Southern Democrats such as Ex-Klansman Senator Byrd vehemently opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Conservatives believe in equality for all Americans; while Democrats give lip service to equality while historically practicing discrimination for political advantage -- "Jim Crow" laws for a century, to prevent sharing social and political power with Blacks; and then firmly enbracing "affirmative Action" and posing as the champions of Civil Rights, when the American People would no longer tolerate their overt racism.

The Houghton Mifflin Reader's Companion to American History says this about the Klan Night Riders:

"Most southern counties saw little of the Klan, but others were overrun by it for months or years at a time. It tended to thrive where the two parties or races were relatively evenly balanced; in such places, terrorism was most apt to change election results. In the worst-affected counties, disguised night riders ranged the countryside on a regular basis, dragging people from their homes, whipping, shooting, or otherwise assaulting them, destroying their property, or driving them away. Most of the victims were black, but white Republicans were also targets."

The Klan sought to control the political and social status of the freed slaves. Specifically, it attempted to curb black education, economic advancement, voting rights, and the right to bear arms. However, the Klan's focus was not limited to African Americans; Southern Republicans also became the target of vicious intimidation tactics.

A federal grand jury in 1869 determined that the Klan was a "terrorist organization." Hundreds of indictments for crimes of violence and terrorism were issued.

Oliver P. Morton, Governor and Senator from Indiana, said of the Democrats in 1866:

"Every man who labored for rebellion in the field, who murdered Union prisoners with cruelty and starvation, who conspired to bring about civil war in the loyal states ... calls himself a Democrat. ... Every wolf in sheep's clothing, who pretends to preach the gospel but proclaims the righteousness of man-selling and slavery; every one who shoots down negroes in the streets; burns negro school-houses and meeting-houses, and murders women and children by the light of their own flaming dwellings calls himself a Democrat.

"...the Ku Klux Klan, the unofficial strong-arm of voter suppression for the Democratic Party throughout the Solid South."

In a wonderful and revealing new book by Angela McGlowan, Bamboozled: How Americans are being Exploited by the Lies of the Liberal Agenda, she interviews Jesse Jackson, Jr., who admits the Confederate flag, long used as an electoral bludgeon against conservatives and Republicans, is actually a symbol of the Democratic Party.

"There is no doubt that the Democratic Party is the party of the Confederacy, historically, that the Democratic Party's flag is the Confederate flag. It was our party's flag. That Jefferson Davis was a Democrat; that Stonewall Jackson strongly identified with the Democratic Party; that secessionists in the South saw themselves as Democrats and were Democrats; that so much of the Democratic Party's history, since it is our nation's oldest political party, has its roots in slavery."

As McGlowan says: "In fact, if you've ever seen a case where a black was stoned, lynched, tarred and feathered, or prevented from voting, the person or persons who did this to them was most likely a Democrat."

The South was solidly Democrat for a century, due not only to Jim Crow laws enacted to disenfranchise Blacks, but political terrorism practiced against anyone, Black or Republican, who dared to vote against the wishes of the entrenched Southern Democrat political Machine.

The Copperheads were a faction of Democrats in the North who opposed the American Civil War, wanting an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates. They nominally favored the Union but strongly opposed the war, for which they blamed abolitionists, and they demanded immediate peace and resisted the draft laws. They wanted Lincoln and the Republicans ousted from power, seeing the president as a tyrant who was destroying American republican values with his despotic and arbitrary actions.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Lincoln was considered despotic, for one thing, because he dared to jail newspaper editors who wrote seditious articles opposing the Civil War. Today, Lincoln is revered by many Blacks and liberals as the "Liberator of the Slaves," and you would almost think he, along with those who pushed through the civil rights laws of 1866 and 1964, were Democrats. Of course, they were Republicans and conservatives, who have always believed in equality for all Americans.

Through their control of public schools, universities, and major media, Democrats and liberals have attempted to completely re-write history and make it appear that conservatives have historically been racists, while the truth is completely the opposite. While many liberals have definate psychological problems, refusing to accept reality and common sense, this particular malady is called "projection": constantly attempting to inpute motives and actions to the opposition that they themselves are guilty of.