The First Klan Part 1 Birth and Reconstruction

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Eric Gasca, and you're listening to the
Distorted History podcast, and problem I can't give you many names,
and you're a blunder. Hey, look I'm reasoning. I'm got

(00:24):
the by Sarah A long struggle for freedom. It really
is a revolution. Welcome to Distorted History, where this month
we're beginning our deep dive into the history of the
Ku Klux Klan an organization, or maybe more appropriately, the

(00:46):
ideas and motivation behind it, which has never really left us. Indeed,
the motivating forces behind the clan are very much still
with us today. It just seems that its supporters have
opted for let's say, different wardrobe choices, with the second
version of the clan for the nineteen twenties Ish area
being an especially app comparison to our current situation one

(01:08):
with it being a politically focused organization, which was an
addition of being filled by racism, was also a rejection
of immigration, a changing society, and other things like the
labor movement. A political organization then also was a bit
of a grift that benefited those at the top of
the organization exclusively. Yet before we get into that particular
version of the clan, I felt it important to see

(01:29):
where it first came from. We then, for these next
three episodes, will be focusing on the organization that was
birthed in the ashes of the Civil War and which
would play a role in disrupting and reconstruction efforts. Also,
I want to make a point of mentioning here at
the top that keep in mind, at the time of
these events, the Republican and Democratic parties were very much
switched in terms of racial policies and appeal from where

(01:51):
they are now, as the Republicans at the time were
actually the Party of Lincoln and thus worthy party that
had largely been dedicated to ending slavery, albeit with some
having different approaches and time schedules of when and how
that should happen. Some members of the party then, following
the end of the war thus sought as their responsibility
to do something for the people they had liberated. In contrast,

(02:13):
the Democrat Party at the time had been more of
the party of the status quo and thus had wanted
to preserve slavery. It was then, especially in the South,
the party made up of former Confederates, while the Republican
Party had the loyalty of Southern African Americans, which is
something you have to keep in mind when I'm going
to be talking about Republicans and Democrats in these episodes. Yet,

(02:33):
before we go any further with the House and Yse
Clan first came into being, have one more thing to
take care of, which has of course given credit to
my sources for this series, which include Jane Michael Martinez's
Carpetbagger's Calvary and the Ku Klux Klan, Elaine France parsons
Ku Klux the Birth of the Clan during Reconstruction, and
Alan W. Tree leases the Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy in

(02:55):
Southern Reconstruction. And like always, Lis and any other sources
use like websites will be listed on this podcast Bluesky
and Covie pages. Plus for anyone who does want to
be bothered skipping through commercials, there is always an ad
free feed available at patreon dot com slash Distorted History.
And with all that being said, let's begin now. We

(03:16):
start our story this week at the end of the
American Civil War. The conflict was over and the North
was victorious. The thing was, while the war itself might
have been over, that did not mean that things could
just magically go back to the way they had been.
Half the country, after all, had rebelled and was now
being occupied by federal troops. How to handle this situation

(03:36):
that was very much in question, because there was no simple,
tried and true rule book on how one resolves a
civil war you for example, and questions like what should
be done with those who rebelled, specifically the treaties who
had led said rebellion. Plus, in addition to all the
normal questions that result from such a conflict, the US
also had the additional question of how to handle all

(03:58):
the people who had been freed from the bonds of
safe say, and what abolition meant for the South as
a whole. Indeed, the abolition of savory very much threatened
to often establish Southern society. The whole thing, after all,
had been predicated on slave labor and the subjugation of
a specific race, and without that system and place, those
who used to be in power were very much worried

(04:19):
about what they knew South would look like, especially in
the regions where the newly freed African Americans outnumbered the
people who used to enslave them. That being said, though
the reality was Southern white still very much had the
upper hand to begin with, they had experience working within
and manipulating the American legal, economic, political, and even military systems,

(04:40):
something which realistically could not be said of the freedmen,
who had generally been kept separate from such concerns. Furthermore,
wealthier Southerners, even without access to slave labor, still tended
to have connections with other wealthy and powerful individuals, including
those beyond their sections of the country. They still very
much had power and influence thanks in their time with

(05:00):
businesses and politicians and even those within the military, which
again was not something the freedmen could say. Plus, on
a very basic level, why Southerners already owned things, including
land and had stuff like monetary savings, that made as
soon they had a leg up on the formerly enslaved
who were essentially starting with nothing. Yet still this wasn't enough.

(05:21):
In particular, Southern whites were afraid of violent reprisals from
the people they used to enslave, which was basically just
an extension of the fear save uprisings like Nat Turner's rebellion,
and if you want more information on that, In the
way the South responded to what was really just an
isolated incident, you can check out my series on that.
This though, was an especially oppone fear now following the war,

(05:43):
due to the fact that the old systems of control
were no longer in place, as not only were African
Americans no longer enslaved, but these systems of monitoring them,
preventing them from obtaining weapons, and the ways in which
whites controlled their movements to prevent pods from forming were
no longer applicable or existent now that they had been freed. Yet,
for as dominant as his fear the dangerous other was

(06:04):
the thing that was neck and neckan the fore front
a white Southerner's minds following the Entity Civil War was
he thought that the black person might now be on
the same level as them, or might even surpass them,
now that they were free. They simply could not stomach
the idea of having to train African Americans as equals.
In fact, part of the Louisiana Democratic Party platform from
eighteen sixty five was that quote we hold this to

(06:27):
being a government of white people made to be perpetuated
for the exclusive benefits of the white race. And if
that wasn't clear enough, they would then add that quote
people of African assent cannot be considered as citizens of
the United States, and that there can, in no event,
nor under any circumstances, be any equality between the white

(06:47):
and other races. And if we need any more proof
of want their position on race was, and how at
the forefront of their minds it's issue was, I give
you the former Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander H.
Stevens of Georgia, who declared that quote a quality does
not exist between blacks and whites. The one race is
bond nature inferior in many respects physically and mentally to

(07:09):
the other. They should be received as a fixed, invincible
fact in all dealings with the subject. It is useless
to war against the decrease of nature and attempting to
make things equal which the Creator has made unequal. Yet,
forasmuch as they went on about how naturally superior whites
were and how self evident that quote unquote fact was,

(07:29):
they were afraid that those medaling Northerners were threatening to
up end nature itself by doing things like providing the
newly freed people with educational opportunities and assistants informing their
own organizations, although they actually needed little encouragement with that
last one, as they had experience working communely in supporting
one another from their time when they were enslaved. The

(07:50):
thing was, though white Southerners were afraid that, with the
help of those troublesome Yankees, a former save uprising of
sorts did not even necessarily have to be violent to
be devastating to Southern whites and their way of life,
as without any means of controlling the now freed African Americans,
it was possible that these supposedly inferior people might start
demanding things like equality and rights. This was such an

(08:12):
obvious and all consuming concern for Southern conservative whites that
a Republican in Georgia would point out, quote, if you
talk about equality, they at once conclude that you must
take the negro into your parlor or into your bed,
everywhere that you would take your wife. They seem to
be diseased upon that subject. They do not seem to
consider that he's merely to be equal before the law,

