by Charles Lane
* * *
A dozen years after In It, though, as Whitley sat watching The Clansman, something made him abandon this artificially evenhanded posture. Whitley concluded that he should speak out about the Ku Klux Klan. As was so often the case with this calculating man, his true motivation was not easy to discern. Perhaps the sheer brazenness with which Thomas Dixon Jr., who was not even born until after Reconstruction, distorted events irritated Whitley. Possibly Whitley thought that, having let his theater host the play, in defiance of respectable religious and journalistic opinion in Emporia, and having profited from doing so, he owed it to the town to counteract any ideological harm Dixon’s play might do. Or maybe the reminders of the Klan’s violence had reactivated the same corner of Whitley’s conscience that an overseer’s racist savagery had stirred many years earlier in Louisiana.
And, of course, Hiram C. Whitley always had to have the last word.
Whatever his reason, Whitley denounced Dixon’s play in the Emporia Gazette on the first Monday after the Friday night performance.62 The Clansman was “misleading,” Whitley told the paper, “a sort of palliation if not a justification for the existence of the most formidable and dangerous secret order that ever infested this or any other country.” The Ku Klux Klan, he explained, was not defensive; it arose when Southern whites both refused to accept Republican “carpetbagger” governments in their states, and “determined that others should not do it and live in peace.” The Klan had “perpetrated crimes with impunity,” he reminded readers, “shielded by terror.” The Secret Service’s files contained documentary proof that “23,000 persons, black and white, were scourged or murdered by the Ku Klux Klan within 10 years following the close of the rebellion,” Whitley claimed. “It would seem impossible that such deeds of slaughter could have been perpetrated in a civilized country,” he wrote. But they had been.
Whitley’s political analysis of the Klan’s origins greatly oversimplified matters. Morally, however, his statement brought a much-needed note of candor to public discussion of Reconstruction. Whitley avoided a common fallacy: attributing Klan crime to the purported lower-class origins of rank-and-file members. Rather, he identified “wealthy and educated men” as its true support base. Tinged with racial condescension as they were, Whitley’s comments, unlike those of all but a few of his contemporaries, acknowledged black officeholders in Reconstruction governments had tried to serve “with honest intentions to do their duty.”
Throughout his life, Hiram C. Whitley practiced situational honesty. Now, a few months shy of his seventy-fourth birthday, he faced the uncomfortable subject of white racist terrorism and spoke about it with more than usual clarity, relative both to his own practice since leaving the government, and to the standards of other men of his race and social standing in the early twentieth century. This was Whitley at his best, defending historical facts that many preferred to ignore, at a time when monuments were going up to the likes of William Dudley Chipley, the erstwhile Columbus, Georgia, Klan leader and initiator of a wave of murders whose political and social repercussions distorted the next hundred and fifty years of American history.
The plaque on the twenty-foot obelisk in a downtown Pensacola, Florida, public park honoring Chipley, who died in 1897, declares him a “statesman” and “public benefactor.”63
Whatever else he might have done, for good or for evil, in his long life, Hiram C. Whitley had at least endeavored to bring Chipley and his coconspirators, and others like them, to justice, when the United States government asked him to do so.
He died on April 19, 1919, to be followed in death three days later by his wife, Catherine. Whitley’s family buried him in Emporia, at the Maplewood Memorial Lawn Cemetery. The only marker on the detective’s grave is a rectangular granite headstone, engraved with his name, the year of his birth, the year of his passing—and nothing else.
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It would not have been possible to finish this book without assistance and support. Before I do finish it, I would like to express my appreciation to the many good and generous people who helped.
My editor at the Washington Post editorial page, Fred Hiatt, gave me a leave from my duties at the paper for the last four months of 2017, during which I finished a first draft of the manuscript. That expedited schedule would never have been feasible without a helping hand from Professor Kenneth Anderson of the American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C., who arranged for me to work as a visiting scholar in a comfortable, quiet office at the school’s Pence Law Library. Dean Billie Jo Kaufman and administrative assistant Charmaine Baxter at the library welcomed me, provided logistical support, and made sure that I had all the books and articles I needed.
As always, Scott Waxman, my literary agent, would not take no for an answer—either from me, when my belief in this project occasionally flagged, or from potential publishers. At Hanover Square Press, Peter Joseph was a supportive and astute editor; he has done much to improve this project. Copy editor Anne-Marie Rutella and proofreader Leah Mol ably scrubbed the text. My research assistant, Drew Goins, rummaged energetically through archival arcana and found what I needed when I needed it.
Special thanks are due to Danforth W. Austin of Scottsdale, Arizona, Hiram C. Whitley’s great-grandson, who answered my questions about the family’s history, shared records and photographs, and permitted me to include much of this material in the book. I hope I have done his ancestor justice.
