The Invisible Empire: A Response to Federal Tyranny During the Reconstruction Era Part 5
It is of essential historical importance to understand that the Ku Klux Klan of the Reconstruction years of 1865 to 1877 has absolutely no connection to the KKK of today.
“The only freedom that can last is a freedom embodied somewhere, rooted in history, located in space, sanctioned by genealogy, and blessed by a religious establishment.” ~M. E. Bradford, PhD.
How the Klan Battled Against Reconstruction
At the end of the war, the South had not only suffered tremendous human losses but was materially and economically devastated. Yet there was no Marshall Plan for her recovery put forth by dominant faction of Northern political leaders. Instead, reconstruction was a plan to punish the South and remake Southern society, while continuing and even increasing her ruthless economic exploitation for the benefit of Northern commercial and industrial interests. The Total War policies of the Union Army and the exploitive policies of the Reconstruction governments had caused a famine in the South in 1866, while the North was enjoying economic prosperity and plenty. Although many private relief agencies and churches in the North sent some relief, the U.S. Government sent no aid and continued to force its destructive confiscation and tax policies on the South all this related to maintaining the political dominance gained by the Republican Party in 1860 and furthering the agenda of the Radical Republicans. If this cannot be made into each little vassal states to the Radical Republicans, the Republicans would lose their national power. Many politicians will do anything to gain and maintain power, and the North had no such men in Thaddeus Stevens, Benjamin Butler, Edwin Stanton, and others in the Radical Republican faction. Enfranchising and capturing the black vote was key to their strategy. Enfranchising their political competition was a second key, which would perhaps be their most heinous political crime.
By March of 1867, they had disenfranchised Confederate veterans and former political leaders. Most white Southerners were then left without political power or any recourse to justice or relief from the Reconstruction despotism. In addition, Radical Republicans seemed hell-bent on controlling the South through black dominance.
It was not encouraging to hear of the North's most acclaimed orator and most renowned and fervent of the radical abolitionists, Wendell Phillips, by saying from the pulpit of Henry Ward Beecher:
“I do not believe there will be peace until 347,000 men of the South are either hanged or exiled.”
Contrary to popular belief most Christians, both in the North and South favored a gradual emancipation of the slaves. Radical abolitionists wanted immediate emancipation of slaves despite the formidable ills it might bring on the slaves themselves and the Southern economy. The radical abolitionists were prompt, and predominantly Unitarians, or they were very liberal or apostate Congregationalists, or Presbyterians. A few were allied to the Methodists, like lawyer Charles G. Finney. Finney was a powerful and manipulative persuader and not very orthodox in his theology. These radical abolitionists made-up only of about 2% of the population, but that included a substantial number of Radical Republicans in Congress and considerable support for Northern press led by Horace Greeley. Lincoln hated both the radical abolitionists and the Radical Republicans and wished to distance themselves from them politically. They hated him in return until his assignation elevated him to a mythical status as the Great Emancipator. Lincoln's war was tyranny against the South, but his assassination was one of the worst things that could befall the Southern people. The radicals would then reign.
Radical Republican tyranny even extended into religion. And because of this, many churches were closed and their clergy barred from preaching because they would not offer prayers for the President and government. Richard Wilmer, Episcopal Bishop of Alabama, was one who bravely suffered this fate. Williams insisted that the government had no authority in affairs of religion and worship, and further stating that:
“No one can be expected to pray for the continuance of military rule.”
This type of religious interference by Federal Army officers also had been a problem in the Border States and occupied areas during the war. Fortunately, Bishop Wilmer had any Northern allies, and his case was eventually brought before a U.S. Supreme Court unsympathetic to the Radical Republicans. Wilmer's victory in Court was a major victory for religious freedom.
