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 Negroes that still inhabited the southern regions. The Radicals' first step was to refuse to seat any Senator or Representative from the old Confederacy; and as a result, the southern white peoples and the recently formed Klan blamed both Federal and state governments for large and widespread corruption since they felt Federal government had decimated the Democratic party due to it seceding and starting the war with the United States. Next, they passed numerous measures dealing with the former slaves, but southern Democrat president Andrew Johnson vetoed the legislation. As a result, the Republican Radicals mustered enough votes in Congress to pass legislation over his veto; this was the first time in the history of the United States that Congress had overridden a President on an important bill. They passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established Negroes as American citizens and loosely forbade discrimination against them. A few months later, Congress submitted to the states the 14th Amendment on the constitution, which specified that no state should "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." All the former Confederate States except Tennessee refused to ratify the amendment; furthermore, there were two particularly bloody race riots in the South as a result of these votes that showed the true nature of the political divides in the south. Whilst speaking in the Midwest of the United States such as Ohio and Illinois, as well as Kansas, President Johnson faced very hostile audiences, and in some cases, Johnson had to use private guards since the secret service refused to protect him due to political views. Later on, the Radical Republicans won an overwhelming victory in Congressional elections that fall. In March of 1867, the Radicals put their own plan of Reconstruction into effect, again placing southern states under military rule, which had previously been revoked by President Johnson. The newly instituted congressional majority government passed laws placing restrictions upon the President. When Johnson allegedly violated one of these, the Tenure of Office Act, by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the House voted eleven separate articles of Federally mandated impeachment against him. He was tried by the Senate in the spring of 1868 and acquitted by one vote. By the time the Klan was in full force, Ulysses S. Grant, a former Union general, was elected as the new president in a landslide vote in 1868, which quickly enraged the organization since by vote, no act contributed Democrats could be voted into law within the four years due to the spacing of congressional votes and the sheer amount of Republican seats. In 1869, General N.B. Forrest who was often described as “a foul fiend in the shape of a human”, and was also the Grand Wizard of the KKK ordered Klansmen to restrict their activities so that the Federal government would not crack down on the organisation, but the Klan was already out of control, and Congress passed a Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871. By the end of 1872, the Federal crackdown had broken the back of the KKK. Due to the restrictions and the Acts passed violence was isolated but still continued by the Klan in the former Confederate States of America. The KKK was dead, and Reconstruction lived on in southern legend. The attributes of the Republican reconstruction era left the United States of America a country with essentially only one party and no ability for the southern whites to express themselves on a state and Federal level due to military rule of the south and an invincible Republican majority in the north.
The social atmosphere of the southern united states was a fairly unique one throughout all stages of Federal reconstruction from beginning to end having racial and political divides creating a setup for eventual violence and struggle for dominance in a situation where it was sometimes difficult to tell whether the south was really under the control of the Federal government or the former Confederates. The leadership of America was convoluted just like the eventual social and organizational structure of the Klan whilst advancing through reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan, as it is known today, was started in the spring of 1866, by six Confederate veterans formed a social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, which was a former northerly Confederate state. This gave the forming of the Klan a good time and place to make an appearance in its early stages as a type of theological club amongst childhood friends that had been in the Confederate army during the civil war. The Klan was a very small group that was shrouded in much secrecy at first, but despite it all, the six KKK members initiated new members to join their social club. The early Klan quickly evolved into a social group and a type of fraternal order that set the stage to create an occasion where a group of Klansmen would go out and play non-violent pranks and just have fun in general during the early stages of the organization. A year after the creation of the KKK, the onetime social club joined the rising campaign against the Republican Reconstruction, which at the time had no formal enemy. The 'new' direction of the Klan was well planned and organized, as the Klan was now ready to expand to a bigger and more geographically widespread group. Churches helped create a platform for the reasoning of the Klansmen since they considered themselves a purely Christian organization that based their doctrines upon their own reading of the Bible; in which their theology is strongly influenced by Christian Reconstructionism in the sense that they hope to "reconstruct" the United States along biblical lines and to establish a white-dominated theocracy. New members had to be over 18, pay $1, sworn to secrecy, recruits pledged to 'protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenceless', from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal.' The highly centralized plan for expanding the KKK, enabled it to spread so rapidly that most chapters operated alone and without much regulation by way of the central Klan. Yet Klan activities still followed a common pattern throughout the south, and in a short while, the Klan now started to spread across Tennessee in a haphazard manner. The founders of the KKK lost control due to the popularity that resulted in such great expansion, and it became impossible to talk about a single KKK. The Klan decided independently throughout its individual chapters that it would do as it pleased, due to the lack of a formal organisational structure that was forcefully implemented and upheld within the Klan.
