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Dixon Jr. is mainly remembered for today although it is only one out of twenty-two novels and many screenplays, sermons, and works of nonfiction. Born in 1864 in Shelby, North Carolina, apart from his artistic careers as writer, playwright and actor, Dixon also attended law school in Greensboro, N.C. However, after serving in the state’s legislature for only one year, he opted for the career of Baptist minister that led him to Raleigh – the capital of his home state – as well as Boston and New York City.

The Clansman is part of a trilogy – The Leopard’s Spots was published in 1902 and The Traitor in 1907 – that is centred thematically on Southern life during the Reconstruction Era. The story of The Clansman famously served as the basis for D.W. Griffith’s epic movie The Birth of a Nation, which hit the cinemas across the country in 1915. Dixon’s trilogy presents a picture of the post-war years that aims at creating sympathy for the South and its (white) population.

In order to do so, Dixon draws on conventions of the romance. The subtitle even declares it ‘romance’, and there are various characteristics of prose romance that are made significant throughout the novel. In this regard, its plot deploys heroes and villains, sharply discriminated, and the ‘quest for an ideal’ is made a central theme (see “Novel” 192). In composing his work Dixon relies on basic characteristics of romanticism, a movement that is to be understood as “a reaction against rationalism and materialism”, embracing “the importance of individuality and personal freedom, and […] the value of spontaneity and self-expression as opposed to artificiality and restraint”. Moreover, romanticism also has

important political, social and nationalistic dimensions. Its support for the ideals of [democracy] and republicanism derives from a fundamental belief in human equality, while as an optimistic, [utopian], philosophy, romanticism also envisions the perfectibility of the individual and of society through self-realization, progress and reform. (“Romanticism” 190)

In this regard, it can be argued that Dixon appropriates the romanticism of individuality and personal freedom in his novel in the context of the post-war Southern states, its people and particular ideologies. According to this presentation of the two sections North and South, the latter clearly differs from the former, a fact that had been neglected during Reconstruction, but, however, needed to be acknowledged according to Dixon. Nevertheless, the United States was one nation and that is why it needed reunion in order to further sustain. In this regard, I argue that Dixon appropriated the romantic theme of human equality which, however, is not incorporated in terms of ‘race’ but instead in terms of the two geographical regions North and South which had been separated so violently by the war.

With regards to further structural characteristics of the romance, Dixon employs a particular type of romantic narrative, the ‘chivalric or medieval romance’, a precursor to prose romance. The origins of this narrative type can be dated back to as far as the 12^th century, and its “standard plot is that of a quest undertaken by a single knight in order to gain a lady’s favor [sic]”. It “stresses the chivalric ideals of courage, loyalty, honor [sic], mercifulness to an opponent, and elaborate manners […]” (“Chivalric Romance” 35). In The Clansman these characteristics are held by the knights of the Ku Klux Klan which are portrayed as to live by these ideals, above all by Ben Cameron, one of the organizations’

‘Grand Dragons’. He seems to have all it takes for a nobleman or hero even: the reader learns by the speech of the surgeon in the very first chapter that Ben Cameron proved courageous and brave on the battlefield of the Civil War where he provides his enemies with water. He also excels in terms of manners, and this is mainly acknowledged by Northern Elsie Stoneman who falls in love with the young Southerner: she perceives “[Ben’s] love for his native State [as] genuine, his pride in the bravery and goodness of its people [as] chivalrous […]” (Dixon, The Clansman 149). Elsie concludes that “[h]is gift of delicate intimacy, the eloquence with which he expressed his love, and yet the manly dignity with which he did it, threw a spell no woman could resist” (Dixon, The Clansman 148). From their very first meeting, the relationship between the two young people is characterized by mutual sympathy and fondness, and soon, in the sense of the chivalric romance Ben declares the winning of Elsie’s love the mission in life: “His

creed was simple. The chief end of life is to glorify the girl you love. Other things could wait” (Dixon, The Clansman 148).

The novel is termed a ‘romance’ but it also is a highly political narrative. As outlined by Kinney (880-81), basic to Dixon’s outlines is his perception that the black population’s political participation would seriously threaten American society as to him, the resulting social equality could only result in ‘miscegenation’

and the end of known ‘civilization’. At its basis, the purity and sanctity of the white family needed peculiar protection. In order to arouse sympathy within the readership, Dixon addresses these social fears and appropriates them in presenting his evaluation of the post-war United States to the reader:

The chaos of blind passion that followed Lincoln’s assassination is inconceivable to-day. The revolution it produced in our Government, and the bold attempt of Thaddeus Stevens to Africanize ten great States of the American Union, read now like tales from ‘The Arabian Nights’. […] In the darkest hour of the life of the South, when her wounded people lay helpless amid rags and ashes under the beak and talon of the Vulture, suddenly from the mists of the mountains appeared a white cloud the size of a man’s hand. It grew until its mantle of mystery enfolded the stricken earth on sky. An ‘Invisible Empire’ had risen from the field of Death and challenged the Visible to mortal combat. (Dixon, To the Reader)

Dixon perceives the Reconstruction South as politically discriminated, socially devastated and threatened by a ‘black politics’. The author clearly advocates white-supremacist thinking and this obviously has an influence on how the various characters are presented as well as how the plot progresses. However, despite the allegedly desperate situation, there seems hope on the horizon in the form of the Ku Klux Klan.

Apart from content, the paragraph quoted also provides a foretaste of what can be expected from the novel in terms of style: a language drenched in pathos and sentimentalisms can be regarded Dixon’s main tool in reaching his aim of gaining sympathy for the South, its people and especially the Ku Klux Klan and their acts of violence. Essential to his argumentation is the connection drawn to the Scottish descent of North Carolinian people. In fact, by the end of the 18th century, one fifth to one third of the Southern white population had been of Scots or Scots-Irish descent, and so is the Cameron family (see McWhiney 440). In The Clansman this particular ancestry makes the Southern white people an essentially heroic and courageous one.