Why would The Colored American review Dixon's works? Because they were frightening and critically important for understanding American culture. These reviews have not been republished; they are available now via Hathi Trust. "The Staging of 'The Clansman,'" from the November 1905 issue, quotes the Richmond Times-Dispatch review from September 26, 1905: "It would be better if the novel had never been written. It would be still better if the play were strangled in its infancy."
The review of The Leopard's Spots is by William Stanley Braithwaite. The reviews of The Clansman are unsigned.
The Colored American (June 1902) Book Reviews; William Stanley Braithwaite
In the light of the apparent material progress of the Negro, and contrasting deeply with Mr. Washington’s “Up From Slavery,” and Mrs. Erskine’s “When the Gates Lift up Their Heads,” Mr. Dixon’s book, “The Leopard’s Spots” comes from the press an ill starred and deformed piece of fiction. There is absolutely no rational excuse for the book’s being; and least of all, as its vaunted mission, can it in any way promote civilization or assist in the “federation of the world.” The author’s doctrine is the complete subjugation of the Negro to insure the redemption and maintenance of an unadulterated American Republic. With appalling recurrence the author, with shallow austerity warns his countrymen that “In a Democracy you cannot build a nation inside a nation of two antagonistic races, and therefore the future American must be either an Anglo-Saxon or a Mulatto.”
By this I presume Mr. Dixon means that sixty odd millions of people of heterogenous blood in granting social, industrial and political equality to the Negro will develop a preponderance of in heritance from the lesser numerical race and build up a Mulatto nation. Granting the possibility of this illogical reasoning, Mr. Dixon asks. “And if a Mulatto, is the future worth discussing?” By this question one can readily discern the author’s estimate of the Negro; and in the book before us he expresses it with a revolting and odious disregard for truth.
Mr. Dixon has formed a discouraging and personal conception of the Negro and expressed it with ineffectual sophistry through a medium with novelistic pretensions that has outraged this branch of literature. The fact that the author claims authentic reports and documents from which he obtained the material for his book, in no wise justifies his resuscitation of dead acts upon which to build a didactic or problematic work. The book simply reveals a propaganda of narrow and extremely prejudicial principles.
We have many lovable, honest and worthy Negro characters in fiction. Mr. Dixon’s blindness to the best qualities in human nature has failed to give us one. Not only has he failed in this,— but his creations of white types are mummies and tinsel figures that crowd four hundred and sixty-five pages covering a period of thirty-five years. The background of Mr. Dixon’s canvass one confesses, admits ample inspiration for the completion of a wonderful picture. However one may differ from Thomas Nelson Page’s point of view, one feels in reading “Red Rock” that actual men and women of strong and worthy convictions act out a drama of real human destinies.
Mr. Dixon, to the contrary, inspires no confidence or consideration for the characters he creates and the principles they stand for. To go through the history of his people is distasteful. One who reads simply for the pleasure a story gives is very likely to lay this book aside after perusing a few pages; but for one who expects to pass judgment upon it as a piece of literature it is excruciating.
(The Leopard’s Spots. By Thomas Dixon, Jr. Doubleday, & Co., New York, 1902. William Stanley Braithwaite)
The Colored American (February 1905) Book Reviews.
The Clansman, Doubleday, Page & Co., New York – Thomas Dixon, Jr., who represents the American League, that notorious organization for the oppression of colored people, has just succeeded, through Doubleday, & Co., in placing the second of his trilogy of Southern novels on the market. His first book “The Leopard’s Spots” enjoyed a tremendous sale. This second trial, “The Clansman,” will enjoy an even larger run, in the south, among the white people, who will read it to satisfy their vanity, and among the educated colored people, who will read it to ridicule within their circle.
“The Clansman” is an historical book, with a love story weaved in between the absurd conclusions drawn from events succeeding the Civil War, and indeed the very misstatements, to use a calm word, about those events. Mr. Dixon has in no two cases out of ten, told the truth as to the conditions in the south; indeed he evidently thought that the book would be read only by southern whites and northern Mugwumps. He didn’t dream that colored men, and the descendants of Garrison and of Phillips, and of those who gallantly fought for the Union, ever visited a book shop or read the papers.
Strange indeed is Mr. Dixon’s tribute to Abraham Lincoln, whom he avers was the only friend the south had in Washington during the war, and immediately after.
Mr. Dixon has absolutely no literary style; indeed one, to read his latest book, would think he had no literary taste. Sordid, broken in thought. illegitimate in language, incorrect in history, incoherent in logic, and altogether faulty, being a splendid example of an offspring of prejudice and ignorance. In seeking to justify the Ku Klux Klan, a murderous organization, of which the white cap gang is a legitimate and loyal offspring, Mr. Dixon has simply re-awakened interest in the history of an organization that literally bathed itself in the blood of innocents.
Whether speaking or writing, however suave or complimentary, Mr. Dixon cannot hide his chosen life’s work—to still preach the righteousness of slavery, and the right of the south to secede and war, on one hand, and to decry the northern men who were brave enough to denounce slavery, meet war with war and, after slavery, set out to carry New England civilization into what was then a barbaric country, on the other.
