In 1872 federal troops were sent into the south to back up his anti-Ku-Klux proclamation. By the end of 1872 the "conspiracy" was thought to be overthrown.
At various times individuals in the south and elsewhere have tried to put breath into the Klan's dead body.
It was left for "Grand Wizard" Simmons of Atlanta to accomplish it. His new organization, he explains, is imbued with the Ku-Klux "spirit."
"That this spirit may live always to warm the hearts of many men," he says, "is the paramount ideal of the Knights of the Ku-Klux Klan."
President Grant answered: "Thou shalt not" to the Ku-Klux Klan in 1871. He backed up his word with armed troops.
During the whole of one session of congress senators and representatives serving in Washington in the years just after the civil war occupied themselves in stripping the masques off the southern night-riders.
Into the country south of the Mason and Dixon line they dispatched congressional investigators, whose duty it was to enter the "portals of the invisible empire" and discover what was hiding behind them. When they reported that the Ku-Klux Klan, decked out in the uniform of ghosts, was waging midnight warfare on the negro and carpet-bagger congress passed legislation which suppressed the order.
PUTS ROBES OUT OF FASHION
Action was quick. Almost before the government printing presses had finished turning out ten volumes in which the committee recorded the results of their investigation the white robes and hoods of the Ku-Kluxes had gone out of fashion in the old south.
President Grant in 1871 was without precedent. His law enforcers, just getting acquainted with the amendment which freed the slaves, were without a statute to deal with the armed clique which proposed to keep the negro down in the day by frightening him in the night. The emergency bill which congress passed at that period empowers the regular army or the navy to put down any unlawful combination which is doing domestic violence.