(08:33):
but take it as supposed designedly to mean equality in
the broadest sense, and hence they stirred themselves up and
lashed themselves into a fury about it, thus illustrating how
normal people understood the word equality and how the disease
minds of the former Confederacy interpreted it with all their racism. Indeed,
despite their fears and even claims otherwise, they newly freed

(08:55):
never sought anything approaching black supremacy. Instead, all they asked
for was land and schools, and most of all, to
be treated as equals. Plus, it has to be said
that even in the early days of Reconstruction, when the
Republicans were gaining control of state and local governments, the
fact remained that those governments still very much tended to
be on the side of whites, as even Republicans and

(09:16):
Northern nurse who came South tended to be why supremacists
at their core. This was especially true when they blamed
their black neighbors for just about anything that went wrong.
A theft, a fire, or whatever negative happenstance that happened
to impact a white person was regularly blamed on a
black individual who would be rested and tried to regardless
of the evidence or lack thereof. In fact, even when

(09:38):
a black accused individual appeared in front of a mixed
race jury, the African Americans within the ethical bodies were
not infrequently encouraged to convict their fellows, which is all
to say that realistically, the quote unquote threat of African
Americans taking over was never actually that great. Still, the
general consensus, even among those who had opposed a session

(09:59):
and now accepted that the end of slavery was the
cost of losing the war, was that the white man
had to continue to rule the South. So to ensure
continued white supremacy, Southern States passed a series of Black
Codes in eighteen sixty five in eighteen sixty six, laws
that directly targeted and affected African Americans with the goal
of making them second class citizens. These efforts, though, would

(10:21):
be undone as a consequence of radical reconstruction, as the
so called Radical Republicans would force the former Confederate States
to ratify the fourteenth and fifteenth Amendments, which guaranteed voting
rights for African Americans. As you see, the so called
radical Republicans and their plans for reconstruction were considered radical
primarily because they recognized that simply freak enslaved African Americans

(10:43):
was just the beginning and not the end of what
needed to be done. As they rarely recognized that without
the right to vote in legal protections, the formerly enslaved population,
as well as any liberally minored Southern Whites, would relatively
quickly find themselves once again at the mercy of the
very same people who had enslaved them and cause a
civil war in the first place. Speaking oh, the radicals

(11:04):
were also in general more interested in punishing the aforementioned
traders who had plunged the country in the Civil War
and thereby prevent the return to power, as the Radical
Republicans recognized that failure in these areas would effectively mean
that all the blood that had been shed during the
war would have been meaningless as little would have realistically changed,
which was why they demanded that for a rebellious state

(11:26):
to be readmitted into the Union, they had to approve
an adopt the fourteenth Amendment, and until such a time
those states were to remain under military occupation and control.
And it is also why under reconstruction, radical Republicans generally
insisted that African Americans be given rights, including the right
to vote, while at the same time insisting that the
white processession pro Confederacy Southern leaders were banned from holding

(11:48):
office and from voting. Policies which then saw African Americans
being elected to official positions and states all across the South,
a situation which, for all the reasons we already talked about,
was an outreach for the racist conservative Southern forces and
one that they were determined to do something about and
defines what the victorious forces from the recent Civil War

(12:08):
wanted now. The reality was the Civil War had effectively

(12:52):
taught individuals on both sides of the conflict the ways
of violence. This notably included black Southerners, a number of whom,
when given the opportunity, had been more than happy to
take up arms so as to secure the freedom of themselves,
their friends, their families, and their people. In doing so,
they had learned the ways of war, including how the
fire guns and how to protect themselves. As a result,

(13:14):
there was a segment of the Southern black population who
very much were no longer intimidated by whites. As you see,
during the age of slavery, whites and almost exclusive ownership
over the ways and tolls of violence, but now that
was no longer the case. Instead, they formerly unsaved now
potentially had the knowledge and means to protect themselves. At
the same time, though many veterans of the Confederate Army

(13:34):
also returned home not only well trained in the ways
of violence and killing, but also in moving abouts secretly
at night after having to do so to gain an
advantage against the often times larger and more powerful Union armies.
White violence and very much remained a ponent tool. Indeed,
during the early period of reconstruction, race rimes became somewhat
commonplace in the Southern States, as from eighteen sixty six

(13:57):
to eighteen seventy six, Opolusus, Luis Louisiana, Camilla, Georgia, Meridian, Mississippi, Laurence,
South Carolina, Colfax Louisiana, Vicksburg, Mississippi, Clinton, Mississippi, and Hamburg,
South Carolina were all home to race riots of one
degree or another, while New Orleans and Memphis in eighteen
sixty six both played host to a pair of massive

(14:18):
and deadly riots which unlikely cover at some point down
the road. In short, both events seem to have happened
in response to African Americans standing up for themselves, with
Memphis being a case of former Union soldiers defending themselves
from racist Irish comms and New Orleans simply being a
case of African Americans marchin in protest to the recently
installed black Codes, which is to say that for the

(14:41):
former Confederate types, any sign of African Americans standing offered
themselves was liable to result in the violent reprisals. And
that brings us to the Union League, also known as
the Loyal League, which was a patriotic society that had
been created and operated in the North during the war,
but was now being imported to the South following the conflict.
When it did, it spread rapidly throughout the South as

(15:02):
it attracted both way Unionists and more often than not,
recently freeing African Americans. The Union League would then hold
frequent meetings and also sponsored parades and barbecues as they
tried to attract more members. Now while occasional speakers during
Union League meetings would suggest things like redistributing rebel lands
to the people who actually made said land productive, and

(15:22):
from time to time also encouraged African Americans to defend
themselves when attacked. By and large, the Union League was
not some radical or revolutionary organization. Instead, its main goal
was generally to promote patriotism and loyalty to the Union. Indeed,
there is nothing to connect the League with aggressive or
violent activities of any kind. If anything, the organization encouraged

(15:44):
respect for the democratic process and the law, as it
encourage its members do not take the law to their
own hands, but to trust the system. The thing was,
though the Union League was cloaked in the garb of
a secret society with all the attendant rituals, oaths and
closed meetings as such groups were all the rage at
the time. The thing was this secrecy allowed racists, who

(16:04):
by their very nature or terrified of just about anything
and everything, to use the Union League as a blank
canvas to paint all their various fears upon. Yet, even
if that wasn't the case, the fact that the League
reinforced the idea that Republicans were the quote unquote sponsors
of Negro rights would have likely been troubled enough to
racist whites, as the League also made a point to

(16:25):
encourage their black members to use those rights, as they
actively looked to mobilize African American voters to go out
and support the Republican Party at the polls. So, while
rumors ran rapid about the organization and how it was
connected to any crimer mishap, that happened. Its real crime
was he sweeping Republican victories in the eighteen sixty seven
and sixty eight elections that for a time overthrew the

(16:46):
old white establishment, which of course led conservative Democrats and
white Southerners in general to denounce the Union League while
also insisting that it had to be countered and broken up. Now,
various organizations would spring up across the South around this
style time with similar goals, but the one that had
the most lasting staying power is of course the subject
of the series c Ku Klux Klan, which brings us

(17:07):
to Pulaski, Tennessee in mid eighteen sixty six. Pulaski is
a city in central southern Tennessee which is the seat
of Gass County and lays a battle of seventy four
miles south of Nashville. Indeed, Union troops and notably camped
in Pulaski befomed the Battle of Nashville, which proved to
be a particularly bloody clash that saw the Confederate suffering
six thousand casualties, losses that effectively put an end to

(17:30):
the thread of the Army of Tennessee and effectively ended
the war in the state. Which, as you can imagine,
was a particularly bitter pill for locals to swallow. The
end of the war, and in particular, the abolition of
savory was also leaving an unpleasant taste in the mouse
of the white residence of Pulaski, as it had been
a major slave holding region, which meant there were now

(17:51):
a lot of formally enslaved individuals moving about and acting
without the restrictions of their so called masters. Plase also
might have been undertaking such radical and diabolical acts as
refusing the work for the people who had once to
say them, or acting like they were normal people by
walking on sidewalks and not bowing and scraping to get
out of the way of the white folks as they did.

