The Ku Klux movement, which took the form of secret revolutionary societies, grew out of a general conviction among the whites that the reconstruction policies were impossible and not to be endured.Somers, an English traveler, says that at this time "nearly every respectable white man in the Southern States was not only disfranchised but under fear of arrest or confiscation;the old foundations of authority were utterly razed before any new ones had yet been laid, and in the dark and benighted interval the remains of the Confederate armies--swept after a long and heroic day of fair fight from the field--flitted before the eyes of the people in this weird and midnight shape of a Ku Klux Klan." Ryland Randolph, an Alabama editor who was also an official of the Klan, stated in his paper that "the origin of Ku Klux Klan is in the galling despotism that broods like a nightmare over these Southern States--a fungus growth of military tyranny superinduced by the fostering of Loyal Leagues, the abrogation of our civil laws, the habitual violation of our national Constitution, and a persistent prostitution of all government, all resources and all powers, to degrade the white man by the establishment of Negro supremacy."The secret orders, regardless of their original purposes, were all finally to be found opposing radical reconstruction.Everywhere their objects were the same: to recover for the white race their former control of society and government, and to destroy the baneful influence of the alien among the blacks.The people of the South were by law helpless to take steps towards setting up any kind of government in a land infested by a vicious element--Federal and Confederate deserters, bushwhackers, outlaws of every description, and Negroes, some of whom proved insolent and violent in their newly found freedom.Nowhere was property or person safe, and for a time many feared a Negro insurrection.General Hardee said to his neighbors, "I advise you to get ready for what may come.We are standing over a sleeping volcano."To cope with this situation ante-bellum patrols--the "patter-rollers" as the Negroes called them--were often secretly reorganized.In each community for several months after the Civil War, and in many of them for months before the end of the war, there were informal vigilance committees.Some of these had such names as the Black Cavalry and Men of Justice in Alabama, the Home Guards in many other places, while the anti Confederate societies of the war, the Heroes of America, the Red Strings, and the Peace Societies, transformed themselves in certain localities into regulatory bodies.Later these secret societies numbered scores, perhaps hundreds, varying from small bodies of local police to great federated bodies which covered almost the entire South and even had membership in the North and West.Other important organizations were the Constitutional Union Guards, the Pale Faces, the White Brotherhood, the Council of Safety, the '76 Association, the Sons of '76, the Order of the White Rose, and the White Boys.As the fight against reconstruction became bolder, the orders threw off their disguises and appeared openly as armed whites fighting for the control of society.The White League of Louisiana, the White Line of Mississippi, the White Man's party of Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs of South Carolina, were later manifestations of the general Ku Klux movement.
The two largest secret orders, however, were the Ku Klux Klan, from which the movement took its name, and the Knights of the White Camelia.The Ku Klux Klan originated at Pulaski, Tennessee, in the autumn of 1865, as a local organization for social purposes.The founders were young Confederates, united for fun and mischief.The name was an accidental corruption of the Greek word Kuklos, a circle.The officers adopted queer sounding titles and strange disguises.Weird nightriders in ghostly attire thoroughly frightened the superstitious Negroes, who were told that the spirits of dead Confederates were abroad.This terrorizing of the blacks successfully provided the amusement which the founders desired, and there were many applications for admission to the society.The Pulaski Club, or Den, was in the habit of parading in full uniform at social gatherings of the whites at night, much to the delight of the small boys and girls.Pulaski was near the Alabama line, and many of the young men of Alabama who saw these parades or heard of them organized similar Dens in the towns of Northern Alabama.Nothing but horseplay, however, took place at the meetings.In 1867 and 1868, the order appeared in parade in the towns of the adjoining states and, as we are told, "cut up curious gyrations" on the public squares.
There was a general belief outside the order that there was a purpose behind all the ceremonial and frolic of the Dens; many joined the order convinced that its object was serious; others saw the possibilities of using it as a means of terrorizing the Negroes.After men discovered the power of the Klan over the Negroes, indeed, they were generally inclined, owing to the disordered conditions of the time, to act as a sort of police patrol and to hold in check the thieving Negroes, the Union League, and the "loyalists." In this way, from being merely a number of social clubs the Dens swiftly became bands of regulators, taking on many new fantastic qualities along with their new seriousness of purpose.Some of the more ardent spirits led the Dens far in the direction of violence and outrage.Attempts were made by the parent Den at Pulaski to regulate the conduct of the others, but, owing to the loose organization, the effort met with little success.Some of the Dens, indeed, lost all connection with the original order.
