Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama

by Walter L. Fleming

Remember the Ides of April.

By command of the Grand D. I. H.
Cheg. V.

The military authorities forbade the newspapers to publish Ku Klux orders,[1940] and the Klan had to trust to messengers. Verbal orders and warnings became the rule. The Den met and discussed the condition of affairs in the community. The cases of violent whites and negroes were brought up, one by one, and the Den decided what was to be done. Except in the meeting the authority of the Cyclops was absolute.

C. C. Sheets, a prominent scalawag, had been making speeches to the negroes against the whites. The Klan visited him at his hotel at Florence, caught him as he was trying to escape over the roof, brought him back, and severely lectured him in regard to his conduct. They explained to him that the Klan was a conservative organization to hold society together. A promise was required of Sheets to be more guarded in his language for the future. He saw the light and became a changed man.[1941] When a carpet-bagger became unbearable, he would be notified that he must go home, and he usually went. If an official, he resigned or sold his office; the people of the community would purchase a $100 lot from him for $2500 in order to pay for the office. The office was not always paid for; a particularly bad man was lucky to get off safe and sound.[1942] Objectionable candidates were forced to withdraw, or to take a conservation bondsman, who conducted the office.[1943]

Before the close of 1868 the mysterious element in the power of Ku Klux Klan ceased to be so effective. The negroes were learning. Most of the mummery now was dropped. The Klan became purely a body of regulators, wearing disguises. It was said that in order to have time to work for themselves, and in order not to frighten away negro laborers, the Klan became accustomed to making its rounds in the summer after the crops were laid by, and in the winter after they were gathered.[1944]

The activities of the Klan were all-embracing. From regulating bad negroes and their leaders they undertook a general supervision of the morals of the community. Houses of ill-fame were visited, the inmates, white or black, warned and sometimes whipped. Men who frequented such places were thrashed. A white man living with a negro woman was whipped, and a negro man living with a white woman would be killed.[1945] A negro who aired his opinion in regard to social equality was sure to be punished. One negro in north Alabama served in the Union army and, returning to Alabama, boasted that he had a white wife up North and expected to see the custom of mixed marriages grow down South. He was whipped and allowed a short time in which to return North.[1946] White men who were too lazy to support their families, or who drank too much whiskey, or were cruel to their families, were visited and disciplined. Such men were not always Radicals—not by any means.[1947] Special attention was paid to the insolent and dangerous negro soldiers who were mustered out in the state. As a rule they had imbibed too many notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity ever to become peaceable citizens. They brought their arms back with them, made much display of them, talked largely, drilled squads of blacks, fired their hearts with tales of the North, and headed much of the deviltry. The Klan visited such characters, warned them, thrashed them, and disarmed them. Over north Alabama there was a general disarming of negroes.[1948]

The tories or “unionists,” who had never ceased to commit depredations on their Confederate neighbors, were taken in hand by the Klan. In parts of the white counties where there were neither negroes nor carpet-baggers the Klan’s excuse for existence was to hold in check the white outlaws. For years after the war the lives and property of ex-Confederates were not safe. A smouldering civil war existed for several years, and the Klan was only the ex-Confederate side of it.

During the administration of Governor Smith there was no organized militia. The militia laws favored the black counties at the expense of the white ones, and Smith was afraid to organize negro militia; he shared the dislike of his class for negroes. There were not enough white reconstructionists to organize into militia companies. The governor was afraid to accept organizations of Conservatives; they might overthrow his administration. So he relied entirely upon the small force of the Federal troops stationed in the state to assist the state officials in preserving order. The Conservative companies, after their services were rejected, sometimes proceeded to drill without authority, and became a kind of extra-legal militia. In this they were not secret. But the drills had a quieting effect on marauders of all kinds, and the extra-legal militia of the daytime easily became the illegal night riders of the Klan.[1949]

The operations of the Klan, especially in the white counties which had large negro populations, were sometimes directed against negro churches and schoolhouses, and a number of these were burned.[1950] This hostility may be explained in several ways: The element of poor whites in the Klan did not approve of negro education; all negro churches and schoolhouses were used as meeting places for Union Leagues, political gatherings, etc.; they were the political headquarters of the Radical Party;[1951] again, the bad character of some of the white teachers of negro schools or the incendiary teachings of others was excuse for burning the schoolhouses. The burning of school and church buildings took place almost exclusively in the white counties of northern and eastern Alabama. The school and church buildings of the whites were also burned.[1952] The negroes were invariably assisted by the whites in rebuilding the houses. Most of the burnings were probably done by the so-called spurious Ku Klux. The teachers of negro schools who taught revolutionary doctrines or who became too intimate with the negroes with whom they had to board were disciplined, and the negroes also with whom they offended.[1953] It was likewise the case with the northern missionaries, especially the Northern Methodist preachers who were seeking to disrupt the Southern Methodist Church. Parson Lakin when elected president of the State University was chased away by the Ku Klux, and life was made miserable for the Radical faculty.[1954] Thieves, black and white, and those peculiar clandestine night traders who purchased corn and cotton from the negroes after dark were punished.[1955]

The quietest and most effective work was done in the Black Belt principally by the Knights of the White Camelia. Nothing was attempted beyond restraining the negroes and driving out the carpet-baggers when they became unbearable. There were few cases of violence, fewer still of riots or operations on a large scale.[1956] In northern and western Alabama were the most disordered conditions.[1957] The question was complicated in these latter regions by the presence of poor whites and planters, negroes, Radicals and Democrats, Confederates and Unionists. Tuscaloosa County, the location of the State University, is said to have suffered worst of all. A strong organization of Ku Klux cleared it out. In the northern and western sections of the state politics were more likely to enter into the quarrels. The Radicals—white and black—were more apt to be disciplined because of politics than in the Black Belt. Negroes and offensive whites were warned not to vote the Radical ticket. There was a disposition to suppress, not to control, the negro vote as the Black Belt wanted to do. There were more frequent collisions, more instances of violence.