Stoneman, ill in Washington, sends Lynch to the South to help Northern carpetbaggers23 organize black voters. Lynch decides to make the Camerons’ town of Piedmont his headquarters and sets about persuading blacks to stop work in order to celebrate their freedom. His message is aided by the distribution of free supplies by the Freedmen’s Bureau, which encourages the blacks in the delusion that they are to be given “Forty Acres and a Mule” by the federal government. When Ben and Flora Cameron are temporarily prevented from passing into the street by a squad of marching black soldiers, Lynch reprimands the “Little Colonel” for not accepting that African Americans now have an equal right to walk on the sidewalk.
Stoneman, partly for health reasons and partly to see at firsthand the working out of his policies, leaves for South Carolina where—on the advice of his children—he will also live at Piedmont. He and his family visit the Camerons’ home. Lynch arrives and greets Elsie Stoneman (to whom, it has already been made clear, he is attracted). When Lynch holds out his hand for Ben Cameron to shake, the “Little Colonel” (to Stoneman’s great annoyance) refuses it by turning away.
At a Union League meeting held before the elections, there are signs demanding “Equality” and “Forty Acres and Mule.” Stoneman is the guest of honor and Lynch speaks. Outside the Freedmen’s Bureau, a white official is shown registering black voters. In the meantime, Ben Cameron and Elsie Stoneman have fallen in love. Although Margaret Cameron and Phil Stoneman are plainly attracted to each other, Margaret’s memories of her dead brothers will not allow the relationship to develop.
On election day, all the blacks vote (some more than once) while the whites are disfranchised and physically prevented from voting. The blacks and carpetbaggers, therefore, sweep the state. Lynch is elected lieutenant-governor. Black soldiers in the street fire their rifles in the air and Lynch is carried in celebration by his cheering supporters.
In the aftermath of the election, Ben Cameron relates to his father and three other men a series of outrages that have taken place. A white family has lost a legal case tried by a black judge in front of an exclusively black jury. African American soldiers have pushed a white man and his two children off the sidewalk into the street. A white family has been dispossessed and driven out of their home. Even while Cameron is speaking, his loyal African American servant, Jake, is being beaten by a black soldier for not voting with the Union League and carpetbaggers. When an elderly black man tries to stop the beating, he is shot and killed.
The movie then presents a re-creation of the black-dominated State House of Representatives in 1871. African American members are eating, surreptitiously drinking alcohol, and taking their shoes off. The speaker is obliged to rule that all members must wear shoes. The house passes a resolution insisting that all whites must salute black officers on the streets and a law allowing the intermarriage of blacks and whites. Inspired by such ideas, a black soldier, Gus, begins to covet Flora Cameron. When he is reprimanded by Ben Cameron for skulking so close to Cameron Hall, Lynch protests.
The “Little Colonel,” brooding by the riverbank on the fate of his people, sees two white children sitting on the ground who cover themselves with a sheet. Four black children are frightened by them and run away. The incident gives Cameron the germ of the idea for the Ku Klux Klan. The white-hooded night riders are shown terrorizing two blacks. But first blood goes to the supporters of Lynch, who ambush three Klansmen. Stoneman tells Elsie that Ben Cameron is a Klansman, and when she confronts him with the accusation, he drops what is clearly a Klan uniform to the ground. Her suspicions confirmed, she breaks off their engagement.
Young Flora Cameron, against the advice of her brother, goes alone to the spring to fetch water. She is followed by Gus. Meanwhile, the “Little Colonel” arrives home and, alarmed that Flora has gone off alone, sets off in pursuit. At the spring, Gus confronts Flora and tells her he wants to marry her. Flora panics and runs off. Not knowing that Ben is on his way, she climbs a rocky slope to get away from Gus, who still follows her. Finally, at the top of the hill, with Gus still following her, she jumps off the rocks and is fatally injured. Gus runs away and the dying Flora is found by Ben Cameron.24 While the Cameron family (and their black servants Mammy and Jake) mourn Flora, Gus takes refuge in a black saloon.