In such conditions the Ku Klux Klan became the hope of a powerless and beleaguered Southern people for relief from the intolerable tyranny of the Reconstruction. The Klan of those years was quite different from later in the modern imitators. Bedford Forrest described them in this way to a Congressional Investigation Committee in 1870:
“They admitted no man who was not gentleman, and a man who could relied upon to act discreetly; not men who were in the habit of drinking; boisterous men, or men liable to commit error or wrong.”
In 1869 the Grand Dragon of Tennessee stated that it was essentially a protective organization with the purpose “to protect all good men, whether white or black, from outrages and atrocities of bad men of both colors, and who have been for the past three years a terror to society, and an injury to us all.”
General John B. Gordon, speaking of the violence perpetrated by the Union League, explained to a Congressional Committee in 1871 that the Klan:
“Was therefore necessary to protect our families from outrage and preserve our own lives, to have something that we could regard as a brotherhood—a combination of the best men of the country to act purely in self-defense.”
By 1869, Reconstruction in some states had become intolerable, but the Klan was seeing considerable success against the Union League in thwarting some of the most egregious conduct of the Treasury and the Freedman’s Bureau agents. But they began to be gravely concerned that Klan violence was growing out of control. Much of the violence was by imitators, and even more by their enemies in the Union League, but there was a growing violation of discipline and principle in the Klan itself. A German survivor of Stalingrad and witness to many atrocities when interviewed after the Second World War, probably put unchecked violence during and following particularly bloody wars or oppressions in perspective for all eras, when he told a reporter, “Vengeance is a very powerful human emotion and motivation.”
In October of 1869 General Forrest issued an order stating:
“Whereas, the Order of the KKK is in some localities being prevented from its original honorable and patriotic purposes…and is becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace and public safety for which it was intended…It is therefore ordered and decreed, that the masks and costumes of the Order be entirely abolished and destroyed.”
Forrest went on to declaim those who had used the KKK as an instrument of personal vengeance. He further stated that:
“This is not to be understood to dissolve the Order.”
He went on to prohibit several actions such as the whipping of blacks or whites or interfering with any man on account of his political opinions. There are some academics that claim the Klan was disbanded at this time. But Major Robert Donnell, the KKK Grand Scribe in 1869, who gave Susan Lawrence Davis a copy of the order, stated to her that the Klan was not disbanded until 1877. There were several reports of the original KKK disbanding in the early 1870’s, but at least one of these was only a ruse to confuse carpetbagger governments in the South. By 1877 they were still active and forming an alliance with the White League in Louisiana.
The Klan Intimidates and Defeats the Union League
The Klan was raised up primarily to protect the Southern people, both black and white, from the depredations and violence of the Union League. Had the radical Republicans not commissioned the Union League to intimidate blacks into voting Republican and terrorizing any opposition by whites, there would never have been a Klan. The Union League’s murders, beatings, burnings, and ravages created a climate of fear with no recourse to protection or justice by Federal authorities. Most of the League's murder and beating victims were other blacks who refused to comply with its ruthless political methods. Whites were sometimes murdered and their women ravaged, but most of the crime committed against them by the League was in the form of burned homes, barns, and crops. Southern men were, however, ever near their women and children. In some states the Reconstruction regimes did not allow Confederate veterans to own guns, but enforcement was not very effective.
The principal objective of the clan was to defend against Union League atrocities, ravaging, and threats. The Klan proved very effective in its defensive measures in guerilla and psychological warfare against the Union League. Union League outrageous and depredations were not eliminated, but they were considerably reduced and hampered. The Klan had succeeded in intimidating the League. A second objective of the KKK was protecting cotton farmers from the unscrupulous swarms of racketeering Treasury agents and carpetbag swindlers that plagued the South, and to help them evade the oppressive and hated cotton tax. They accomplished this primarily by intimidation. Given the KKK’s reputation for exacting regulatory justice, a single warning was usually sufficient to send a carpetbag predator or Treasury racketeer packing. They also aided cotton farmers and cotton businesses by protecting secret cotton gins and cotton storage from Treasury agents, the Union League, or the Freedmen's Bureau discovery. The oppressive and predatory tax on cotton exports was phased out in early 1868, when the Republicans realized it was devastating the cotton wealth they hoped to exploit, and that their Treasury agents were swindling the government as well as the farmers. The Klan’s ultimate objective was to rid the South of corrupt and despotic Radical Republican dominated carpetbag state governments. This was a political objective that was finally achieved in the elections of 1876. In order to break an electoral impasse in the Presidential election, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes agreed to remove all Federal troops from the South. Consequently, the last of carpetbagger governments fell in 1877 with the installation of Confederate war hero, Wade Hampton, as Governor of South Carolina. The Radical Republicans had completely failed in their effort to have a black dominated Republican South. They had created instead a solid Democratic South.