(18:12):
In fact, they might have even expressed their own opinions
on matters that might have differed from the appendance of
the white residence of Pulaski. Additionally, Pulaski notably also land
at the crossroads in the Nashville to Birmingham and the
Chattanooga to Memphis highways, which meant that local residents, in
addition to their own newly freed and African Americans, also
likely bore witness to many, a newly freed man and

(18:32):
woman traveling these roads either simply taking advantage of their
newfound freedom, or more than likely searching for lost family
and friends, or simply trying to get back to someplace
where they had been sold from, a kind of freedom
they had never been allowed before. Meanwhile, Pulaski in the
area around it was also notable as a group of
black leaders had emerged in the region. This included fifty

(18:53):
three year own brick Mason Dangerfield Danger Roads, who actually
had enough money to own several horses and mules, and
who had earned not only the respect of his fellow
African Americans, but also that of some Union officers, with
some even staying at Danger Rhodes's home during the war. Now,
what was especially notable about Roads and the other emergent
black leaders in the region was how they worked to

(19:15):
support their fellow newly freed neighbors. Indeed, Rcied Caledwell, the
superintendent of the Freedmen's Bureau, would credit Danger Roads for
going above and beyond his own means as he sought
to alleviate the quote once and necessities of the poor
of his race, noting in particular how during the winter,
danger had taken in a man who had been injured
in a tornado, a nurse, and a woman with children,

(19:37):
whom he all fed and kept warm. Yetto was more
than just seeing to the basic needs of the recently liberated,
as the lacks of danger roads also helped to inspire
their recently freed brothers and sisters as well. They provided
an example what was possible now that they were freed
from their chains Rhodes and others like, and then offered
the hope that they too might have lives of respectability

(19:57):
and even some degree of wealth. They certainly were not
acceptable to the local whites, one of whom notably yanked
down a sign that had been hung up by a
black saloon keeper that read equal Rights. Now, the fact
that whites had torn down an equal rights sign in
eighteen sixty six is not surprising her even all that notable. However,
the fact that a black man at that time had

(20:18):
been confident enough to put up such a sign is,
as it speaks to not only what their goals were,
but what they actually believed to be possible at that time. Meanwhile,
over in East Tennessee was another thorn in the side
of the former Confederates, with this particular thorn being the
Mountainous region, which, since it wasn't well suitiful plantation style
of farming and thus had few slaves, had not been

(20:40):
supportive of secession. The sizeable Unionist element who called the
region home would then form a voting block with the
newly freed African Americans to effectively strengthen the deeply frustrating
old Republicans had on the state following the war, which
was especially troubling for those who had fought for the
Confederacy and longed for the so called good old days.
The perceived sites and issues from having seen their own

(21:02):
army cut down and defeated not that far away to
being occupied by federal forces ever since, or in the
fear of what particularly adept black leaders might do to
their beloved system of white supremacy, might help to explain
why the whites of Giles County, where Pulaski was located,
were said to be especially bad even by the standards
of the day. In fact, Giles County would be identified

(21:23):
in eighteen sixty six as one of the four counties
in Middle Tennessee where crimes against freedmen were most often reported. Indeed,
Captain Georgie Judge, who was in charge of the Freedmen's
Bureau's efforts in the region, would describe the area to
his commanding officer, quote, it can almost be said that
there is no law in Giles County. All do just
as they see fit, without regard to law or decency,

(21:47):
a situation that John Blaine primarily on poor whites, who
he described as quote men who amount to nothing, have
no property and no principle. The problems in Giles County, though,
went beyond just disaffected, poor racist whites, as the issues
were systemic as well. Indeed, even crimes with white victims
were only addressed by local authorities if the person supposedly

(22:08):
responsible was black, while any crimes committed against African Americans
were of course categorically ignored. In fact, the local sheriff,
One Brian Pedon, was doing to publicly declare that blacks
were still slaves, and would list former slaves as as property,
and would even boast about how he still whipped them
when he deemed it necessary. Now to be clear that
things were already bad in Giles County before the events

(22:31):
of May in July eighteen sixty six, when the aforementioned
riots are more approperly massacres took place in Memphis and
New Orleans, as in both instances, dozens of African Americans
were killed by white moms, which was in addition to
the rapes, beatings, and cases of arson that also took place,
incidents that seemed to further embolden former Confederates and their

(22:51):
milk as the so called race riots were a new
form of violence that demonstrated a way in which unrepentant
Southern racists like themselves were respond to attempt to give
the newly freed African Americans rights, while also demonstrating that
to at least some degree, the federal government was either
incapable or unwilling to protect them. For the unrepentant whites

(23:12):
of Pulaski and elsewhere, these massacres were assigned that they
were not alone and that they might be allowed to
follow through with their darkest impulses, a fact that the
black people of the region were certainly not blind to,
with one African American individual noting that quote, those Memphis
rights are having their effect here, as he could clearly
tell how inspired his white neighbors were by such violence. Meanwhile,

(23:35):
amidst all this, you also had Albert Pike, an influential
former Confederate general who, in the wager Republican victories in
the state, advised the conservative whites of Tennessee to form
civic guard companies with the goal of fighting back against
the newly freed African Americans attempting to claim political, social,
and economic rights, as well as the federal agents who
were to one degree or another supporting such claims. A

(23:58):
call to action that it should be noted Pike was
not alone in making, let alone in doing so publicly,
which brings us to May eighteen sixty six. As it
was around this time the reportedly six young men who
were all former Confederate soldiers came together. They were all
in their mid twenties to mid thirties, and they all
came from fairly well off backgrounds, and indeed many were

(24:19):
college graduates and active figures in their churches and communities. Notably, though,
none of their families had owned plantations, and only one
among them had anything to do with agriculture, meaning that
the end of slavery had not had any real direct
impact on them and their families. Now, these young men,
who again were by and large the future civic leaders
of Bulaski were hanging out in the law offices of

(24:41):
one Judge Thomas Jones, who was the father one of
these six young men, when the topic of discussion presumably
turned to just how bored they were. After all, life
and the army had been exciting, but these same could
not be said now that they had returned back to
civilian life. Plaster is also all the underlying resentment they
had bottled up for losing the war and now having

(25:01):
their homeland being effectively occupied territory. So hoping to leave
their boredom and frustration, one of these six apparently made
the suggestion that they start some sort of club, an
idea that was apparently quite appealing to the others, as again,
secret societies and alike were all the rage at the time,
so they agreed they would form just such a club
the next time they came together, and indeed, when the