Whites search the town for Gus. The blacksmith, Jeff, goes to the saloon where Gus is hiding. When confronted by several blacks, he fights and beats them, throwing several out of the window. He is then shot in the back. Gus runs away from the saloon and tries to escape on a horse, but he is cornered. Tried by the Klan, he is found guilty and killed.25 His body is left on the steps of the lieutenant-governor’s house with a sign bearing a skull and crossbones and the letters “K.K.K.” It is found there in the morning by Lynch, who orders black militiamen into the streets to take up the challenge laid down by the Klan.
The Klans prepare for action and that night make the decision to disarm all blacks. In the meantime, black spies set out to uncover whites in possession of Klan uniforms so they can be killed. One such spy catches sight of Margaret Cameron hiding one of the uniforms and Lynch orders the arrest of Dr. Cameron. Margaret runs to the Stoneman house to plead with Elsie to have her father intervene. The white scalawag26 captain who has arrested Dr. Cameron parades him in chains before his former slaves, who jeer him. Mammy and Jake, black but “faithful souls,” mount an attempt to rescue Dr. Cameron, which is observed by Mrs. Cameron, Margaret, and Phil Stoneman. To complete the rescue, Phil punches the captain in the face and shoots one of the black soldiers. Mr. and Mrs. Cameron, Margaret, Phil, Mammy, and Jake all escape in a wagon. When the wagon loses a wheel, they take refuge in a log cabin occupied by two Union veterans.
Gus’s “trial” by the Klan. (Epoch/The Kobal Collection)
Elsie Stoneman, in her father’s temporary absence, goes to Lynch to ask for help. Lynch, who has been hosting a party, clears the room to be alone with her. He proposes marriage and Elsie, shocked, threatens to have him whipped. Lynch, with black soldiers thronging the streets, dreams of carving out a black empire for himself with Elsie as his consort. Drunk and besotted with this dream, he orders his servants to rush preparations for a “forced marriage.” The Klans, in the meantime, begin to assemble, led by the “Little Colonel.”
Stoneman returns to Piedmont. He approves when Lynch says he wants to marry a white woman but then angrily rejects the idea after Lynch informs him that Elsie is the objection of his affections. Stoneman is restrained by force. The town is taken over by rioting blacks, brought in by Lynch to overawe the whites.27 Elsie manages to smash the window of the room in which she is imprisoned. Her call for help is heard by two mounted white spies.
When black soldiers surround the log cabin in which the Camerons, their servants, and Phil Stoneman have taken refuge, the Union veterans refuse to allow Dr. Cameron to give himself up. As black soldiers attack the cabin, the veterans join in its defense. In the town, black mobs riot in the streets while helpless whites look on. Finally, the massed ranks of Klansmen reach the town, attack the black soldiers, and force them to flee. Lynch is captured and Elsie is rescued by Ben Cameron.28
Meanwhile, things are growing desperate in the little cabin. Their plight, however, has reconciled Margaret Cameron and Phil Stoneman. Just as the black soldiers are about to take the cabin—and Dr. Cameron plans to kill Margaret to prevent her falling into black hands—the Klansmen arrive and drive off the attackers. The blacks are all disarmed. Led by Margaret, Elsie, and Ben, the Klansmen parade through the town. Whites celebrate as blacks slink away. At the next election, blacks are prevented from voting by a line of armed, mounted Klansmen.
In the aftermath, first Margaret and Phil, then Elsie and Ben, are seen on a “double honeymoon.” An image of the God of War surrounded by broken bodies is followed by that of Christ, then that of a celestial city. Elsie and Ben are shown looking toward the city. The final title appears: “Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever!”29
The predictions of the doomsayers at the intermission proved inaccurate and Karl Brown’s fears unnecessary. The audience at the première remained intent during the second part of the picture, completely caught up in the drama. At times, they reacted strongly to particular sequences.30 One critic would later note that audiences “invariably” applauded the scene in which the “Little Colonel” refused to shake hands with Lynch.31 The audience at the première probably did the same. Brown recalled that as the Klansmen began to ride,
The victorious Klan parade in Piedmont. (Epoch/The Kobal Collection)
The cheers began to rise from all over that packed house. This was not a ride to save Little Sister but to avenge her death, and every soul in that audience was in the saddle with the clansmen and pounding hell-for-leather on an errand of stern justice, lighted on their way by the holy flames of a burning cross.
