"PALE FACES" AND OTHERS
Other bands of nightriders responded to the names of "Pale Faces," "White Leaguers," the "White Brotherhood" and the "Constitutional Union Guards."
Surviving members are hazy as to their aims and methods, the character of their membership, their members, and the connection between them.
Federal recognition that the Invisible Empire, whether it was the original Klan or not, was everywhere a real empire came in the spring of 1871, when a senate committee presented majority and minority reports on the result of its investigations of the white man's will to rule against the freedmen's militia in the south.
The majority report found that the Ku-Klux Klan was a criminal conspiracy of a distinctly political nature against the laws and against the colored citizens.
The minority found that Ku-Klux disorder and violence was due to misgovernment and an exploitation of the states below the Mason and Dixon line by radicals.
CONGRESS ACTS AGAINST KLAN
The first Ku-Klux bill was passed in April, 1871, "to enforce the fourteenth amendment." Power of the president to use troops to put down the white-hooded riders was hinted at.
In the next month the second Ku-Klux bill was passed to enforce "the right of citizens in the United States to vote."