Includes bibliographical references and index

1. Hell's victories -- 2. Family roots -- 3. Hollywood Bolsheviks -- 4. The enemy within -- 5. Black Monday -- 6. Philosopher, statesman, and chief -- 7. The Little Rock crisis -- 8. Vicious and desperate men -- 9. Legislating redemption : the Posse Comitatus Act becomes law -- 10. From Jew to Reverend Gale -- 11. Birchers and minutemen -- 12. Flags, tents, skillets, and soldiers -- 13. Anglo-Saxons triumphant -- 14. The ministry of Christ Church -- 15. The conjurer's circle -- 16. Volunteer Christian posses -- 17. The Posse Blue Book -- 18. The Posse rides Wisconsin -- 19. The Posse and the FBI -- 20. The spirit of vigilantism -- 21. Badges and stars -- 22. The Hoskins estate -- 23. Spud shed -- 24. Farm strike! -- 25. Tractorcade -- 26. No substitute for knowledge -- 27. Tax protester -- 28. Civil disorder -- 29. AAM split -- 30. Kahl and his courier -- 31. Snake oil for sale -- 32. Jim Wickstrom's main man -- 33. A domestic dispute -- 34. Neoconservatives and the Grand Wazir -- 35. Soft-pedaling hate -- 36. The deadfall line -- 37. Farmers abandoned -- 38. An enemy government -- 39. Militia madness -- 40. The road from Oklahoma City -- Epilogue -- Acknowledgments -- Ancestors and descendant of William Potter Gale -- Reader's timeline -- Appendix I. The Posse Comitatus : an annotated bibliography -- Appendix II. Suppression of the insurrection and civil disorder : from Shay's Rebellion to the Civil War -- Appendix III. Congressional approval of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 -- Abbreviations to sources -- Endnotes -- Index

From the emergence of white supremacist groups following the Civil War, through the segregationist violence of the civil rights era, the right-wing tax protest movement of the 1970s, the farm crisis of the 1980s and the militia movement of the 1990s, the book details the roots of the radical right. It also tells the story of men like William Potter Gale, a retired Army officer and the founder of the Posse Comitatus whose hate-filled sermons and calls to armed insurrection have fueled generations of tax protesters, militiamen and other anti-government zealots since the 1960s. The book is painstakingly researched and includes rich detail from official documents (including the FBI), private archives and confidential sources never before disclosed. In detailing these and other developments, the book will prove to be the most definitive history of the roots of the American militia movement and the rural radical right

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