Thread by @BrooksDSimpson

A study that would be interesting is to see what was the composition of Reconstruction white supremacist terrorist groups in terms of Confederate veterans (and non-veterans).

There's all this talk that we should honor Confederate veterans because they fought for what they believed in.

But we might find out more about what they believed in (and what they fought for) by looking at these groups more carefully.

I always hear a lot about Nathan Bedford Forrest, for example, but he comes off in the books as a not particularly nice guy whose claims to military genius have to be carefully qualified.

But when I learned that John B. Gordon, often honored in the literature as a warrior, was quite the terrorist leader himself in Georgia after the war, it served as a reminder that much of what Civil War memory is about includes what we choose to forget.

I knew that Gordon told Grant during Grant's 1865 southern tour that US black troops on occupation were an affront to southern (white) honor.

I reconsidered the stories about Gordon as a man of honor concerning the treatment of wounded Francis C. Barlow at Gettysburg.

Of course Barlow also gave up on Reconstruction, as his report about events in Florida during the aftermath of the 1876 disputed election suggests.

So Gordon and Barlow had much in common after all.

But Georgia politics during Reconstruction was fundamentally shaped by white supremacist terrorism from the beginning, and Gordon played a role in that.

A large one.

But you won't read about that when you visit Barlow's Knoll at Gettysburg.

As for me, I can never see Gordon the same way. I once bought the image of Gordon as a terrific commander, even if I knew his recollections tended to cast him in a rather self-admiring light.

Never again.