The Invisible Empire of the South
At the time of Ulysses S Grants’ election to the presidency, white supremacists were conducting a reign of terror throughout the south in outright defiance of the Republican-led federal government. The most violent organization to rise, during this time, was the Ku Klux Klan, otherwise known as the KKK. Formed in Pulaski, Tennessee ; the Ku Klux Klan was originally a social club, but then grew violent as they felt violated by the federal government. The Ku Klux Klan grew into a hooded terrorist organization and included all classes of society. At the Klan’s peak, the membership exceeded four million people . Abram Colby, a former slave, reported being beaten violently by a lawyer, a doctor, and several farmers …show more content…
The south main populace consisted of plantation owners, many found it difficult to view their former slaves as equals. Numerous southerners’ still believed in the subordination of African Americans and since most of their workforce was slaves, they lost their workforce. Factories stopped producing at the rate prior to the war and plantation owners had to figure out whom to hire to work the fields. Feeding off of the feelings in the South, the Klan committed terrorism without punishment. The Klan used newspapers as a tool for publishing death threats next to the local advertisements, which demonstrated how “normal” it was considered in daily life. Also, by having their deeds printed in the newspapers, their deeds were considered ‘heroic’ for they had been doing the work the federal government was not doing. In the Klansman Manuel, the organization stated that they were committed to keeping America “pure” and were doing “God’s work” by invocating constitutional law, which justified their murderous actions. In the name of preserving order in a white dominated society, the Klansmen punished newly freed blacks for a variety of reasons, including behaving in an impudent way towards women . The KKK believed women to be sacred and have their liberties protected by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan . Therefore they became scapegoats for the Klan’s actions since the common thought of the Klan was that the freed blacks would rape their white women, which would violate their chastity. Furthermore, by protecting white women and securing a white-dominated population, southerners agreed to their actions as moral. The southerner’s had found a way to rid themselves of the freed blacks, and return to their once prosperous South. Southerners felt as though the Ku Klux Klan did the work the federal government lacked on, and could rid the South of Northern