(25:23):
original six men again for this purpose, they also brought
along several others who they thought would be good members
of this proposed club. In the meantime, though, two among
them were selected to come up with a name for
their new organization, which was easier said than done. Considering
that at the time there was no direction or goal
for their little organization, so the pairages came up with
a list of ideas to present to the others, among

(25:46):
which was reportedly the idea of using ku kloi, a
word which gave from kuklos, which men circle or brotherhood.
For whatever reason, this really caught the attention of the others,
with one supposedly shouting out the suggestion that they should
call the group Koukouns, with clan being subsequently added, likely
due to their Scottish ancestry and simply the alliteration. They

(26:06):
all would then agree to this name, apparently at least
in part because they liked the idea of a name
that they would all understand, but to everyone else it
would be meaningless nonsense. In fact, when the clan started
to rise in popularity, multiple papers and other sources would
create their own ideas about the origin and meaning of
the name, with ideas ranging from it being the sound

(26:26):
of cocking and firing a gun to having its origins
in a secret society called these Seven Confederate Knights. Others
suggested it came from a Jewish term that had appeared
in a Jewish history book that detailed their rebellion against
the Egyptian pharaoh. Then there was the suggestion that the
name came from a quote unquote Oriental word that had
something to do with opium smuggling, while another suggestion said

(26:48):
it was derived from Kukla Khan, the god of light
from Mexican legend, who was known to do battle with
and defeat a vampire god of darkness, a legend that
it was theorized the people of Pulaski were aware of
after had served in the warwith Mexico, with the idea
being that the young men of the town had formed
this organization, calling themselves the Suns of Light as they
fought against the dark forces of reconstruction, none of which

(27:12):
was apparently true, and indeed the fact that the matter
was as we returned to the original founders of the clan,
beyond having a name, their lunar groups stilled in heavy purpose.
So those who founded it very much continued to be
bored to try and spice things on. Then they looked
to developed their own sayings, rituals, and insignia to make
their Lino group more like a proper secret society. Meanwhile,

(27:34):
some of their boredom also started dressing up in sheets
and pillow cases, which they then started wearing to the
streets of Pelaskian night, crying out and howling as a
pretended to be ghosts, seemingly a long last finding something
that they enjoyed. The men started making their costumes even
more elaborate, as they traded in sheets for long robes
featuring various supposedly occult designs, but which were in reality

(27:55):
just fancy patterns featuring stars, half moons, animals, and goblin faces,
while also trading in their pillow cases for white masks
and tall cardboard pointed hands. As they did, they seemed
to fully embrace the absurdity of what they were doing,
as they also began adopting nonsensical titles, as instead of
a president, their club would have a Grand Cyclops. The
vice president would then be the Grand Magi, who was

(28:18):
in turn assisted by the Grand Turk, while the group
itself would be protected by nighthawks. The group, then, for
the first year or so, would meet in what was
deemed the clan Den, which was in reality the basement
of the house that had been damaged by a storm.
It would be here where they participated in the typical
kind of nonsensical secret society initiation rights and rituals, which

(28:38):
were all elaborate, theatrical and scripted. Now, for the first
year or so of its existence, this seems to be
all that the clan was. Indeed, they did not seem
to be involved in any of the kind of violent
activities one typically associates with the KKK. Instead, it was
just this weird, little goofy secret society that was little
different than any number of other similar organizations that existed

(29:00):
all across the country. Groups like the Freemasons and countless
others there were mainly just an excuse for guys to
hang out and get dressed up in weird and elaborate
costumes and do goofy shit. At most, they might have
looked to revitalize Southern culture, which had been decimated by
the war. In fact, the number of former Confederates at
this time were on the mind that rebuilding Southern culture

(29:21):
was one of the most important things that they needed
to do now that the fighting was over. As Notably,
one way in which people had been mobilized politically prior
to the war had involved public amusements like parades, picnics,
and barbecues, in other words, communal events that brought people together,
as in addition to offering entertainment, these gatherings also presented
the chance to bring people together on a specific issue,

(29:44):
things which were important in the days before mass media. Indeed,
three of the Clan's founders, around the time that they
were first coming up with the idea of their little club,
also weren'd together to stage a series of artistic scenes
with the goal of raising money to provide artificial limbs
to Confederate veterans with lost theirs in the war. You
can potentially see some of this impulse to revive something
culture among the original Clan founders in the way they

(30:07):
might parade through the streets of Pulaski at night in
their elaborate costumes or show up at a fair. For example,
early on, the Clan apparently held a parade in Pulaski
where they claimed to have attempted to play a trick
where they made it look like there were more of
them than there actually were by circling around from the
front of the parade to the end so they could
march through the town again. Now whether or not this
happened or how successful the trick was if it did is,

(30:30):
like pretty much everything else concerning this period of the
clan unclear. What we can say, though, is that rumors
about this new Little Secret Society through word of mouth,
did seem to get around to the surrounding areas, where
other groups of young men cares about this fun, new
little secret society reached out to inquire if they might
start their own chapter of the organization, with word of

(30:51):
the clan getting out largely being the result of one
of the founders of the group also serving as the
editor of the local Pulaski paper, as the paper started
regularly run stories about the mysterious, exciting new group. Meanwhile,
in this first year or so of the clan's existence,
if they were conducting any kind of violent raids or
other similar acts like human expect it was not reported

(31:11):
on or attributed to the Klan by any paper or
any other official documentation. That being said, it is still
quite possible that members of the group, acting on their own,
might have engaged in violence against the freed people in
the region. After all, these were all former Confederate soldiers.
But again, if they did so, they did not seem
to have done so in connection with their special little club.

(31:33):
Things though, might have changed following the initial year the
group's existence due to the fat that in the spring
of eighteen sixty seven a fire swept through part of Pulaski.
With this destruction this pylon top of the devastation the
region had suffered during the war, as they had yet
to rebuild now. The most notable thing for us, though,
is that among these structures destroyed by this fire were
the law offices, where two of the founders of the

(31:55):
clan had worked. It is possible, then, that the frustrations
these men felt at having seemingly lost their jobs in
their future prospects might have led the group into a
darker direction. Or alternatively, it is also possible than as
the idea of the clans spread to other groups and
might have taken on a different character. Either way, it
wasn't exactly a stretch, as wise in the South had

(32:16):
a long history of abusing and bullying the African Americans
living among them. They were, after all, the very definition
of an easy target. They were than the people who
these frustrated young men could most easily take their frustrations
out on. Some more men joined the group, the better
the chances were that at least some of them better
over the feet of the Confederacy and the occupation the

(32:37):
South was enduring as a result, would engage in such
violent pastimes. Meanwhile, William G. Brownlow, the editor of the
Knoxville Whig, who had been selected to service the governor
of Tennessee during this period of reconstruction, was worried by
reports of bout attacks against Republicans, unionists, and to a
lesser extent, attacks against the newly freed African Americans as well,

(32:58):
with his main concern being and that this was an
assault on its political power base. Now, some of these
attacks might have had client ties, but most at this
point probably did not. Regardless, though, in response to these attacks,
Brownlow would declare on the twenty fifth of February eighteen
sixty seven, quote, I have no concessions to make two traitors,
no compromises to offer to assassins and robbers. And if