Archivists, librarians, and historians across the country unhesitatingly aided my research. I would like to thank the staffs of the Library of Congress and National Archives, as well as Daniel S. Holt, Assistant Historian of the United States Senate Historical Office; James Amermason and Gregory Guderian of the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark, New Jersey; Ronald E. Romig, Site Director for the Kirtland Temple Visitor’s Center, Kirtland, Ohio; Laura E. West, Managing Editor of Mississippi Quarterly in Oxford, Mississippi; Patricia E. Powers, Managing Editor of the Journal of Policy History in Tempe, Arizona; Rebecca Bush, Curator of History/Exhibitions Manager at The Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia; Theresa Altieri Taplin, Archivist and Collections Manager at The Abraham Lincoln Foundation of The Union League of Philadelphia; Jennifer M. Cole, Associate Curator of Special Collections at The Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky; Lora Kirmer, Research Librarian at the Lyon County History Center in Emporia, Kansas; Fran Leadon, Associate Professor, City College of New York; Jocelyn Wilk, Research Archivist at Columbia University in New York; Mark Osler, Professor and Robert and Marion Short Distinguished Chair in Law at St. Thomas University in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Margaret Shannon of Washington Historical Research in Arlington, Virginia; Stephan Loewentheil and Thomas Edsall of The 19th Century Rare Book & Photography Shop in New York and Baltimore; and Howard Roloff of Victoria, British Columbia.
The United States Secret Service’s public affairs staff in Washington, D.C., generously provided a trove of documents from the organization’s early history. Following Secret Service policy, they requested anonymity, but I know who they are, and I very much appreciate their assistance.
We all need someone we can talk to, writers especially. As I worked, the following gave advice, information, and encouragement: Tom Sietsema, Morris Panner, Lara Ballard, Jonathan G. Cedarbaum, Michael A. Ross, Lawrence Powell, Ross Davies, S. L. Price, and Stephen F. Hayes. Dan and Andrea Elish, dear friends of mine for many years, went above and beyond by hosting me at their place in New York City while I was doing research in that part of the country.
I am indebted to Professor Gary Gerstle, Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge, in Cambridge, England, who agreed to read and comment upon an early draft of the book, as well as to advise me on various points of interpretation and analysis throughout the writing of the manuscript. Gary’s perspective was indispensable, as it has been for more than thirty-five years�
��since he was my undergraduate thesis adviser. It has been a privilege to learn from him about America’s past.
It’s challenging to write a book. It can be even more challenging to live in the same house with someone who’s writing a book. For tolerating me, humoring me, and loving me, I am eternally grateful to David, Nina, and Johanna Lane, my children, and to Catarina Bannier, my wife and, truly, my coauthor.
Charles Lane
Washington, D.C.
December 2018
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Manuscript Collections
Danforth W. Austin Family Collection (Private)
Hiram C. Whitley Papers
Filson Historical Society, Louisville KY
M. G. Bauer Papers
James B. Beck Papers
Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington DC
Benjamin H. Bristow Papers
Hamilton Fish Papers
James H. Wilson Papers
Lyon County History Center, Emporia KS
Hiram C. Whitley Scrapbooks
National Archives, College Park MD
Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59
Records of the Department of Justice, Record Group 60
Records of the U.S. Secret Service, Record Group 87
Records of the Solicitor of the Treasury, Record Group 206
National Archives, Southeast Region, Atlanta GA
Records of the U.S. Circuit Court for North Carolina, Record Group 21
National Archives, Washington DC
Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Record Group 15
Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (U.S. Army), Record Group 153
Records of the U.S. Army, Department of the South, Record Group 393
New Jersey Historical Society, Newark NJ
I. C. Nettleship Papers
The Heritage Center of The Union League of Philadelphia, Philadelphia PA
Abraham Lincoln Foundation Collection
U.S. Secret Service Archives, Washington DC
Government Documents
U.S. Army Department of the South. Major General Meade’s Report on the Ashburn Murder (1868).
U.S. Congress. Sen. Ex. Doc., 41st Cong., 3d sess., no. 16, “Outrages Committed by Disloyal Persons in North Carolina and other Southern States.”
—————. Senate Reports, 42d Cong., 1st sess., no. 1, “Condition of Affairs in the Southern States: North Carolina.”
—————. Senate Reports, 42d Cong., 2d sess., no. 41, “Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States” (Vols. 1–13).
—————. Senate Reports, 42d Cong., 2d sess., no. 227, “Testimony in Relation to the Alleged Frauds in the New York Custom House Taken by the Committee on Investigation and Retrenchment” (Vol. 2).
—————. House Reports, 43d Cong., 1st sess., no. 559, “The Sanborn Contracts.”
—————. House Reports, 43d Cong., 1st sess., no. 785, “Testimony in Relation to the Alleged Safe-Burglary at the Office of the United States Attorney.”
—————. House Reports, 43d Cong., 2d sess., no. 262, “Affairs in Alabama” (Vol. 3).
U.S. Naval War Records Office. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. Washington: Government Printing Office (1894–1922).
U.S. Census
Kansas State Census
Massachusetts State Census
New York State Census
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