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Running head: The KKK During Reconstruction.

The Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Period

Milt Chatzimouratidis

Robert Morris University

David Hartley

HIST1100

November 29, 2010

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The Ku Klux Klan was established initially as a social group in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866

(actually December 24th, 1865 according to some) by a group of Confederate veterans in their

effort to preserve their privileges and limit the rights of newly freed black slaves in the American

south. Its name came from the Greek word "κύκλος", (circle) and "clan". "The Klan's goal was to

reestablish the dominance of the prewar plantation aristocracy" (Various Authors, edited by R. A.

Guisepi, n.d.) and subvert the efforts of Radical Reconstruction.

The Klan started as a local movement but later it developed a somewhat loosely hierarchic

structure. It soon attracted more and more members among the people who had an interest in

preserving the slavery status quo and absorbed many smaller groups as it spread. Other groups

included the White Brotherhood, the Men of Justice, the Constitutional Union Guards, and the

Knights of the White Camelia.

The first to lead the hate movement as a Grand Wizard, was general Nathan Bedford Forrest,

accused of being responsible for the massacre of black troops who surrendered to the Confederate

forces under his command at Ft. Pillow, Tennessee. Forrest was a cavalry and military commander

during the war, self-educated and gifted. Meanwhile the former Confederate brigadier general

George Gordon developed the Prescript, a document containing a variety of white supremacist

beliefs and focusing on resisting the Reconstruction and the Republican Party.

The first period of Ku Klux Klan was described by violence, intimidation and active

opposition to Radical Reconstruction. "In the fall 1866 congressional elections, Northern voters

overwhelmingly repudiated Johnson’s policies. Congress decided to begin Reconstruction anew.

The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts and outlined how new

governments, based on manhood suffrage without regard to race, were to be established. Thus

began the period of Radical or Congressional".(Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 21,

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2010 ). This would constitute a significant threat to all the Ku Klux Klan believed in and fought

for.

In a short period of time the Klan evolved from a local social group into a terrorist

organization. Klan members wore white robes and hoods as a means of intimidation but obviously,

also to avoid identification. Initially their actions were aimed to controlling black people's political

and social status by undermining their education, economic advancement and voting rights.

However, they quickly adopted extremely violent methods and were involved in thousands of

murders, aggravated assaults not only against blacks but also the whites who supported them or

defended their freedom.

A wave of KKK-inspired violence spread across the southern states in 1868. The murder of

1,300 Republican voters achieved its purpose of a political purge. Months later, in the

November1868 presidential election there was only one vote for the Republican candidate Ulysses

Grant in Columbia County, Georgia. The escalation of violence and huge number of hideous crimes

that were committed in name of the Klan, soon brought it to be considered more of a criminal

organization than a political and "peaceful" one as Gordon stated in a 1868 proclamation. By this

time its activity had already started decreasing significantly. "Many influential southern Democrats

were beginning to see it as a liability, an excuse for the federal government to retain its power over

the South".

The KKK burnt, hung and otherwise murdered for years in the name of economical interests

and social differences. Some of the atrocities perpetrated were so extreme that infused a sense of

general terror and destabilized the social tissue of the period when it has been active in the still

young nation.

Forrest in fact had assumed a leadership role in the Klan but officially, he always denied any

participation. In a 1868 newspaper interview, Forrest claims that Ku Klux Klan is a nationwide
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organization of more than half a million members and that he could muster 40,000 men at any given

time with five days' notice. He also states that he was not a member of the Klan himself but in

sympathy and would cooperate with them. Also that the Klan was not as much against the blacks as

against "Republican state governments like Tennessee governor Brownlow's, and other

carpetbaggers and scalawags", which was partly true since the Klan often targeted white members

of the above mentioned groups, in particular school teachers brought south by the Freedmen's

bureau.

The KKK played a significant political role in the Reconstruction years and served as a

political tool on many occasions. However, it was very loosely organized and local groups were not

under the direct control of the national organization and even national leaders were often

complaining about not being able to control the young country boys and their night raids. Some

units never fully accepted the Prescript and operated anonymously, using violence, infusing terror

and settling old grudges.