Brown also remembered one special sequence “that made the audience duck and scream,” as it seemed that the horses of the clansmen were heading straight for the audience.32
When “The End” appeared on the screen, the audience, according to Brown, “didn’t just sit there and applaud, but they stood up and cheered and yelled and stamped feet until Griffith finally made an appearance.” The director stepped out a few feet from the left of the stage. He did not bow or raise his hands, but simply stood there, a tiny figure against the backdrop of the great proscenium arch, as wave after wave of cheers and applause engulfed him.33 We shall never know what Griffith thought as he stood in front of the enthusiastic crowd. It was quite possibly the greatest moment of his life. It seemingly justified his attempt to make a film longer than anyone else in the United States had so far done and the time and effort required to bring the project to a successful conclusion. It held out the promise that The Clansman would make a return on the very large sum it had cost to make.
Above all, perhaps, it justified Griffith’s own decision to become a film-maker. It may be, standing on the stage of Clune’s Auditorium, that Griffith was reflecting on the route by which he had arrived at that night. If so, he may well have spared a thought for his fellow Southerner, Thomas Dixon Jr. Though The Clansman, like all films, was a collaborative enterprise, the roles of two men had been absolutely crucial in leading up to this screening: those of Griffith and Dixon.
2
Thomas Dixon Jr.
The essential narrative and the principal fictional characters of The Birth of a Nation were originally created by Thomas Dixon Jr. Any attempt to understand the genesis of the film, therefore, must start with Dixon. Successively lawyer, politician, minister, lecturer, novelist, dramatist, actor, theatrical and motion picture producer, and real estate entrepreneur, he was a man of tremendous energy, considerable versatility, and enormous ambition. Almost forgotten nowadays, he was a significant figure in early twentieth-century American culture. He was a highly successful minister and popular lecturer. His novels, frequently addressing racial issues, enjoyed huge sales. He also wrote a number of plays that attracted large, enthusiastic audiences. The popularity of Dixon’s novels and plays, indeed, suggests that the issues he addressed struck a responsive chord among many Americans of his time.
Childhood and Youth
Dixon was born on January 11, 1864, on a farm near Shelby, North Carolina. Both the time and the place would heavily influence his later career. It was the third year of the Civil War, and North Carolina was one of the slave states fighting for independent nationhood as part of the Southern Confederacy.1 Though the Dixon family had deep roots in North Carolina going back to the eighteenth century, it was because of the impact of the Civil War that Dixon was born there. His father, Thomas Dixon Sr., had moved west with his family in 1862 to establish a farm near Little Rock, Arkansas. One reason for this change may have been to help his wife, Amanda, overcome depression brought about by the deaths of two of her four children. It may also have seemed to the slave-owning Dixons that Arkansas was less likely to be occupied by advancing Union forces. If these were indeed the main reasons for their move, nothing worked out as the Dixons hoped. A few months after their arrival in Arkansas, the younger of their two surviving sons died.2 Shortly thereafter, with Amanda pregnant again, the couple realized that the advance of Grant’s Union Army southward along the Mississippi toward Vicksburg (which surrendered on July 4, 1863) was effectively cutting the Confederacy in two and leaving Arkansas detached from Confederate states to the west. They set off home, with their slaves, on an epic journey that—to avoid battle lines and hostile Union troops—would ultimately cover more than 2,000 miles. Finally, in August 1863, their caravan halted twelve miles away from Thomas Dixon Sr.’s boyhood home, at King’s Mountain in North Carolina, where he bought a farm. Five months later, Amanda gave birth there to a boy, whom they named after his father.3
Thomas Dixon Jr. (1864–1946). (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-110941)
While it was not yet clear in January 1864 that the South had lost the Civil War, its prospects had become increasing grim by the summer. Those prospects would get no brighter in the ensuing months. Grant had pinned Lee down at Petersburg, twenty miles from the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Meanwhile, Sherman captured Atlanta on September 2, marched to the Georgia seacoast in December, and then swung north into the Carolinas. He sealed off Wilmington, North Carolina, the Confederacy’s last remaining major seaport, in February 1865 and drove Confederate forces north through the state before him. In April, the two main Southern armies surrendered. Although Sherman’s route had taken him to the east of Shelby, the area around Dixon’s birthplace had also suffered from the depredations