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The original targets of the Ku Klux Klan were Republicans, both 
black and white, according to a new television program and book, 
which describe how the Democrats started the KKK and for decades 
harassed the GOP with lynchings and threats.

An estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites died at the end of 
KKK ropes from 1882 to 1964.

The documentation has been assembled by David Barton of Wallbu 
More..ilders and published in his book "Setting the Record 
Straight: American History in Black & White," which reveals that 
not only did the Democrats work hand-in-glove with the Ku Klux 
Klan for generations, they started the KKK and endorsed its 
mayhem.

"Of all forms of violent intimidation, lynchings were by far the 
most effective," Barton said in his book. "Republicans often led 
the efforts to pass federal anti-lynching laws and their 
platforms consistently called for a ban on lynching. Democrats 
successfully blocked those bills and their platforms never did 
condemn lynchings."

Further, the first grand wizard of the KKK was honored at the 
1868 Democratic National Convention, no Democrats voted for the 
14th Amendment to grant citizenship to former slaves and, to 
this day, the party website ignores those decades of racism, he 
said.

"Although it is relatively unreported today, historical 
documents are unequivocal that the Klan was established by 
Democrats and that the Klan played a prominent role in the 
Democratic Party," Barton writes in his book. "In fact, a 13-
volume set of congressional investigations from 1872 
conclusively and irrefutably documents that fact.

"The Klan terrorized black Americans through murders and public 
floggings; relief was granted only if individuals promised not 
to vote for Republican tickets, and violation of this oath was 
punishable by death," he said. "Since the Klan targeted 
Republicans in general, it did not limit its violence simply to 
black Republicans; white Republicans were also included."

Barton also has covered the subject in one episode of his 
American Heritage Series of television programs, which is being 
broadcast now on Trinity Broadcasting Network and Cornerstone 
Television.

Barton told WND his comments are not a condemnation or 
endorsement of any party or candidate, but rather a warning that 
voters even today should be aware of what their parties and 
candidates stand for.

His book outlines the aggressive pro-slavery agenda held by the 
Democratic Party for generations leading up to the Civil War, 
and how that did not die with the Union victory in that war of 
rebellion.

Even as the South was being rebuilt, the votes in Congress 
consistently revealed a continuing pro-slavery philosophy on the 
part of the Democrats, the book reveals.

Three years after Appomattox, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. 
Constitution, granting blacks citizenship in the United States, 
came before Congress: 94 percent of Republicans endorsed it.

"The records of Congress reveal that not one Democrat ? either 
in the House or the Senate ? voted for the 14th Amendment," 
Barton wrote. "Three years after the Civil War, and the 
Democrats from the North as well as the South were still 
refusing to recognize any rights of citizenship for black 
Americans."

He also noted that South Carolina Gov. Wade Hampton at the 1868 
Democratic National Convention inserted a clause in the party 
platform declaring the Congress' civil rights laws were 
"unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void."

It was the same convention when Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the 
first grand wizard of the KKK, was honored for his leadership.

Barton's book notes that in 1868, Congress heard testimony from 
election worker Robert Flournoy, who confessed while he was 
canvassing the state of Mississippi in support of the 13th and 
14th Amendments, he could find only one black, in a population 
of 444,000 in the state, who admitted being a Democrat.

Nor is Barton the only person to raise such questions. In 2005, 
National Review published an article raising similar points. The 
publication said in 1957 President Dwight Eisenhower, a 
Republican, deployed the 82nd Airborne Division to desegregate 
the Little Rock, Ark., schools over the resistance of Democrat 
Gov. Orval Faubus.

Further, three years later, Eisenhower signed the GOP's 1960 
Civil Rights Act after it survived a five-day, five-hour 
filibuster by 18 Senate Democrats, and in 1964, Democrat 
President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act after 
former Klansman Robert Byrd's 14-hour filibuster, and the votes 
of 22 other Senate Democrats, including Tennessee's Al Gore Sr., 
failed to scuttle the plan.

Dems' website showing jump in history

The current version of the "History" page on the party website 
lists a number of accomplishments ? from 1792, 1798, 1800, 1808, 
1812, 1816, 1824 and 1828, including its 1832 nomination of 
Andrew Jackson for president. It follows up with a name change, 
and the establishment of the Democratic National Committee, but 
then leaps over the Civil War and all of its issues to talk 
about the end of the 19th Century, William Jennings Bryan and 
women's suffrage.

A spokesman with the Democrats refused to comment for WND on any 
of the issues. "You're not going to get a comment," said the 
spokesman who identified himself as Luis.