Many atrocious crimes were committed: Klansmen barged into private houses in the middle

of the night and dragged black people often out of their beds, they tortured and killed, they burnt

houses with entire families in them and these hideous actions went on for years before Forrest

ordered its disbandment in 1869. By that time its action had already waned and its numbers had

declined but there were still local groups acting uncontrollably. Moreover, by no means Forrest's

orders meant the end of Ku Klux Klan's activities. Many individual groups kept operating locally

throughout the American south. Historian Stanley Horn (as cited in

http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/kkk1.html#The_first_Klan ) writes that "generally speaking,

the Klan's end was more in the form of spotty, slow, and gradual disintegration than a formal and

decisive disbandment."

The KKK had been often used as a disguise for committing non-political crimes. As
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mentioned earlier, many Klansmen used violence and terror to serve their very personal interests but

were also manipulated by influential people for achieving their goals from political to financial.

Until then there had been feeble efforts to contain all that wave of violence. State and local

governments sometimes acted against it. However "in lynching cases, whites were almost never

indicted by all-white coroner's juries, and even when there was an indictment, all-white trial juries

were extremely unlikely to vote for conviction". When North Carolina Republican governor

William Holden called out the state militia taking action against the KKK, he was voted out of

office.

In 1871 the first Klan Act is written by Benjamin Franklin Butler and in the same year

President Ulysses Grant signs Butler's legislation. Along with the 1870 Force Act, it is used to

enforce civil rights. According to the Klan Act, federal troops could be used (instead of state militia,

previously) for containing the KKK's action and its members would be prosecuted in federal courts

where major part of the juries were black.

Many Klansmen were fined and imprisoned and within a few years period the Klan was

literally destroyed in many of the southern states. In the years from 1871 through 1874 the first

Klan period ended. Sadly, lynchings of African americans have been going on for many more years

and small, independent groups never ceased their activity even to the present day.

While the role of the Ku Klux Klan has been highly destabilizing and the results of its

crimes generated thousands of innocent victims and separated thousands of families, it reflected the

beginning of transition from the slavery period to the social integration of the black people in the

American society. That said, it constitutes one of the darkest pages in the history of the nation.

Some of the atrocities committed by the Klan were literally indescribable and many authors and

artists dedicated part of their work to describe this open wound that was inflicted back then and

lingered until the 1960's. An open wound that the American society has been working on closing
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only in the last few decades and it will probably take more generations to heal. The sheer violence

against black people that was born in the Reconstruction period and scarred the country to the

present day, had left its mark. As the first verse of the poem Strange Fruit written by Abel Metropol

and later sung by Billy Holiday so eloquently describes:

Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

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 References

Ku Klux Klan. Retrieved November 21, 2010, from Encyclopædia BritannicaOnline:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/488724/Radical-Reconstruction.

Bryant M.J., (10/3/2002). Ku Klux Klan in the reconstruction era.

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694, Retrieved on Nov 21, 2010.

Various AuthorsEdited By: R. A. Guisepi. Ku Klux Klan (n.d.) http://history-

world.org/ku_klux_klan.htm. Retrieved on Nov 22, 2010.

The Ku Klux Klan (n.d.) http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=444.

Retrieved on Nov 22, 2010.

Ku Klux Klan (n.d.). http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/kkk1.html#The_first_Klan. Retrieved on

Nov 22, 2010.

HighBeam Research. (2009). Nathan Bedford Forrest. http://www.reference.com/browse/

nathan+bedford+forrest. HighBeam Research, Inc. © Copyright 2009. Retrieved on Nov 22,

2010.

Ward, A. River run red: The Fort Pillow massacre in the american civil war. Viking Penguin:

2005.

Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan conspiracy and southern reconstruction

(1971; reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995).

Metropol A.. The new masses: Strange fruit. (1937)