A Ku Klux Klan group will rally on the Civil War battlefield where a Northern victory led President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

The National Park Service has issued a permit for a Klan demonstration June 10 on a farmstead at Anti-etam National Battlefield in western Maryland. The battle in 1862 remains the bloodiest day in U.S. history.

The National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi organization, demonstrated last year at Yorktown Battlefield in Virginia and in 2004 at Valley Forge National Historical Monument in Pennsylvania, both Revolutionary War sites.


Anti-etam Battlefield superintendent John Howard says the right to free speech meant he was obligated to issue the permit. "The First Amendment is very clear on that," he said. "The framers of the Constitution decided this for me in 1791. It applies to all, not just people we like."