was the fact that the Noontide Press edition I read explicitly endorses Dixon’s white supremacist vision in the 1993(!) introduction by Sam Dickson; evidently this publisher specializes in racist and anti-Semitic books. I would like to see these novels presented with something like the scholarly apparatus of a Norton Critical Edition, with notes and essays recounting and correcting the history they purport to represent, putting the books within the cultural framework of the time they were written, and analyzing their subsequent influence. These books will not disappear – it is only a matter of whether scholars and historians will acknowledge and deal with them or they will continue to exist as a sort samizdat of the racist fringe.
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August 3, 2007I can't even rate this. The only reason you would read this is if you were feeling down because you've been paying attention to this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/whilesea...
and needed some reassurance that yes, we have come a long way. Creepy. But also, terribly, terribly written.
and needed some reassurance that yes, we have come a long way. Creepy. But also, terribly, terribly written.
January 7, 2010
No, I'm not racist. It's for my Master's Thesis.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews