Controversies
For many years from the 1950s – 1970s J T Edson's books were hugely popular. However, in the 1980s he increasingly clashed with UK publishers over his books' treatment and portrayal of racial politics and issues in the post-Civil War Southern States. Perhaps because of his experiences in the British Army, Edson developed a deep disapproval of Liberal and Liberal-Radical politics and was avowedly Right of Centre in his political ideology.
J T Edson's treatment of racial politics and issues in the post-Civil War South dealt with potentially controversial issues. His novel, The Hooded Riders, portrayed a Ku Klux Klan like organization as a heroic resistance group. His heroes, Dusty Fog and Mark Counter, are responsible for founding this group. The same novel also portrays the outlaw and gunfighter John Wesley Hardin as a wrongly accused hero, and his killing of a black man is presented as self-defence. The novel also refers to Reconstruction as a "period of stupidity and bigotry" directed against white Southerners. In other novels, Edson refers to black slaves in the South who came to the defense of their masters against Northerners.
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