Mr. Dixon wastes much space in his book, in an effort to blame the northern Republican party for the Negro’s gain in representation in the various state legislatures in the south, immediately after the war; when as a matter of fact, northern Republicans had not as much to do with this phase of the political question as the southern white man, who abused the northern white Republican in one breath for commingling politically with colored Americans; and sought, in the next to undermine the political fortunes of the Republicans, by overtures to the colored men. Thomas Dixon knows a good many things he doesn’t tell, and he told many things he knows are untrue. Every bit of legislation ever passed by the National Congress, or Republican State Legislatures, seeking to adjust southern matters, was right and needed. The south was never ruled as well as when Republicans were in power there. The best friend the south ever had is the Negro, who is still its best friend.
Mr. Dixon asserts that 80,000 Negroes were armed in South Carolina against the white man. This is untrue; every Negro armed in South Carolina was armed to protect himself and the Federal Government, which then, as now, was held in contemptuous regard. The south has always refused to submit to any ruling, except by the bayonet; states’ rights is as rampant now as in ’50. The Ku Klux Klan flourished after, not before, Hayes withdrew the Federal troops.
And so we might go on from chapter to chapter, proving the falsity of Mr. Dixon’s position, and the general worthlessness of “ The Clansman;” but enough has been disproved, to show the bad character of the production. It is an incongruous, incoherent epistle, whose style is as faulty as the matter contained, and whose historical accuracy is as uncertain as a March wind. Mr. Dixon's assertions of accusation against the morality of the colored man are prejudiced untruths, which serve, however, to raise the general character of the race he assails, because of the living examples of genuine moral strength, who so nobly refute his every charge.
The book should be read, because it both so plainly shows how a man can go down into the quagmire of wicked malignity and still retain the good will, and excite the worship of millions of people, who are, however, in the same pen, and because it forcibly shows just what kind of a sentiment obtains in the south against the struggling colored citizen.
The Way of the World,” The Staging of “The Clansman” (November 1905)
Thomas Dixon, Jr., is bent upon mischief; he is working to it with a zeal and industry that are as amazing as regrettable; in his heart of hearts, the black spot of the sentimental South, there lurks a desire for blood, and he is well on his way to the drenching. If the South does not rise against his teachings, avowedly for the purpose of revenge against the decree of Providence, to be visited upon the black people, we shall see one of the bloodiest clashes of modern times. That Dixon is a knave, no one denies; that he is a fool, no one believes; that he is crazy, is the verdict of the Republic; that he should be muzzled, for the good of the country, has long ago possessed the North, and in time must possess the sane element in our Southern civilization. At present he is on the warpath; behind him he leaves perturbed and blood-thirsty smouldering but bidding ember, which at his touch, may kindle into a flame that will sweep the South. That serious steps should be taken to check his influence, low, mean, vulgar, unbecoming to a patriot, and disgraceful to a Christian minister, is forcibly, and we trust permanently, brought home to thoughtful men, by the news of Dixon's latest and most deadly move toward the aim of his low calling.
“The Clansman,” the biggest falsehood that ever sprang from the imagination of man, and which purported to blacken the reputation and render uncertain the future of the American colored man; and in addition, to arouse within the Southerner a desire for vengeance when there is no vengeance; retribution when there has been no crime; revenge, even if against Heaven, has been dramatised, and under the personal direction of Dixon is now on a “triumphal tour throughout the South.” The show opened up in Norfolk, in order to allow those who are playing the leading characters to smooth the rough edges. After a night of glory in Norfolk, it moved on to Richmond, where it played to a packed house; here it was christened the official play of the Lost Cause, and sent upon its mission of hate and racial hostility. Mr. Dixon explained to his Richmond audience why “The Clansman” was written, and why now it is staged. He does not claim that the book reflects, in any degree, conditions in the South immediately following the war; he could make no such claim. But it was written specifically to confuse the present situation, and to demonstrate for the Republic, against the Republic's protest, that the “Civil War did not settle the Negro question; it simply created it.” “And,” said Dixon, as he stood before the footlights at Richmond, “we not only have not settled it; we have not looked at it.” He meant simply that because the South has not been left to butcher the black people, and to intrude its opinions and customs upon other sections of the country, to have its way in the councils that have from time to time discussed the questions in all its phases; to demoralize every ambition of the black men in the South, while in the same breath destroy, by force if necessary, the virtue of their women —in short, because the South has not been left to fasten slavery about the neck of the Negro, the question has not been settled. And yet, because the question is not settled, Tom Dixon desires to destroy the reason of the Southern white man, in order that it may never be settled.
Of the play itself, nothing need be said. There was never a Negro like Lynch; no Negro desired to marry the white women of the South, after the war; few, if any, did. There were no Negro tyrants. The best government that ever the South had, was during Negro rule. There were no abolitionists like Stoneman. The best friends that ever the South had were the Northern white men who settled in the South after the war, and stood between the recently enslaved and the master, as a peace- maker. They served their government with a patriotism that was sometimes overzealous, but never vicious. These characters Dixon has overdrawn, in order that the chief of the Ku Klux Klan may have the opportunity to appeal to the passion of the mob in words that fit and serve Dixon1 s purpose, but do not, in the least degree, describe any condition that ever obtained at any time in the South.
