CHAPTER TWELVE
The Ku Klux Klan
Before proceeding with the narrative, an explanation of the origin and purposes of the Ku Klux Klan may interest the reader. The facts mentioned were derived from authentic and official sources.
The first den was organized in Pulaski, Giles county, Tennessee, in 1866, and Pulaski continued to be the centre of the order throughout its existence as an interstate organization. Six men organized the den for diversion and amusement in a community where life was dull and monotonous. The original name was Ku Kloi (from the Greek word Ku Klos), meaning band or circle. It was changed to Ku Klux and Klan was added.
The constitution of Tennessee was imposed by a fraction of the people. The legislature passed an act restricting suffrage which disfranchised three-fourths of the native population of the middle and western parts of the state. This obsequious legislature also passed acts ratifying the illegal edicts of the autocratic and tyrannical Governor Brownlow (“The Parson”); the sedition law was revived and amplified; freedom of speech and press was overthrown, and a large militia force composed of negroes was created and made responsible to the governor alone. At an election enough men had been permitted to register to thwart Brownlow’s plans. He threw out the entire vote of twenty-eight counties. Registrars were removed, registration set aside, the counties placed under martial law, and negro militia quartered therein. The legislature had become unanimously Republican in both branches.
The people began to consider means of counteracting this high-handed tyranny. The Pulaski Ku Klux organization had attracted much attention and branches of it had been organized in many parts of the state. Leaders of the people quickly saw that it could be utilized for the purpose in view. And this was done. The order, thus perverted, soon spread from Virginia to Texas. The ritual was simple and easily memorized and was never printed; but a copy of the prescript was obtained and used in a trial in Tennessee and reproduced in United States government publications. At a meeting in Nashville of delegates from all dens this was modified. That convention designated the southern territory as “The Invisible Empire.” It was subdivided into “realms” (corresponding to states); realms were divided into “dominions” (congressional districts); dominions into “provinces” (counties); provinces into “dens.” Officers were designated as follows: Grand Wizard of Invisible Empire and his ten Genii (and the grand wizard’s powers were almost autocratic), Grand Dragon of Realm and his Eight Hydras, Grand Titan of Dominion and his Six Furies, Grand Cyclops of Den and his Two Night Hawks, Grand Monk, Grand Scribe, Grand Exchequer, Grand Turk, Grand Sentinel, The Genii, Hydras, Furies, Gobbins and Night Hawks were staff officers. It is said that the gradation and distribution of authority were perfect, and that no more perfectly organized order ever existed in the world. The costume consisted of a mask with openings for the nose and eyes; a tall, pointed hat of stiff material; a gown or robe to cover the entire person. Each member was provided with a whistle, and with this, and by means of a code of signals, communicated with his comrades. They used a cypher to fix dates, etc., and published their notices in the newspapers, until repressive laws forbade this. Their horses were robed and their hoofs muffled.
Meanwhile, other orders formed: White brotherhood, White League, Pale Faces, Constitutional Union Guards and Knights of White Camelia; but all evidence shows that they were for the most part short-lived, the very name of Ku Klux having caught the fancy of the members. General Forrest is credited with having consolidated all of them into the one grand order. An interview with General Forrest was published in the Cincinnati Commercial in September, 1868, in which he was quoted as saying that in Tennessee the klan embraced a membership of 40,000, and in all the states 550,000. He said to the congressional commission that the order was disbanded by him when it had fulfilled its purpose. No doubt he meant that the general organization was disbanded, for certainly detached bodies existed after the date fixed by him as that of the disbandment. Fleming says that the general was initiated by Captain John W. Morton, formerly his chief of artillery, and became Grand Wizard. In his testimony General Forrest said that the klan in Tennessee was intended as a defensive organization to offset the Union League; to protect ex-Confederates from extermination by Brownlow’s militia; to prevent the burning of gins, mills and residences.
