the Civil War. He engaged in a series of popular speaking engagements throughout the country. These lectures, entitled "The Last Days of the Confederacy", were very well received in both the North and South, and tended to focus on anecdotes and incidents that humanized soldiers from both sides. General Gordon was the first Commander-in-Chief of the United Confederate Veterans when the group was organized in 1890 and held this position until his death. He died while visiting his son in Miami, Florida, at the age of 71, and was buried in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia; upwards of 75,000 people viewed and took part in the memorial ceremonies. Racial views Gordon, being a slaveowner and former Confederate general, held white supremacist views on race, which he retained for his whole life. He was a firm opponent of Reconstruction and endorsed measures to preserve white-dominated society, including restrictions on freedmen and the use of violence. Author Ralph Lowell Eckert concluded that Gordon was a member of the Ku Klux Klan based on evasive answers during an 1871 hearing. During congressional testimony in 1871, Gordon denied any involvement with the Klan but acknowledged that he was associated with a secret "peace police" organization, whose sole purpose was the "preservation of peace." Gordon was thought to be the titular head of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia, but the organization was so secretive that his role was never proven conclusively. In the midst of Reconstruction, a variety of organizations cropped up in the south, which existed to defy reconstruction (i.e. the Ku Klux Klan, White League, and Red Shirts). As many of these groups feared reprisals while under occupation by Federal troops, they generally operated as secret organizations. In 1866, Gordon made substantial contributions in the form of money and materials to help build churches and schools for blacks in Brunswick, Georgia, and advised them to: educate themselves and their children, to be industrious, save money and purchase houses, and thus make themselves respectable as property holders, and intelligent people. With submission to the laws, industry and economy, with union among yourselves, and courtesy and confidence toward the whites, you will reach these ends, and constitute an important element in the community. These comments were given to help ease the tensions between the blacks and whites in coastal Georgia. Gordon seems to have been most concerned with incidents such as black Federal troops