II.

Original Targets and Tactics

The Klansmen regarded the Reconstruction governments as hostile and oppressive. They also generally believed in the innate inferiority of blacks and therefore mistrusted and resented the rise of former slaves to a status of civil equality and often to positions of political power. Thus, the Klan became an illegal organization committed to destroying the Reconstruction governments from the Carolinas to Arkansas. Attired in robes or sheets and wearing masks topped with pointed hoods, the Klansmen terrorized public officials in efforts to drive them from office and blacks in general to prevent them from voting, holding office, and otherwise exercising their newly acquired political rights. When such tactics failed to produce the desired effect, their victims might be flogged, mutilated, or murdered. These activities were justified by the Klan as necessary measures in defense of white supremacy and the inviolability of white womanhood.

A secret convention of Klansmen, held in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1867, adopted a declaration of principles expressing loyalty to the United States Constitution and its government and declaring the determination of the Klan to “protect the weak, the innocent and the defenseless ...; to relieve the injured and oppressed; [and] to succor the suffering ....” The convention designated the Klan as an Invisible Empire and provided for a supreme official, called Grand Wizard of the Empire, who wielded virtually autocratic power and who was assisted by ten Genii. Other principal officials of the Klan were the Grand Dragon of the Realm, who was assisted by eight Hydras; the Grand Titan of the Dominion, assisted by six Furies; and the Grand Cyclops of the Den, assisted by two Nighthawks.

From 1868 to 1870, while federal occupation troops were being withdrawn from the Southern states and radical regimes replaced with Democratic administrations, the Klan was increasingly dominated by the rougher elements in the population. The local organizations, called klaverns, became so uncontrollable and violent that the Grand Wizard, former Confederate general Nathan B. Forrest, officially disbanded the Klan in 1869. Klaverns, however, continued to operate on their own. In 1871 Congress passed the Force Bill to implement the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the rights of all citizens. In the same year President Ulysses S. Grant issued a proclamation calling on members of illegal organizations to disarm and disband; thereafter hundreds of Klansmen were arrested. The remaining klaverns gradually faded as the political and social subordination of blacks was reestablished.