Thus ended the second period of Ku Kluxism in the South. A large number of “Dens,” however, paid no attention to the order of General Forrest, but continued to act independently, and kept up their work until the late seventies. The “Pale Faces,” the “Constitutional Union Guards,” the “White Brotherhood,” “White League,” and the “Knights of the White Camelia” were also kept up for several years after the organization of the Ku Klux Klan was officially abandoned, it being very likely that many of the Klan units joined in with these movements. It is generally understood that the work done by these organizations, and by the irresponsible people who still used the name of the old Klan, was more reckless and violent in its character and was the cause of more bloodshed than the original movement. At any rate there was less justification for the movement after 1870 than in the first years of the reconstruction.
Ku Kluxism occupied a great deal of attention of Congress in 1870, 1871 and in 1872, the President issued proclamations against it backed by the army, committees were sent by Congress to visit every section of the South, volumes of testimony were taken, hundreds of speeches were made, in some instances martial law was declared, and a drastic act was passed by Congress intended to check the movement. It went on, however, until the Federal troops were withdrawn, the carpetbaggers left the country, and all of the State governments were in the control of the white men of the South.
Mr. Gregory in summing up the whole Ku Klux movement said:
“Did the end aimed at and accomplished by the Ku Klux Klan justify the movement? The opinion of the writer is that the movement was fully justified, though he of course does not approve of the crimes and excesses incident to it.
“The abuses under which the American colonies of England revolted in 1776 were mere child’s play compared to those borne by the South during the period of reconstruction, and the success of the later movement as a justification of a last resort to revolutionary methods was as pronounced as that of the former.
“The Ku Klux machine has been stored away in the Battle Abbey of the nation as obsolete, we trust, as the causes which produced it; it will stand there for all time as a reminder of how useless is the prostitution of forms of law in an effort to do that which is essentially unlawful, but it will also remain an eternal suggestion to the vigilance committee and the regulator.”