While described as acts based on ethics, the Klan went from being a harmless club to becoming a malignant organisation that became the greatest problem for the southern blacks, and the Federal government. When the Klan started up, it was a small group of friends that played pranks on the local blacks and Yankees that were causing them trouble, but that period ended quite promptly. As the word got out about the Klan and Nathan Bedford Forest became the leader of the organisation that was now exploding exponentially in size, the Klan leaders proved unable to control their followers and many groups started forming around the south called the Ku Kluxers and were not actually fully related to the original Klan. However and wherever Klan's were formed they all followed the same pattern set by the Tennessee Klan. Although the violence was often random, there was a method in the madness since the victims were almost always black or if white, associated with the hatred of the Republican Party, since the Klan had fear of black equality and sparked attacks on schools setup for freed slaves. The Klan, would first warn the blacks not to attend school, and would scare the teachers, most from out of state, to leave town. The Klan was being noticed as and called 'The Invisible Empire'. The Klan became the greatest terror in 1868, when their attacks were against Republicans and elected Democrats. These attacks ended with many dead from being lynched and flogged by mobs along with homes and churches being raided and many times burned to the ground under the cover of darkness to help the Klan achieve their goals of scaring and intimidating those that were opposed to the former southern ways to give up trying to ‘reconstruct’. Thousands of blacks and whites fell victim to the murders and beatings given by the KKK. By the time the Klan had reached its prime, it had developed a complicated and intricate prescript for Klansmen to read if they were captured by Federal troops as to confuse them so much that they could not be prosecuted. As well, the Klan made sure that no member could possibly convict another under any circumstance by using code names to call of his fellow Klansmen in order not to incriminate themselves or others by accident, whilst they attempted to get people not to vote. The Klan was so diverse in its acts and cover-ups that they were able to terrorize the south with so many seemingly random attacks that most southerners against the Klan were extremely scarred and demoralised.
In conclusion, the Klan was never officially recognised for bringing back the old social order of complete dominance by the southern whites, since they would have been forced to wage war with the Union States. This first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan only lasted a short six years; although the Klan was never formally declared to be gone, the general consensus of the people determined that the Klan had finally been crushed after six years of brutal and hard fought struggle through the turmoil of reconstruction. The Klan was impossible to destroy since “it’s not possible under American law to forbid the existence of an organisation such as the Klan. Only the overt deeds of individuals, not organisations and opinions are possible” due to the amendments on the American constitution. The Klan never managed to get Federal law changed, they did manage to force enough people to stop voting, that they were able to gain control of former Confederate state legislatures and create laws such as the black codes and the Jim Crow laws to limit the influence the outsiders had on the old south. Therefore, the Ku Klux Klan cumulatively succeeded in protecting and reinstituting most of the old social, economical, religious, political ways of the former Confederate states through the methods of terror, political and religious practices to manifest their changes. One year after the Klan disbanded, in 1873, the Jim Crow laws were passed, which showed that even though the Klan was gone, the effects of social inequality were lasting and the ways of the old south held steady in a slightly modified form from the original slavery based society.
Milton Meltzer, The Truth About The Ku Klux Klan (New York, NY: Franklin Watts, 1982), 5.
Alan Axelrod, The International Encyclopaedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders (New York, NY: Facts on File, 1997), 159.
William Richter, The ABC-CLIO Companion to American Reconstruction (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1996), 151-152.
William Dudley et al., Opposing Viewpoints in World History: Reconstruction (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2004), 99.
William Richter, The ABC-CLIO Companion to American Reconstruction (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1996), 151.
Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), 34.
William Richter, The ABC-CLIO Companion to American Reconstruction (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1996), 244.
William Dudley et al., Opposing Viewpoints in World History: Reconstruction (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2004), 100.
Fred Cook, The Ku Klux Klan: America’s Recurring Nightmare (New York, NY: J. Messner, 1989), 9.
Alan Axelrod, The International Encyclopaedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders (New York, NY: Facts on File, 1997), 159.
David Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History Of The Ku Klux Klan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987), 394.
Fred Cook, The Ku Klux Klan: America’s Recurring Nightmare (New York, NY: J. Messner, 1989), 23.
William Dudley et al., Opposing Viewpoints in World History: Reconstruction (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2004), 100.
William Dudley et al., Opposing Viewpoints in World History: Reconstruction (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2004), 99.
Patsy Sims, The Klan (New York, NY: Stein and Day, 1978), 92.
William Richter, The ABC-CLIO Companion to American Reconstruction (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1996), 245.
William Richter, The ABC-CLIO Companion to American Reconstruction (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1996), 246.
Patsy Sims, The Klan (New York, NY: Stein and Day, 1978), 96.
Patsy Sims, The Klan (New York, NY: Stein and Day, 1978), 95.
Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), 40.
Fred Cook, The Ku Klux Klan: America’s Recurring Nightmare (New York, NY: J. Messner, 1989), 23.
Alan Axelrod, The International Encyclopaedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders (New York, NY: Facts on File, 1997), 159.
David Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History Of The Ku Klux Klan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987), 111.
Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), 33.
William Richter, The ABC-CLIO Companion to American Reconstruction (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1996), 244.
Milton Meltzer, The Truth About The Ku Klux Klan (New York, NY: Franklin Watts, 1982), 6.
William Richter, The ABC-CLIO Companion to American Reconstruction (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1996), 244.
William Richter, The ABC-CLIO Companion to American Reconstruction (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1996), 244.
Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), 34.
Alan Axelrod, The International Encyclopaedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders (New York, NY: Facts on File, 1997), 159.
David Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History Of The Ku Klux Klan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987), 394.
David Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History Of The Ku Klux Klan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987), 103.
Alan Axelrod, The International Encyclopaedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders (New York, NY: Facts on File, 1997), 160.