(33:21):
in the sweep of coming events retributed of justice shall
overtake the lawless and violent, their own temerity will have
called it forth the outrageous enumerated must and shall cease.
To back up these words, Governor Brownlow announced he was
organizing a militia to counter these anti union attacks, with
units on this militia to be deployed so as to

(33:42):
protect and secure the upcoming elections in the state. Now,
Brownlow's conservative foes would deny any connections whatsoever to the
violent attacks against the freedmen and pro unionist whites, which
was of course a ridiculous claim, as even if they
did not themselves carry out such attacks, they most certainly
encouraged and actively called for such violent acts. Yet, despite this,

(34:05):
a woe cry foul at the governor's threat of using
the militia, as they asserted that the governor was going
to manipulate the Negro vote to stay in power. They
then insisted that they had no choice but to proactively
defend themselves, although while ignoring the fact that they were
the ones trying to manipulate the vote through their violent tactics,
it wasn't likely round about this point that Declan decided

(34:27):
to really start leading into their violent activities in the
name of defending themselves in conservatism in Tennessee. Indeed, while
the exact details are unknown, April eighteen sixty seven would
see what was termed a General Council gathering at the
Maxwell House in Nashville. It was here in this fancy
hotel that the clan undertook a bit of a transformation
in recognition of its recent growth, as they look to

(34:50):
further establish the clan's hierarchy by dubbing the rank and
file members of the organization guls, while adding levels above
the grand cyclops like the Grand Giant, the Grand Tighten,
the Grand Dragon, and the Grand Wizard, with each rank
having their own specific sent of nonsensically named subordinates like Hydras, furies,
and genies to carry out their orders. Now to be clear,

(35:11):
this was effectively modesty stupid names, a military style hierarchy,
which also came with a system of bylaws that all
clan members were expected to follow, all of which have
been crafted by a pair of former Confederate general's John C.
Brown and George W. Gordon, with Brown in particular being
politically well connected, as he would go on in the
years to come to become one of the wealthiest and

(35:33):
most influential men in the South, while Gordon, who had
been the youngest brigadier general in the Confederate Army, is
to one who is credited with craft in the clan
in the style of paramilitary groups. Also coming out of
this meeting was the clan's formal statement of purpose, as
they claim that quote, this is an institution of chivalry, humanity, mercy,

(35:54):
and patriotism, embodying in its genius and its principles all
that is schulvarick and conduct, noble and sentiment, generous in manhood,
and patriotic in purpose. Their stated golden was to quote
protech the week, the innocent, and the defenses from the indignities,
wrongs and outrageous of the lawless, the violet, and the brutal. Specifically,

(36:16):
they claimed that their goal was to help the oppressed,
the suffering, and the unfortunate. However, they had their own
definition of who actually fed that criteria and who did not. Specifically,
according to the Klan, white Southerners like themselves, you know,
the people who had enslaved others and openly rebelled against
the government to continue doing so were actually the poor, innocent,

(36:37):
put upon victims and all this. Meanwhile, the people who
had been enslaved were, according to the Klan's twisted logic,
the agents of the oppressors, and thus were fair game
then for the cherry on top of their twisted logic.
Whilst the fact that clan members were to swear an
oath to support the United States Constitution and constitutional law,
which you would think doesn't make sense given their own

(36:59):
history of traitors during the Civil War and their hatred
of Reconstruction and the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet per their logic,
the Fourteenth Amendment and the Reconstruction Acts were unconstitutional and
thus it was their duty to ignore and fight against them. Now,
while you and I might look at the clan statements
as just self serving bullshit, to them, this was all

(37:20):
logically consistent, as at the core their beliefs was the
fact that they saw themselves as the victims. You see,
the former Confederates firmly believed that they were the victims
of the Civil War. I mean, it's not a coincidence
that they like to call it the War of Northern
Aggression because it casts them as the poor, put upon
victims instead of as the people who had started the

(37:41):
conflict in the first place over their desire to continue
owning other human beings. And now here they were the
victims once again, as they the poor innocence of that war,
who had done nothing wrong, were now being punished for
failing to defeat their northern bullies as they were being
forced to do things like free their slaves, and except
that these newly freed individuals were to be allowed to

(38:02):
do things like vote. In the eyes of the Klan
and the conservative allies, then it was the Unionists and
the Radical Republicans who were pressing and threatening them given
the set of beliefs, and the Clan and their allies
were justified in whatever actions they took to defend themselves
from these oppressive forces. You can see the change in
the Klan then, from silly little secret society that was

(38:23):
a little note outside of the local paper published by
one of its members to a group who, by the
end of the year would appear in a Freeman Bureau
officer's report, with the officer in question running about how
he was concerned about the kup Klugs because, as far
as he was concerned, its entire purpose was to quote, annoy,
and intimidate colored people. Now, he did not offer any

(38:44):
specific incidents to explain why he felt this way, but
the fact that he made such a note clearly suggests
that there had at least been some incidence. By that point.
The Clan however, was only just getting started, as by
August eighteen sixty eight, the same officer of the Freedman
Bureau would note of how he was aware of seven
murders that had been attributed to the clan, with the

(39:05):
first in which being the hanging of a white man
that had happened back in December eighteen sixty seven. That
being said, word of the Clan and their crimes at
this time wasn't just coming from the Slan officer either,
as George F. Vells, a teacher at a Cone school
in the Clansholme County of Giles, Tennessee, would report that
he had been threatened and robbed by the clan in
January eighteen sixty eight, while others out son of Giles

(39:27):
also reported a similar timeline of learning all the existence
of this terrorist group and its stupid costumes. In early
eighteen sixty eight. The Clan then had gone from a
secret society type of social club with stupid names at
saleve rituals to a paramilitary organization that was dedicated to
or harassing African Americans in their political allies in the
name of protecting the quote unquote Southern way of life

(39:49):
from so called carpetbaggers and scaley wags, names which I
remember learning about in school, with an ay single teacher
ever pointing out that this was largely propaganda from racist
former Confederates who, more than anything else wanted to go
back to a time when they could own other human beings. Now,
to be clear, Pulaski and Giles County weren't exactly peaceful
places before the Clan turned violent. Indeed, in March eighteen

(40:12):
sixty six, Alan Abernathy would complain to the Freeman's Bureau
that a wave planter, won James Scruggs, had shot him
for whistling. Then for daring to report this, a group
of ten to fifteen armed white men would assault and
threatening group of Abernathy's friends. Giles County, in fact, was
increasingly seen even before the Klan became the clan as

(40:33):
the epicenter of violence in the region, with one Freeman's
Bureau agent reporting in January eighteen sixty seven quote Roscoe
liked in Pulaski from this and adjoining counties. They have
their own way here then to kill and drag out
all who disagree with them. The clan then wasn't an
aberration and was an outgrowth of what was already going
on in fact, among the people who had participated in

(40:56):
this prior wave of violence, where some of the men
who had found in the Klan in the first place,
with one of the group's founders, Frank McCord, being on
record as having incited a riot against a black male
school teacher, it had then seemly only been a matter
of time before these better hate field former Confederate soldiers
decided to combine their silly little social club with their

(41:17):
violent efforts to oppress African Americans in the name of
defending the Southern way of life and white supremacy in general.

