“…Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1867 to 1869…
…In 1858, Forrest was elected a Memphis city alderman as a Southern Democrat and served two consecutive terms…
…The Klan’s activity infiltrated the Democratic Party‘s campaign for the presidential election of 1868. Prominent ex-Confederates, including Forrest, the Grand Wizard of the Klan, and South Carolina’s Wade Hampton, attended as delegates at the 1868 Democratic Convention, held at Tammany Hall headquarters at 141 East 14th Street in New York City. Forrest rode to the convention on a train that was stopped just outside of a small town along the way, when he was confronted by a well-known fighter shouting “d[amne]d butcher” and wanting to “thrash” him. When Forrest rose and approached the bully, his larger challenger’s “purpose evaporated.”[184] Former Governor of New York Horatio Seymour was nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate, while Forrest’s friend, Francis Preston Blair Jr., was nominated as the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Seymour’s running mate. The Seymour–Blair Democratic ticket’s campaign slogan was: “Our Ticket, Our Motto, This Is a White Man’s Country; Let White Men Rule”. The Democratic Party platform denounced the Reconstruction Acts as unconstitutional, void, and revolutionary. The party advocated the termination of the Freedman’s Bureau and any government policy designed to aid blacks in the Southern United States. These developments worked to the advantage of the Republicans, who focused on the Democratic Party’s alleged disloyalty during and after the Civil War…”
Forrest is only one of many Democrat Party members and sympathizers of the Klan.
