In the winter and spring of 1867 and 1868 many things were done by members, or professed members, of the Klan, which were the subject of universal regret and condemnation. In many ways the grave censure of those who had hitherto been friendly to it was evoked against the Klan, and occasion, long sought for, was given its enemies to petition the intervention of the government to suppress it. The end came rapidly. We must now trace the causes which wrought the decay and downfall of the "Invisible Empire."
In regard to the doings of the Ku Klux two extreme positions have been advocated. On the one hand, it is asserted that the Ku Klux committed no outrages. On the other, that they were the authors of all the depredations committed by masked and disguised men in the Southern States from 1865 to 1869. The truth lies between these two extremes. Great outrages were committed by bands of disguised men during those years of lawlessness and oppression. And the fact must be admitted that some of these outrages were committed, if not by the order and approbation of the Klan, at least by men who were members of it.[47]
The thoughtful reader will readily understand how this came about.
There was a cause which naturally and almost necessarily produced the result. Men of the character of the majority of those who composed the Klan do not disregard their own professed principles and violate self-assumed obligations without cause. We have seen that the Klan was in the main composed of the very best men in the country—peaceable, law-loving and law-abiding men—men of good habits and character—men of property and intelligence.
We have seen that the organization had no political significance; they expressly and in solemn secret compact declared their allegiance to the constitution and all constitutional laws, and pledged themselves to aid in the administration of all such laws. To see such men defying law and creating disorder, is a sight singular enough to awake inquiry as to the causes which had been at work upon them. The transformation of the Ku Klux Klan, from a band of regulators, honestly trying to preserve peace and order, into the body of desperate men who, in 1869, convulsed the country and set at defiance the mandates of both State and Federal governments, is greater than the transformation which we have already traced.
In both cases there were causes at work adequate to the results produced; causes from which, as remarked before, the results followed naturally and necessarily.
These have never been fully and fairly stated. They may be classed under three general heads: (1). Unjust charges. (2). Misapprehension of the nature and objects of the order on the part of those not members of it. (3). Unwise and over-severe legislation.
As has already been pointed out, the order contained within itself, by reason of the methods practiced, sources of weakness. The devices and disguises by which the Klan deceived outsiders enabled all who were so disposed, even its own members, to practice deception on the Klan itself. It placed in the hands of its own members the facility to do deeds of violence for the gratification of personal feeling, and have them credited to the Klan. To evilly-disposed men membership in the Klan was an inducement to wrongdoing. It presented to all men a dangerous temptation, which, in certain contingencies at any time likely to arise, it required a considerable amount of moral robustness to resist. Many did not withstand it. And deeds of violence were done by men who were Ku Klux, but who, while acting under cover of their connection with the Klan, were not under its orders. But because these men were Ku Klux, the Klan had to bear the odium of wrongdoing.[48]
In addition to this, the very class which the Klan proposed to hold in check and awe into good behavior, soon became wholly unmanageable. Those who had formerly committed depredations to be laid to the charge of the negroes, after a brief interval of good behavior, assumed the guise of Ku Klux and returned to their old ways, but with less boldness and more caution, showing the salutary impression which the Klan had made upon them. In some cases the negroes played Ku Klux. Outrages were committed by masked men in regions far remote from any Ku Klux organizations. The parties engaged took pains to assert that they were Ku Klux, which the members of the Klan never did. This was evidence that these parties were simply aping Ku Klux disguises. The proof on this point is ample and clear. After the passage of the Anti Ku Klux Statute by the State of Tennessee, several instances occurred of parties being arrested in Ku Klux disguises; but in every instance they proved to be either negroes or "radical" Brownlow Republicans. This occurred so often that the statute was allowed by the party in power to become a dead letter before its repeal. It bore too hard on "loyal" men when enforced.
The same thing occurred in Georgia and other States. (See testimony of General Gordon and others before the Investigating Committee.)