The Ku Klux Klan: Restoration of Old Southern Order During Reconstruction

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The Ku Klux Klan: Restoration of Old Southern Order During Reconstruction

The Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist rebel group killed hundreds and performed many acts of violence and hate throughout the years of its existence during the period of reconstruction, rife with problems and rebellion.  The Ku Klux Klan succeeded in protecting and reinstituting most of the old social, economical, religious, political ways of the former Confederate states.  The effect of the Ku Klux Klan in the south during reconstruction is sometimes brought into question due to the fact that the Federal government may not have accurately reporting what the effect of the Klan on southern society was during reconstruction, since the Klan was an ‘invisible empire.’  All the personalities, politics, organizations, legislation, ideas, incidents, exploitations and the power struggles that constituted reconstruction are cumulative to the total effect of the fraternal Ku Klux Klan in the glorified early days of battling reconstruction.  All the transformations underwent such as the takeover by general Nathan Bedford Forest and the disbanding of the first incarnation that formed the true nature of the Klan as a fraternal terrorist organization in all aspects of its goals.  The purpose is to be a chronicling attempt to show what happened during the constant changes and turmoil that took place during the confusing events that unfolded during the radical and non-radical taper of the Republican reconstruction era.

The economic situation proved to be dismal in all ways that the word dismal could describe something after the civil war in the former Confederate States of America, since the war ravaged the land and laid waste to all industry and sustenance with the Bureau of Freedmen adding insult to injury.  Because of the continuous nature of the civil war and the widespread marching through and burning of the south resulted in the decimation of all crops and the inability to use the land for any use whatsoever in the southern areas of the united states that were then under division into Federal military districts.  The loss of the war also brought about the loss of all slaves estimated with a total value of $2000 million, and a Confederate war debt of $3500 million, which left the economy decimated due to the lack of extremely cheap labour to man the long, hard jobs that required gruelling work on the cotton plantations.  The Bureau of Freedmen and Abandoned Land, was created by the Federal government to moderate employment contracts for the federally endorsed practices of sharecropping and to give the abandoned to the blacks across the south for immediate inhabitancy and ownership under the Federal southern Homestead Act.  Now, the former slave proprietors had no labour that came without any strings attached in the form the negotiating teams of the Bureau of Freedmen to keep a farmer in check with the now, mandatory designation of the practice of slavery as a punishable offence under the 13th amendment of the constitution of the United States.  Also, the economy took a while to get restarted to the point of mediocrity, since there was an overabundance of cotton that was stored in warehouses and depots throughout the civil war, which left cotton prices sitting rock bottom.  The economies around the world that needed the cotton from the south had greatly diminished due to the relatively stable relations between most European nations and the great and cheap availability of cotton from Egypt, which left the south with little incoming money for their main industry.  Overall, the southern economic infrastructure was destroyed due to the great economic changes that occurred worldly and the fact that the south had no cotton to export and next to no viable parcels land to produce it on.

One of the main reasons that the Ku Klux Klan was formed was so that they could protect the whites of the south from what the blacks and the Yankees were doing to the basic structure of the country through the teachings of both the church and the schools.  At the time that the Klan started, the churches had separated into black and white churches, and the blacks began to become engaged in common society without blatant restrictions upon their choices in religion and teaching.  The first thing that happened was the Klan devised ways to relate to all Americans of the former confederacy by basing it partly on religion.  Since the south of the United States was, and still is populated by a majority protestant population, the Klan had the potential for a large base of followers to the cause of the restoration to pre-reconstruction social ethics.  This gave the Klan a steadfast group of a potentially massive amount of followers that were as devoted to religion as their desire to reclaim the south from the Federal government and established a base for their practices amongst the population.  The protestant bible proved to be one of the most prominent points of the Klan’s doctrine, since the interpretations of the bible that existed in southern churches from before the war were still being taught in the same manner a was previous to reconstruction.  One reason that the interpretations of the bible that claimed it to give permission to discriminate ethnically and to keep slave was that it was deep-rooted in the foundations of the southern hierarchical traditions of the protestant church upheld to their full potential at the time when it was still believed to be a nonexistent moral issue.  The church proved to be an organization that was influenced by the Klan due to the fact that most churches had many prominent members that belonged to the Klan, and many times, as recorded in donation books, they gave generously to the protestant church, which could not be stopped due to the 1st amendment of the constitution of the United States.  Throughout the reconstruction period, and even continuing today, the southern protestant churches serve as a safe breeding ground for the Klan that was, and is seemingly untouchable by the Federal government since they are protected under the 1st amendment.

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The Federal government did not make things any better for the south in the opinion of many after the civil war, since all acts passed in the District of Columbia had long ranging effects that had a ripple effect in the south due to the restrictive nature and the political attitudes at the time of the former confederacy.  After Lincoln, the new Federal government under Radical Republicans in Congress moved vigorously to change President Andrew Johnson's program.  Quickly, they gained the support of Northerners who were dismayed to see Southerners keeping many prewar leaders and imposing many prewar restrictions upon ...

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