Unfortunately, once the Northern carpetbaggers and Radical Republicans had abandoned their black political constituency, Southern Democrats indiscriminately made second class citizens of all blacks, friend and foe, regardless of qualifications. The Southern experience with the widespread corruption, demagoguery, and oppression of Reconstruction caused in most whites a fear and revulsion of black participation in government that would take many decades to subside. Blacks were placed under the same type of “black laws” that still relegated blacks to second class citizenship in most Northern states. Several Northern states, such as Indiana, Illinois, and Oregon had laws that prevented blacks or mulattos from even entering their states. Because of the Reconstruction experience and the larger black population in the South, the residue of these “Jim Crowe” laws lasted longer in the Southern states.
The Union League and Freedmen's Bureau had failed in their purpose but succeeded in doing tremendous damage to race relations in the South. Thus, they were a strong contributory cause in retarding rather than advancing black political and economic progress. Donn Piatt, Washington newspaper editor, Union Brigadier General during the war, and personal friend of Lincoln editorialized that:
“All race antagonism in the South came from carpetbaggers using the Negro votes to get their fingers in the treasury.”
Piatt was very pessimistic that the damage to race relations could ever be repaired. He believed race relations in the South had been permanently poisoned by the Reconstruction.
General Gordon told a Congressional Committee in 1871 that:
“We never had any apprehension from the conduct of the Negroes until unscrupulous men came among them and tried to stir up strife.”
It is probable that the immediate rather than gradual emancipation resulting from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln admitted was a military move to divert Confederate armies from the field to protect their homes and families, doomed any real chance of successful transition. Dealing with such a tremendous social revolution was bound to multiply problems and strife. The makeup of the Union League militias also militated against future racial harmony. Sizeable components of the League's militias were made up of the 100,000 Southern black soldiers who had served in the Union Army. Numerous Union Army communications indicate that very many of these men were recruited into the Union Army at the point of a bayonet. Yet at the war’s end they were not welcomed in the North and were even excluded by law from entering many Northern states. They had to return to the South where they were strongly resented by the white Confederate veterans, whom they had fought against during the war. Most Union League militiamen, both Union veterans and ex-slaves, wore the Union Army uniform. They were essentially Federal agency units of the War Department assigned to the military or carpetbagger governments for their political bidding and defense. Often, the more resentful or vengeful Union League militiamen used their new and elevated status to insult and menace the now humiliated Confederate veterans and their families. The Union League militias were also notorious for their lack of discipline. In addition to their assigned political violence and bullying, there was often wanton violence, destruction, confiscation, and thievery. They outnumbered regular Federal troops in most states. Despite their numbers, reputation for brutality, and connection to Federal power, the Union League was first intimidated and then defeated by the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan. The severely damaged racial relations that was once the work of the Union League and Reconstruction policies still lingers, but modern political correctness still assigns the South as the sole scapegoat.