The play, like the book, is a horrible piece of artful work. It is treason; it is criminal; it is untrue. Even the Richmond “Times- Dispatch,” one of the bitterest and most unscrupulous papers in the South, was disgusted with its viciousness and said the morning after its appearance at the Richmond Academy of Music:
“Mr. Dixon has written and staged a strong play, intensely dramatic and full of thrilling situations. Of that there is no dispute. It is a money-maker. But he claims for it that it is a purpose play, a play with a lesson and a moral. But what good can it possibly accomplish? It necessarily assures the most violent passion of social instinct; it exaggerates the horrors of things impossible in the South—social equality and miscegenation. It will unnecessarily stir the antagonism of the white man and arouse the hatred of the black with out doing good to either."Here is condemnation of Dixon’s foul sin from his own nest; it must therefore be doubly diabolical in its brightest parts. That it lacks the chief element of the play, that eternal truth upon which a great moral melodrama is founded, and with which it sweeps its audiences and stirs the souls of men, is known of all who have read “The Clansman;” the testimony of the “Times-Despatch” adds double force to the opinion of those who were sick enough when they had done drinking the poison Dixon prepared in the original copy. Upon this point that journal very wisely observed:
“That touch of sentiment that makes the audience one with the idea of theThe play can teach no lesson; it can only portray at best conditions that are now happily and forever dead. Great melodramas are written and staged to regenerate the life of a people, or the customs of a country; never to widen a breach or open a sore. Thomas Dixon, Jr., is engaged in a work of rankest perfidy; he is tearing asunder the Republic, persecuting a people upon whose labor he nursed; slandering those who stood for government when his fathers were preaching tyranny.
dramatist was lacking. Perhaps the pathos and glory of the battle of the South after peace had been declared was obscured by the horror of other suggestions, but be that as it may, the average spectator felt that he had assisted at a fearful and wonderful representation which did not touch the outskirts of that drama which was played in the desolate homes and ravaged farms—where the men of the South following the example and the words of General Lee, sought to make their state great again.”
The survivors of that murderous band called the Ku Klux Klan do not desire that the history of it shall be written; it is too vile. They would that the dead past should bury its dead. They are not blind to the brink to which Dixon persistently leads. Many of them are not looking to the past; they are too busy with the present preparing for the future. After one such had witnessed the play in Richmond, he gave out the following significant interview:
“The true history of the Ku Klux Klan has never been written, and it never should be, either in the form of history or novel, and much less should it make an attempt to get on the stage in fragmentary story, in sensational situation and in all manner of stage setting and trappings.That is the testimony of a clansman, whose conscience is now weighted with the awful crimes wilfully and maliciously committed by his organization against the person and homes of a defenseless people, who but a moment ago, bared their backs to the indiscriminating sun, in order to feed their persecutors. He knows Mr. Dixon wrongly represents the part played by the Negroes in reconstruction; he also knows that Mr. Dixon dare not tell the truth about the Ku Klux ; in his wisdom he knows whereof he speaketh when he says that “it would be better if the novel had never been written.” He pleads for his section and his posterity when he adds “it would be still better if the play were strangled in its infancy.”
"The Ku Klux Klan arose for a specific purpose, accomplished that purpose in an incredibly shot space of time, and then its patriotic members again became law-abiding citizens. With the disbanding of their order they buried its history in their secret hearts. It is a pity that book writers, striving to ‘turn an honest penny’ had not let it remain buried.
“It is said that Uncle Tom's Cabin did as much as any other agency to bring on the civil strife in our land, be cause it aroused sectional feeling and created sectional hatred. It can be said for Mrs. Stowe's novel and play, that they dealt with an institution that then existed. The institution with which the “Clansman” deals, does not exist, and the men who are brought into it existed 35 years ago and do not re quire vindication or defense at the hands of Mr. Dixon or any one else. They do not feel that they need any one to ex plain why they became violators of law. An explanation is not necessary at this late day and never was.
“‘The Clansman,’ as a novel, has already unnecessarily aroused sectional feeling. ‘The Clansman’ as a play is bound to be more effective along this line.
“It would be better if the novel had never been written. It would be still better if the play were strangled in its infancy.”
Mr. Dixon will listen to no reasoning; he is drunk with fame ; he is bent upon a deadly purpose ; and so we shall possess our souls in patience while “The Clansman” makes its “triumphal tour of the South.” If it does not disgust the South, as it disgusted Richmond, it will stir up murder. There is no escape. We trust the black people of the South will turn no ear to it, nor lose their self- control under its influence. We have it from sources reliable but not intimate, that “The Clansman” will not be tolerated, even by Southerners, in New York. And so we leave the South to its own infamy, to dispel it or perish under its malignity.