of the Union army. A force of 7,000 men, led by General George Stoneman (whose surname many years later would be appropriated by Thomas Dixon for the white villain of his novel and play The Clansman), invaded North Carolina from Tennessee in early April, stealing or destroying property in a score of western counties.4 When the war ended a few days later, the Shelby area was also obliged to deal with the economic and social consequences of the South’s defeat. The Dixon family found itself hovering on the verge of destitution. An endless procession of soldiers passed by their farm on their way home to the Deep South, begging food, taking the wooden fences for campfires, and eating any remaining livestock. His former slaves begged Thomas Dixon Sr. for employment, but he was unable to help them. He had just enough money to help himself. On his return from Arkansas, he had carefully buried a cache of a hundred dollars in gold in a secluded place on his farm. Now he dug up this money, moved into a house in Shelby, and opened a small store.5
Politically, from March 1867 onward, North Carolina, in common with most of the ex-Confederate South, experienced a period of “radical” Reconstruction.6 The South was temporarily reorganized into five military districts, each under the command of an army general. To be readmitted to the Union, each state was required to draft a new state constitution providing for black suffrage and the disfranchisement of ex-Confederates disqualified under the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution proposed by Congress. It was also necessary for the new state legislatures elected under these arrangements to ratify the amendment itself.7 In many Southern states, the new legislatures had sizable numbers of black members. However, in only one state, South Carolina, did the legislature have a majority of black members. Dixon would later remember, as a small boy, being taken by his uncle, Colonel Lee Roy McAfee, to the state capital, Columbia, to see the South Carolina legislature in action. It contained, he would later write, “ninety-four Negroes, seven native scalawags, and twenty-three white men [Conservatives or Democrats who were hostile to the Reconstruction process].”8
In 1868, William W. Holden was elected the first Republican governor of North Carolina with the help of a small number of scalawags, carpetbaggers, and large numbers of newly enfranchised African Americans. Holden, proprietor of the North Carolina Standard and a former Democrat, was opposed both before and after his election by the Ku
Klux Klan. The Klan, which first appeared in North Carolina in 1867, was probably the most effective weapon in the hands of the whites opposed to the whole process of radical Reconstruction. At its peak, it may have had 40,000 members in the state. Through intimidation, whippings, and occasional murders, it set out to defeat the Republican Party and reestablish “white supremacy” in North Carolina. The Klan was particularly strong in western areas of the state, including the region around Shelby. By 1870, Holden, realizing that he and the Republicans faced political defeat unless the activities of the Klan were checked, attempted to combat it by using the state militia to arrest local supporters. In the elections that followed, native whites (known as Conservatives) carried both houses of the legislature. In 1871, they succeeded in impeaching Governor Holden and in convicting him and removing him from office—the first state governor in American history to be ousted in this way. Subsequently, the Klan gradually declined, partly as a result of more effective federal legislation and partly because it had achieved its main aim, the restoration of white supremacy.9
Living in the South as a child during the era of radical Reconstruction affected Thomas Dixon Jr.’s outlook throughout his life. He would always look back on Reconstruction as a “tragic era” in which the white South had been unjustly treated by the North. Much of his later career was spent trying to tell the “true story” of what had happened. He would later claim that some of his earliest memories dealt with the Ku Klux Klan, one of which was watching the hanging of a black convict accused of raping a white woman. In the beginning, the Klan was led by respectable members of the social elite, including Dixon’s uncle, Colonel Lee Roy McAfee, and his own father. It liked to see itself as a “law and order” organization attempting to mitigate the chaos of the Reconstruction period. Over time, however, the Klan was effectively taken over by more unruly elements—particularly working-class white men who, seeing free black men as their competitors, set out to harass them by violent means. On one occasion, young Dixon and his father encountered a group of drunken, swearing men on their way to beat up an “insolent nigger.” Trying to enlist the help of Colonel McAfee (the local Klan leader) in preventing this, Thomas Dixon Sr. drove his horse so hard that it died of exhaustion outside the entrance to McAfee’s home.10
D W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation Page 4