Birth Of The KKK  "Ghostly Terrorists"  May 1866

The world to which the ex-Confederate veterans returned after the war was greatly changed from the one they had known in 1860. Many Southern towns and cities were little more than clusters of blackened chimneys, and large areas of the South were utterly desolate. Besides the physical and economic ruin, a great upheaval of the social structure was taking place. The Radical Republican Congress had placed the South under military rule. Carpetbaggers and scalawags sat in the state houses, raising taxes and looting the state treasuries. And ex-slaves, now armed with the right to vote, were struggling to claim their rights.

White Southerners had lost all control over their own affairs. As ex-Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest put it, in losing the war they had "lost all but [their] honor", and now they felt even that was being stripped from them. Southerners tried to regain some measure of control by forming secret organizations to restore order to their disrupted society through the intimidation and terrorism of blacks and unionists. These secret societies had such names as the Pale Faces, the Sons of Midnight, and the Knights of the White Camelia.

In May 1866, a group of ex-Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tenn., formed another such group, giving it the name Ku Klux Klan. Thus beginning the "invisible empire of the South" that would grow to be the largest and best known of the groups that opposed the Reconstruction government and attempts by freed blacks to receive their rights. In May 1867, Forrest became the Grand Wizard of the Empire and thereby leader of the KKK. The Klan was run as a quasi-military organization and grew quickly with the addition of more former Rebel soldiers. Wearing white robes and hoods, these "ghosts of dead Rebel soldiers" paid midnight visits to frightened blacks and carpetbaggers. If warnings failed to get the desired results, the KKK never hesitated to resort to more violent methods.

Fascinating Fact:  Disillusioned by the tactics and the goals of the Klan, Forrest resigned as Grand Wizard and tried to disband the organization. The KKK, seemingly not realizing that the prewar society could never return, continued without him.


Back to index page