(41:42):
It seems like the first Klan incident to really gain
a degree of national attention was the death of a
man known as Orange Jones or Orange Roads, which occurred
on the seventh of January eighteen sixty eight, with Orange
Jones being a leader among Pulaski's black community who was
also known to be a frequent signee of Freeman's attitions
to the government. Now, the incident in question started with

(42:03):
a fight between twenty eight year old black farmer Calvin
Carter and white grocer Calvin Lambert, with the fight potentially
stemming from an argument over one Lucy Reynolds, a black
woman who the black farmer Carter had apparently threatened a
whip should he catch her going over to Lambert's house again.
As while a black man associating with a white woman
was the greatest of all crimes, a white man meeting

(42:26):
with a black woman was something to just kind of
be ignored. Yet regardless of whatever potential love triangle existed
between these individuals, the fact that the matter was. This
disagreement soon came to involve the friends of both men,
until it eventually escalated to the point that there was
an arm standoff in downtown Pulaski, where on one side

(42:47):
was a poorly armed group of black men, including the
aforementioned Orange Jones, a group who due to being outgunned
and being forced to shelter inside a black owned grocery
store from the gunfire of the mob of angry white men,
a clash they would end with six black men being
injured in Orange Jones dead. Now, A Captain, Michael Walsh
would be ordered to investigate this incident. The captain then

(43:09):
noting the what he deemed to be military style tactics
that had been employed by the whites, would conclude that
the Ku Klux Klan was responsible for this incident, a
group that he noted was dedicated to the quote expulsion
of loyal men whites and blacks in the counties of
Gals and Murray, and thus terrorizing similar to which was
general in this county about the breaking out of the rebellion.

(43:30):
In other words, to Walsh, the clan's activities were reminiscent
to those seen in the lead up to the Civil War.
With that being said, though this may have been more
of a riot than a real military style operation. However,
it does feel telling that the name of the Klan
was brought up in connection with this incident, as it
seems to indicate that they were becoming more of a
known quantity. Indeed, it was round about this time that

(43:52):
the clan really started to spread beyond the area around
Pulaski to a significant degree, a process which started the
previous year. As he clanned in eighteen sixty seven, seemed
to really start looking to make their secret organization a
bit more public so as to attract more members and
spread its influence. For example, on the twenty ninth of March,
the local Pulaski paper, whose editor was one of the

(44:14):
clan's founders, printed an announcement about an upcoming meeting of
the quote unquote den An announcement which was quote in
just enough mystery so as to attract curiosity and attention.
They then really seem to ramp up these efforts the
following month, as starting in June, every issue of the
weekly publication contained some mention of the clan, be it
a message coming directly from the organization or an article

(44:36):
which feigned amazement and wonder about the new mysterious group. Basically,
the clan had an official paper of sorts that was
pretending to not have anything to do with them, so
was able to be like, Oh, hey, who are these
cool new mysterious dudes who have been seen around town?
What kind of fun and mysterious things must be up to?
I bet it's really cool and mysterious. Also leading to

(44:58):
the spread of the clan and likely it's increasing militancy,
was the fact that eighteen sixty seven had also featured
elections which saw Republicans sweeping the victory not only in
Tennessee but also all across the South. With these victories
coming about in no small part due to the newly
freed African Americans voting to support the party that had
been behind their liberation. The outcome of these elections then

(45:20):
seriously and bettered the at the time Conservative Democratic Party
and its supporters, especially since they had actually made an
attempt to appeal to the newly freed African Americans to
get them to vote with them, albeit doing so and
what was likely an exceedingly racist and condescending way. As
Southern whites were confident that nobody knew and understood black
people better than the people who had enslaved them, they

(45:41):
had then been fairly confident before the election that the
now freedmen would trust their former masters and their judgment
and would thus vote Democrat per their desires and wishes. Now,
this tactic, while blind to reality, had to some degree
ensure that the run up to the election wasn't particularly
violent in eighteen sixty seven. However, since it failed, the

(46:02):
defeated former Confederates were now even more upset than ever,
so they started looking for a new outlet for their rage,
as well as a new way to respond to what
they saw as oppression for meddling Northerners. Republicans pro Union
white traders, and of course, the newly freed African Americans.
As a result, early eighteen sixty eight saw in the
Klan experience, which seems to have been a fairly rapid

(46:23):
and massive expansion, as it went from having chapters in
a half dozen or so counties in Middle Tennessee to
having them in virtually every southern state now. The press
obviously played a role in this expansion as they helped
to spread the legend of the Klan. The Northern Press,
for example, bound up the Klan by stressing that it
was an organization that was behind the various incidents they

(46:43):
were reporting on, which had the effect of portraying the
Ku Klux Klan as this singular organization with wine stretching
arms and cohesive, unified goals, something that wasn't truly the case,
as instead of an organization that was essentially controlled, with
every group calling itself the clan and reporting in and
taking orders from a singular leadership group with a singular

(47:04):
vision and tactics, the reality was the Klan was just
a bunch of at best, loosely connected groups that often
operated independently from one another. The idea of this massive
cohesive organization then made the clan seem more powerful and
more attractive than it actually was. Additionally, the Northern press
were also strangely fascinated with the secret society aspect of

(47:24):
the group, which kind of helped to make it look
mysterious and interesting instead of just a bunch of unhinged
racist terrorists. Meanwhile, publications like Harper's Weekly, even though not
sympathetic to the clan and their cause and advertedly, also
helped to spread the legend of the group as While
they would characterize the group as basically being the terrorist
arm of the Democratic Party, not all who rather publications

(47:47):
saw this as a bad thing. For example, when covering
the nineteen sixty election, the publication would report how we
quote rebel colonel from Georgia and a meeting in New
York shouted that if Northern Democrats won't take care of
the bayonet, the Southern Democrats would be responsible for the
result of the ballot in November, meaning that the ku
Klux Klan would take care of loyal voters, an inclusion

(48:09):
which was surely designed to frighten and anger their readers. However,
for many unrepented Confederates, this was music to the ears.
This was exactly what they wanted and thus exactly the
kind of group that they wanted to be a part of. So,
for any reading this, if there wasn't already a Clan
chapter in their area to join, they would then set
up one for themselves and other like minded white supremacists. Additionally,

(48:32):
Democrat leading papers in the North would compare the Clan
to the Union League and in doing so ignore the
violent and terroristic activities of the group that had ties
to their political party activities, which, by the way, seemed
to be absent from all accounts concerning the Union League.
Of course, though for as bad as the Northern press
missed the mark, the Southern press was far worse, as

(48:54):
instead of portraying the Clan as a terrorist group, they
said they were an organization that was dedicated to enforce
in the Southern Code of honor, doing so because again
they wanted to portray themselves as victims. As you see,
while white Unionists and African Americans were gaining power, many
sovereigners were being stripped of theirs Mike for example, Some
were being denied things that the right to bear arms

(49:16):
and vote, which they saw as being outrageous, especially when
their former says were now being given those same rights,
all the while ignoring the fact that this was punishment
for being a bunch of traitors who had taken up
arms against their country so they could continue to own
other people Southern Democratic papers and not only openly praised
the Klan and its growth, but they even actively encouraged