"Why would Democrats skip over their own history from 1848 to 
1900?" Barton asked. "Perhaps because it's not the kind of civil 
rights history they want to talk about ? perhaps because it is 
not the kind of civil rights history they want to have on their 
website."

The National Review article by Deroy Murdock cited the 1866 
comment from Indiana Republican Gov. Oliver Morton condemning 
Democrats for their racism.

"Every one who shoots down Negroes in the streets, burns Negro 
schoolhouses and meeting-houses, and murders women and children 
by the light of their own flaming dwellings, calls himself a 
Democrat," Morton said.

It also cited the 1856 criticism by U.S. Sen. Charles Sumner, R-
Mass., of pro-slavery Democrats. "Congressman Preston Brooks (D-
S.C.) responded by grabbing a stick and beating Sumner 
unconscious in the Senate chamber. Disabled, Sumner could not 
resume his duties for three years."

By the admission of the Democrats themselves, on their website, 
it wasn't until Harry Truman was elected that "Democrats began 
the fight to bring down the final barriers of race and gender."

"That is an accurate description," wrote Barton. "Starting with 
Harry Truman, Democrats began ? that is, they made their first 
serious efforts ? to fight against the barriers of race; yet ? 
Truman's efforts were largely unsuccessful because of his own 
Democratic Party."

Even then, the opposition to rights for blacks was far from 
over. As recently as 1960, Mississippi Democratic Gov. Hugh 
White had requested Christian evangelist Billy Graham segregate 
his crusades, something Graham refused to do. "And when South 
Carolina Democratic Gov. George Timmerman learned Billy Graham 
had invited African Americans to a Reformation Rally at the 
state Capitol, he promptly denied use of the facilities to the 
evangelist," Barton wrote.

The National Review noted that the Democrats' "Klan-coddling" 
today is embodied in Byrd, who once wrote that, "The Klan is 
needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth 
here in West Virginia."

The article suggested a contrast with the GOP, which, when 
former Klansman David Duke ran for Louisiana governor in 1991 as 
a Republican, was "scorned" by national GOP officials.

Until 1935, every black federal legislator was Republican, and 
it was Republicans who appointed the first black Air Force and 
Army four-star generals, established Martin Luther King Jr.'s 
birthday as a national holiday, and named the first black 
national-security adviser, secretary of state, the research 
reveals.

Current Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has said: "The first 
Republican I knew was my father, and he is still the Republican 
I most admire. He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim 
Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The 
Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and 
neither have I."

Barton's documentation said the first opponents of slavery "and 
the chief advocates for racial equal rights were the churches 
(the Quakers, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc.). Furthermore, 
religious leaders such as Quaker Anthony Benezet were the 
leading spokesmen against slavery, and evangelical leaders such 
as Presbyterian signer of the Declaration Benjamin Rush were the 
founders of the nation's first abolition societies."

During the years surrounding the Civil War, "the most obvious 
difference between the Republican and Democrat parties was their 
stands on slavery," Barton said. Republicans called for its 
abolition, while Democrats declared: "All efforts of the 
abolitionists, or others, made to induce Congress to interfere 
with questions of slavery, or to take incipient [to initiate] 
steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most 
alarming and dangerous consequences, and all such efforts have 
the inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people."

Wallbuilders also cited John Alden's 1885 book, "A Brief History 
of the Republican Party" in noting that the KKK's early attacks 
were on Republicans as much as blacks, in that blacks were 
adopting the Republican identity en masse.

"In some places the Ku Klux Klan assaulted Republican officials 
in their houses or offices or upon the public roads; in others 
they attacked the meetings of negroes and displaced them," Alden 
wrote. "Its ostensible purpose at first was to keep the blacks 
in order and prevent them from committing small depredations 
upon the property of whites, but its real motives were 
essentially political ? The negroes were invariable required to 
promise not to vote the Republican ticket, and threatened with 
death if they broke their promises."

Barton told WND the most cohesive group of political supporters 
in American now is African-Americans. He said most consider 
their affiliation with the Democratic party longterm.

But he said he interviewed a black pastor in Mississippi, who 
recalled his grandmother never "would let a Democrat in the 
house, and he never knew what she was talking about." After a 
review of history, he knew, Barton said.

Citing President George Washington's farewell address, Barton 
told WND, "Washington had a great section on the love of party, 
if you love party more than anything else, what it will do to a 
great nation."

"We shouldn't love a party [over] a candidate's principles or 
values," he told WND.

Washington's farewell address noted the "danger" from parties is 
serious.

"Let me now ? warn you in the most solemn manner against the 
baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. ? The 
alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by 
the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in 
different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid 
enormities, is itself a frightful despotism," Washington said.
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