Pike was the only Confederate general ever displayed outdoors in Washington, D.C., but he was not put up because he was a Confederate general. For that matter, he was a terrible general.
Pike plays an important role in R. A. Lafferty’s magnificent historical novel Okla Hannali. Partly because he promised them statehood after the war, Pike recruited 2/3 of each of the Caddos, Cherokees, Comanches, Creeks, Osages, Seminoles, Senecas, Shawnees, Wichitas, and smaller tribes to the Confederate cause. This meant that each group fought its own civil war with its U.S. contingent, and Native Americans therefore took horrific casualties during the war. According to Lafferty, Pike did this on purpose!
As a military leader, his performance at Pea Ridge, the one battle in which he commanded troops, ended in near disgrace.
After the war, according to histories of the Arkansas Ku Klux Klan written by insiders, Pike became a key leader of the Klan. Susan Lawrence Davis’s important 1924 work, Authentic History, Ku Klux Klan, 1865-1877, includes a photo of Pike at the front, showing his importance. Loewen thinks he was probably responsible for the Klan’s clothing, titles, and rituals. Loewen received a commission from the Washington Post to write an article about Pike and his monument in about 2015 but found it hard to research. Pike’s biographer, Robert L. Duncan, wrote, “Whether Pike played any part in the formation of the Klan will probably never be known.”
Pike certainly was responsible for much of the titles and rituals of the Scottish Rite Masons (Southern), and they put up the statue of him. Around its base, they wrote, “Author Poet Scholar Soldier Philanthropist Philosopher Jurist Orator.” In 1901, during the Nadir of race relations, Pike’s role in the Ku Klux Klan would only have been a plus. More recently, it’s considered a minus, so the Masons have emphasized that it’s undocumented, which of course it would be, since the Klan is a secret organization.