(49:39):
their readers to go out and form their own chapters.
The conservative Richmond inquire An Examiner, for example, would call
for the creation of the Clan in Virginia, saying that
the organization was necessary because of the actions of radical Republicans,
writing that quote, the sum of all their countemplated villainies
is the Africanization of Virginia and the dis enfranchisement, out lawry,

(50:01):
and persecution of every Reginian who was not a base
trader to a section during the late Civil War, meaning
all those who supported the Confederacy, also known as the
actual traders. In a similar vein the Arkansas Gazette, which
usually opposed secret societies, would justify the Clan's existence by
claiming that quote, the Radical Party throughout the South is

(50:21):
a sworn secret organization, and owing to this, it has
been able to manipulate the ignorant and superstitious Negroes to
vote them as one man. It was the paper's position
then that organizations like the Clan would have to continue
to exist until a quote free and just government of
the White Rays was put in place. That being said,

(50:42):
these papers are only that open and vocal and support
of the Clan until the organization started committing violent acts,
at which point the local conservative press, rather than being
critical of the group, instead typically pretended that such events
weren't actually happening, as it basically would suggest that these
incidents were just the product of the troubled imagination of
their political opponents, like they were deranged or something. This

(51:05):
wasn't just a Southern phenomenon, either, as even a paper
like the Chicago Times, despite being printed any North, was
not immune to such tactics. As you see, the Chicago
Times was a Democrat paper, and thus it far less
frequently made any mention of the Klan, much less the
political leanings of those involved than when they did have
a dimension a specific incident of violence, the paper would

(51:27):
typically either call it a hoax or blame the incident
on the victim's own prior behavior. Now, the first incident
involving the Klan outside of Tennessee that really attracted national
attension was the murder of Republican organizer George W. Ashburn
in Columbus, Georgia, an incident which perfectly illustrates both of
these behaviors by the conservative press. Ashburn Nussi was an

(51:48):
outspoken supporter of the reconstruction efforts, and in doing so
he had garnered a significant following among the local freedmen.
It was then for this grand defense the thirty to
foenty clansmen only thirty free, one March eighteen sixty eight,
broke into the boarding house where Ashbourn was staying, with
five specifically making their way to his room, where they
proceeded to shoot and kill him. Now these a clear

(52:09):
assassin nation. The conservative Presstone looked to a stride from the
sheer overwhelming violence of this act by trying to make
the story about Ashbourn's supposedly scandalous behavior. As the we
characterized the boarding house where the murder happened as a
quote Negro brothel of the lowest order. Because the boarding
house in question was owned by a black woman, and
because among its guests of both races was a young

(52:32):
white woman of supposedly quote unquote dubious character. Meanwhile, in
the wake of this playtant assassin Nation, the Columbus Son,
who just a week earlier had been trumpeting the clan's
arrival in town, now pretended that the clan was a
quote holy imaginary organization. Now, as a clan spread beyond
the city of Pulaski and Giles County, Moray County, Tennessee, became,

(52:54):
if not the home of the largest clan chapter in
the region, the home of its most active and most
violent chapter, with their favorite pastime seemingly being nighttime raids
in the homes of local African Americans. These raids would
all typically follow a similar script. For example, upon arriving
at their target, they would often post guards around the
perimeter so as to ensure that no help came and

(53:14):
that no one escaped. The remaining clansmen would either call
out to the people they were after, or alternatively simply
break into their homes and pull them out of their beds. Now,
for the most party clan on these raids focused primarily
on men and older boys. However, according to reports, not
even children and pregnant women were safe from their violence
either way. Once they had their chosen target at hand,

(53:36):
the clansmen often proceeded to whip their victims bare back.
In doing so, they often administered hundreds of lashes, a
frankly mind boggling amount, as that number was not only
likely to leave permanent scars, but in some cases could
even leave the victim partially crippled. Now, these incidents were
purportedly punishments for alleged crimes and a warning that worse

(53:56):
would come if they did not reform, with the supposed
crimes ranging from allegedly setting fire to barnes owned by
whites to voting Republican or being a part of the
Union League. Clan apologists would then claim that these activities
were necessary because the radical Republican governments in the South
were so corrupt and inefficient that they were incapable of
properly punishing these supposedly numerous crimes committed by African Americans,

(54:21):
a claim that appears to have been exactly as falses
and sounds as even radical Republicans and no real compunction
about arresting and punishing black people. Meanwhile, it also has
to be said that for as extremely painful as a
whipping is for the recipient, it is also a form
of punishment that is fairly laborious for the person administering it.
Which is not me saying, oh, think of the poor
exhausted clansmen in his tired arm, but instead is me

(54:44):
pointing out that a whipping was not some random act
of violence that was doled out indiscriminately. It was a
deliberate choice that was made because of its ties to
the days of slavery. Indeed, everyone involved in these rituals
had a deep understanding of the kind of crime that
was related to the numbers of lashes being delivered and
what tool was being used, which is to say that

(55:04):
it was a torture practice that had its own set
of roles and meanings that were baked in by this point,
and it seems that the clansmen were purposely going above
and beyond what was expected. That being said, whippings were
the only punishment doled out during these nighttime visitations. Indeed,
some were deliberately lethal. There were shootings, and there was
also the incident in July eighteen sixty eight where some

(55:25):
fifty to sixty clansmen took a twenty year old black
boy out into the countryside, where they guarreted him, and
once he was dead, they proceeded to tie a stone
around his neck and dumped his body in the river. Meanwhile,
it should be noned that every raid, regardless of whether
they were there just to threaten or to inflict some
degree of violence, also typically included a search of the
property in question, a search whose goal it was to

(55:46):
fight and confiscate any weapons. Firearms at particular as African
Americans were further twisted racist philosophy not entitled to defend themselves. Now,
to be clearly, clan did not invent this kind of
nighttime raid. Indeed, this type of behavior had existed in
the Southern States even prior to the Civil War. As
you see, if someone was believed to have been guilty

(56:07):
of behaving in such a way the community found unacceendable
and disruptive, they might be visited at night by collection
of individuals who would throw rocks at their house or
shot obscenities at them from outside, or, depending upon the
degree of the offense, they might break it and assault
the offending person for their supposed bad deeds with stuff
like drinking, gambling, sexual immorality and socializing across racial lines,

(56:30):
all being the kinds of offenses that might result in
such punishments in the pre war South. In fact, this
kind of communal vigil lantic group that police social behavior
is actually a tradition that went back to Europe, where individuals,
sometimes wearing costumes, would gather outside of homes at night
to play unwelcome and unpleasant tunes, Bengal pots and otherwise
seat to humiliate the individuals who they had taken exception to. Meanwhile,

(56:53):
nighttime violence had also become common during the war, especially
in the territories along the border of the warring sections
the country, as political enemies were liable to become victims
of violent acts up to and including beatings, rape, and murder.
Which is all to say that the Klan wasn't actually
doing anything new or unique. In fact, they weren't even
unique in dressing up to undertake such violent acts. Following

(57:16):
the end of the Civil War, for example, in Franklin Parish, Louisiana,
there was a group who called themselves the Black Horse Cavalry,
who wore blackface as they went about their violent nighttime raids.
The thing was the black Horse cavalry, and other similar
costume groups have largely been forgotten because their reach was
limited and their actions sporadic. While on one hand this