The Roll of the Klan in Defeating Reconstruct
Many thoughtful historians consider the Reconstruction Era as the darkest and most disgraceful in the history of the American Republic. It certainly substantiated Lord Acton's famous dictum that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” For 12 years the South suffered every variety of tyranny and shameful exploitation at the hands of its conquerors. Arrogant, self-righteous, vengeful and pitiless despotism driven by merciless greed crushed their liberties and robbed the southern people of their daily bread. Reconstruction had further impoverished the South following the wanton destruction of the Union's total war policies. White Southerners were a subjugated people, disenfranchised and denied the very fundamentals of justice under military and carpetbagger government. They were left with no political or legal recourse to exploitation, injustice, and violence. They feared even for the lives of their women and their children. In their desperation there seemed not even a single star of hope. The hope that came was the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was able to give them some protection from exploitation by Treasury and Freedmen's Bureau agents and the violence of the Union League. Eventually the Klan, operating as an “Invisible Empire” across the South, became an effective political instrument for redeeming the South from the power of the Radical Republicans.
It is important to realize that it was the Union League and the Freedmen's Bureau which deliberately stirred the passions of racial hatred to exploit the black vote. It is also extremely important to realize that the KKK of 1865 to 1867 was completely different in principles and motives from the imitation KKK that was founded in 1915. The earlier, the original, and true KKK, was primarily organized to protect both white and black Democrats from the Radical Republican sponsored violence of the largely black Union League. One of the terrible legacies of the Reconstruction is racial distrust.
In addition to significantly increased racial turmoil, Reconstruction also endangered decades of regional distrust. As General Gordon commented to a Congressional Committee:
“But to say to our people, you are unworthy to vote; you cannot hold office… your former slaves are better fitted to administer the laws than you are… this sort of dealing with our people has emphatically alienated us.”
General Gordon also commented that the Reconstruction was a betrayal of the terms of General Robert E. Lee's surrender at the Appomattox and of Johnson’s surrender of the Army of Tennessee. It is only in recent years that the South, through its growing economic and political power, has enjoyed some relief from Northern disdain. Still there are some that insist that the South should sit upon an eternal stool of repentance.
Gordon later went on to hold the offices of Governor and U.S. Senator for Georgia. Gordon was a highly significant personality in redeeming the South from Reconstruction. He was revered for his courage and dedication demonstrated during the war. He had a sincere brand of Christianity very similar to that of Robert E Lee, and he was also noted for his wisdom and integrity. He was also a Master of Diplomacy and negotiation. Although he never admitted specifically to being a member of the KKK, he did admit to having been a member of an organization of its kind and frequently sought to give Northern Congressmen a better understanding of the true nature of the KKK and why it was needed in its time. Theodore Roosevelt admired him as a soldier and statesman, saying:
“A more gallant, generous, and fearless gentleman and soldier has not been seen by our country.”
Gordon loved the South and its people and was tireless in every effort to rescue and redeem them from the ravages of war and Reconstruction. He once made this statement, with which every Southerner can identify:
“No people in the history of the world have been so misunderstood, so misjudged, and so cruelly maligned as the people of the South.”
Gordon was crucial in the final redemption of the South from Reconstruction. He helped negotiate the agreement with Rutherford B. Hayes to withdraw Federal troops from the last Southern states in exchange for South Carolina's and Louisiana's contested electoral votes that gave Hayes a majority of electoral votes in the 1876 election. He was also able to persuade Hayes to prevent any further, untimely Congressional attempts to coerce the South on social and political matters that might exacerbate racial or political tension and erupt into violence. He advocated gradual and voluntary changes. Bedford Forrest is also alleged to have had a representative at that meeting.
Gordon was along with Bedford Forrest also allegedly ready to assist Wade Hampton with Klan support, if the radicals tried by force to defeat Wade Hampton's election as Governor of South Carolina. Forrest was the more visible, promising 15,000 armed Klansmen already in South Carolina to support Hampton if needed with more on the way from Georgia and Tennessee. This may have been another of Forrest’s bluffs, but it worked. President Hayes’ strongly worded advice and the threat of Klan assistance to Hampton’s South Carolina Red Shirts to oppose Federal troops and Union League militia backed the Radicals down. The Radicals vacated the South Carolina legislative buildings, and the Democratic majority assumed power, confirming the election of Wade Hampton. Wade Hampton's inauguration as the Governor of South Carolina was the final and glorious victory in redeeming the South from the tyranny of Reconstruction.