Congress and the radical legislatures resorted to all possible means to break up the klans, but they existed until after white supremacy was restored. Even then, counterfeit bodies perverted the name until they were suppressed by the natural rulers of the land. Congress passed a bill which provided for suspension of civil government in any district in which Ku Klux lawlessness existed, thus depriving all the people of trial by jury and other rights, and placing whole communities under the ban of military power. The Alabama legislative enactment pronounced anyone found in disguise a felon and outlaw. It also provided that if a person was whipped or killed by men in disguise, the county could be sued for a penalty ranging from $1,000 to $5,000; and it made it the duty of the prosecuting attorney of the county to institute suit for and in behalf of the victim or his relatives, in any case where no indictment was found.
After the Nashville convention the order courted publicity, in order to inspire respect for its powers, and the Ku Klux sometimes paraded in daylight. Their appearance in public was sudden and unheralded; and they disappeared as silently and mysteriously. The perfection of their movements in drill revealed the training which the members had received as cavalrymen during the war. Sometimes the parades were at night, and then the mystery of their sudden appearance and the weirdness of the spectacle were heightened. One of the night parades was in Huntsville, and the story of it was circulated throughout the north as evidence that another revolution was imminent. It was in the nature of an acceptance of challenge, and the circumstances connected with it were as follows:
On October 30, 1868, C. C. Sheets, a Grant candidate for elector, made a speech in Florence. About ten o’clock that night a band of disguised men visited his sleeping apartment. He attempted to escape by way of a gallery, but was caught and taken back to his room. After a short stay the band retired without having in any way harmed him. Sheets said that they exacted from him a promise that he would desist from making inflammatory speeches. Later in the same month Sheets delivered a speech in Huntsville. It was reported that in the course of that speech he told his colored audience that he had been interfered with a few nights before in Florence by Ku Klux, and that he had promised them then that he would not make the abusive and inflammatory speeches that he had been making; but up there, where there were so many colored people, he wasn’t afraid to say what he pleased, and that if the colored people would do what was becoming in them, they would carry with them weapons and shoot down those disguised men wherever they found them; that the reason the Ku Klux paraded the country was because the negroes were weak-kneed.
The speech excited the negroes. They remained in town all day, and at night a meeting was held in the court-house and many negroes, with guns, attended. During the day leading negroes loudly proclaimed that Ku Klux would never again be permitted to enter the town; that if they attempted to do so, they would be shot on sight. A federal military officer had said it would be lawful to do this. A rumor circulated that Ku Klux were assembling at a point some miles distant, and about dark two large posses of negroes, under command of deputy sheriffs, repaired to points along principal roads to intercept them. While the speaking at the court-house was in progress, fugitive negroes from the posses, which had suddenly dissolved at the approach of danger, rushed to the court-house and announced that Ku Klux were marching on the town. The meeting broke up in confusion and the people hurried into the yard. All the near-by streets and the sidewalks surrounding the square were thronged with people, white and black. Suddenly the cavalcade, numbering about two hundred, fully uniformed in tall conical hats, long gowns, and hoods with eyeholes, some armed with guns and sabres, wheeled into the square, and without sound save the whistle signals—then almost as awe-inspiring as had been the “rebel yell”—rode in military order completely around the court-house, and then turned into one of the streets. Proceeding along this some distance, the column halted and formed into battle line. After maintaining this formation for a few minutes, the march was resumed and the band disappeared.
There was stationed in Hunstville at that time a regiment of regular troops, and their commander, General Cruger, with some of his staff officers, from a hotel veranda viewed the spectacle of the Ku Klux parade. His comment was that “it was fine but absurd.”
There was an unfortunate episode of the event:
Just as the Ku Klux withdrew there was a discharge of firearms in the courtyard. Some witnesses said that the first discharge, an accidental one, due to nervousness, caused the others. Judge Thurlow, a visitor, was mortally wounded, and said a short while before his death that he was shot accidentally by his Republican friends. A negro seated on the court-house steps was killed instantly. Two white men and a negro were wounded. This tragedy was without design, and the excitement was quickly quieted.
A rumor that a few undisguised Ku Klux were posted about the square was supported by the fact that after the departure of the troop three men, having disguises in hand, were arrested by soldiers while in the act of mounting horses in one of the side streets. Later in the night they were rescued from jail by their comrades, and were never officially identified. But their paraphernalia was retained by the officials and often exhibited and photographed. Perhaps none other was ever captured directly from a wearer.