A minority report from the Congressional Committee that investigated the Klan in 1871 is a good summary of its reason for existence. The majority report had simply condemned the Klan, which was the electioneering purpose of the committee in the first place. But the minority report of eight Northern Democrats and Conservative Republicans gave a more useful and fairer appraisal. Here is an excerpt of their report:
“… when the courts were closed and Federal officers, who were by Congress absolute rulers and dispensers of what they called justice, ignored, insulted and trampled upon the rights of the ostracized and disenfranchised white men while officials pandered to the enfranchised Negro on whose vote they rallied, in short, when people saw that they had no rights which were respected, no protection from insult, no security, even for their wives and children, and that what little they had saved from the ravages of war was being confiscated by taxation… many of them took the laws into their own hands and did deeds of violence which we neither justify or excuse. But all history shows that bad government will make bad citizens.”
The Ku Klux Klan was a critical influence in defeating Reconstruction and returning Southern states to the sovereignty of her own people. Both Forrest and Gordon acknowledged that though the Klan was based on very noble principles and tried desperately to reign in unwarranted violence by its own members and its several allied imitators, the violence had escalated beyond the public good. The Klan was finally and truly disbanded in September of 1877, having accomplished its purposes, and wishing to return to the South to a peaceful enjoyment of her liberties. At that time, just weeks before his death, Nathan Bedford Forrest made this statement:
“There was never a time before or since its organization when such an order as the Ku Klux Klan could have lived. May there never be again!”
A U.S. Congressional Committee investigating the KKK was more political grandstanding than a search for the truth. Here are the findings of a minority report in 1871, prepared by conservative Northern Republicans and Northern Democrats:
The KKK arose as an inescapable response to Union League brutality and the lack of legal redress under corrupt occupation governments.
Many crimes against blacks were committed by the Union league men disguised as Klansmen.
Had there been no wanton oppression and tyranny against Southern whites by corrupt carpetbagger and scallywag governments, there would have been no KKK.
From the oppression and corruption of the carpetbagger governments and the violent actions of the Union League sprang the outrages of the KKK and its successors.
From a Union League catechism:
Q: What party should the colored man vote? A: The Union Republican Party.
Q: What is the difference between Radicals and Republicans? A: There is none.
Q: Would the Democrats take all the Negro's rights? A: They would.
Q: The colored men should vote with the Republican or the Radical Party? A: They should, and shun the Democratic Party as they would the overseer’s lash and the auction block.
Q: Is Mr. Sumner a Republican? A. He is, and a Radical; so are Thad Stevens, Senator Wilson, Judge Kelley, General Butler, Speaker Colfax, Chief Justice Chase, and all other men who believe in giving colored men their rights.
Original KKK Principles (1865-1877):
To be an institution of Chivalry, Mercy, and Patriotism.
To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless from indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless and violent.
To relieve the injured, oppressed, and suffering, especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers.
To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and all laws conforming to the Constitution.
To protect the States and people from all invasions from any source.
To aid and assist in the execution of all constitutional laws and to protect the people from unlawful seizure of property and trial without a jury of their peers.
References and Reading:
Authentic History of the Ku Klux Klan, Susan Lawrence Davis, 1924
Dixie After the War, by Myra Lockett Avary, 1906
Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States by United States. Congress. Joint Select Committee on the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States
Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, made to the two Houses of Congress February 19, 1872 : United States. Congress. Joint Select Committee on the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, made to the two Houses of Congress February 19, 1872, by
United States. Congress. Joint Select Committee on the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States; Scott, John, 1824-1896; Poland, Luke P. (Luke Potter), 1815-1887 Publication date 1872. Topics include: Ku-Klux Klan, Reconstruction, Southern States -- History 1865-1877