(57:36):
made them less likely to draw the attention of the
federal government, it also kept them from being fully effective.
The Klan though, While their acts were carried out by
individual dens, which like these other groups, focused primarily on
the small, local scale, the fact that they had spread
so far and wide enabled them to present themselves as
a singular, unified force that acted cohesively across all the

(57:57):
Southern States. It was then the whyd range of their oppression,
and not their outfits, that was the most frightening part
of their organization, as it seemed like you couldnot really
escape them because they were everywhere in the South. If anything,
the outfits weren't new so much to frighten their victims
or hide their perpetrators' identities, as they were used to
make their activities seem more theatrical and thus not as

(58:19):
violent or political in nature. Basically, their outfits, which were
an outgrowth of their beginnings of the fraternal secret society
type group, were seemingly kept around because they wanted to
make it look like they were just up to mischief
and not doing actual terrorism. Essentially, they wanted to make
it seem like they were, to use a modern term, trolling,
which is why the clan and their various white allies

(58:40):
like the claim. But the reason why the newly freed
black men and women were afraid of the robe wearing
strangers who visited them at night was because they actually
believed they were the ghost to Confederate soldiers killed during
the war, While clan members in places like Alabama, Mississippi,
and Georgia would tell their victims that they were moon men.
Either way, the popular claims he was these robe figures

(59:01):
had come from Hell, specifically to terrorize their black victims,
who were so silly and superstitious that they actually believed
that's what was happening and that's why they feared for
their lives, when the reality was they were simply scared
of the strangely costumed white people who had arrived uninvited
at their houses in the middle of the night. Indeed,
blacks in the South at a long and negative history

(59:21):
of white men riding about on horses, a history that
stretched back to the days of these slave patrols to
more recent encounters with groups that called themselves the Yellow
Jackets and the Red Caps, who were known to show
up and interrupt various African American public gatherings, ranging from
political meetings to church services to just run of the
mill social gatherings. Which is all to say that it's
unlikely that their fancy regalia was actually responsible for the

(59:44):
fear experienced by their black victims, as the reality was
the way they clan treated them was actually why they
were terrified. Indeed, reports repeatedly tell stories of African American
men being physically pulled from their beds by their necks
or by their hair, which you know is frightening enough
all already, but that was typically just the beginning, as
these men would then be pulled outside, where they were

(01:00:05):
then tied up and whipped or alternatively shot with a
shotgun as they tried to run away, fleeing not because
they were afraid of Confederate ghosts, but because these were
cruel and vicious white men and they knew it. The
clan's outfits end did not seem to have any real
impact on the people they were harassing, torturing, and terrorizing,
regardless of whether they claimed to be ghosts or moon men,
or added animal like elements like tails and horns through

(01:00:27):
their costumes as they acted like cows with the way
they shook their heads or hold like dogs or owls.
With all this again not even really being original ideas either,
As you see, they were simply taking costume ideas from
the popular entertainment of the day. Everything from Martin grawl
like carnivals, mask or raide parties, and even various theatrical
productions were used as inspiration for their little outfits. This

(01:00:49):
included minstrel shows, as it wasn't uncommon for clansmen to
done blackface as a part of their activities. Speaking of
entertainment and the theatricality of the clan, they also did
bits as a part of their terroristkaigns. For example, while
brutally attacking the paraplegic freeman Elias Hill, some of the
clan members buckled a strap around his neck as they
dramatically announced that they should take the paraplegic man down

(01:01:10):
to the river to drown him. After making this loud,
dramatic pronouncement, they turned to Hill to ask him to
provide them with directions, with Hill later describing the scene
quote what courses the river, they asked me. I told
them East. Then one of them went feeling about as
if he was looking for something, and said, I don't
see no east. Where is the damn thing, as if
he did not understand what I meant. A comedic bit

(01:01:33):
of sorts in between their assault on a paraplegic man,
which I assume amused them to no end. There are
also accounts of the clan during their raids, putting on
fake voices and accidents as they went through little performances
for their own amusement, while others looked to enhance their
ghostly or other worldly appearance by sitting on one another's
shoulders and throwing the robe on top, basically doing the

(01:01:53):
kids in a trench code bit just for evil. Some
also put on dresses and women's hats to add to
the comedic gas expected their violent activities. And then there
was a bit that some did before riding off into
the night, as it would offer to shake the hand
of the African American individual they had just terrorized, only
to offer a fake appendage that they then left the
black individual holding as they rode off. Now, the reason

(01:02:16):
why the Klan did these things wasn't just for their
own amusement, but because it also shot out their terroristic
activities and the cloak of they were just playing a joke.
As that way, if word got out about what they did,
these stories could be interpreted two ways, depending upon the audience.
For why, the purpose was to undercut the violence with
the comedic like elements that surrounded it, as that way

(01:02:38):
there was no reason to take the group too seriously. Meanwhile,
for African Americans, these tales were meant to horrify and
if failing that, to humiliate those who had fallen prey
to such so called jokes. As at the core of
the clan's activities wasn't just the goal of stripping the
newly freed African Americans of their right to have any
say in the government, but to completely control how they

(01:02:58):
were to behave and engage in public life. One of
the primary goals of these nighttime raids then, was to
redefine their black victims place in the New South, now
that they were no longer enslaved. Basically, they wanted to
remind the people they terrorized of their quote unquote please
which was of course below whites, doing so both through
violence and by forcing their victims to demean or humiliate

(01:03:19):
themselves in one way or another. One way in which
they did this was by making their victims assume these
stereotypical roles, then one would see in the racist minstrel shows. Indeed,
part of the reason why they insisted that the freed
people were framed because they believe the clansmen were ghosts,
was because that was a way of portraying their victims
as stupid and superstitious, hence proving that they were inherently

(01:03:41):
less than Additionally, these tales also served to support their
portrayal of themselves as just a bunch of innocent jokers.
They couldn't help. But if their victims were too stupid
and too superstitious to quote unquote get the joke. As
you see, they hadn't really been there to terrorize them.
They had just been joking, which was why these tales
were so popular among the clansmen and their apologies. They

(01:04:03):
weren't violent terrorists and murderers. They were silly pracsters who
dressed up and wrote around at night. They weren't undertaking
a campaign of terror. They were just spooking a bunch
of glible and superstitious African Americans so as to keep
them in mind. Yet, despite their acting like their activities
were harmless. To be clear, even these so called jokes
still featured quite a bit of violence. For example, one

(01:04:25):
witness from Tennessee would describe John Dummop, who was a
victim of the clans violence, as he quote worst whipman
I ever saw. I have seen negroes whipped and bad
lit two in the days of slavery, but he was
the worst whip man I ever saw. Now, to be clear,
the freed people were not just victims. Indeed, some of
the tales of their gollibility grew out of the fact

(01:04:47):
that they were simply opted to go along with what
the crazy white people in these stupid costumes clearly wanted.
These were, after all, a people who had a long
history of dealing with dangerous and violent whites, and so
they knew how to give them what they wanted, the
hopes that that would satisfy their violent impulses. Alternatively, one
form of resistance employed by some of the clans would
be victims was to just not play along with their

(01:05:09):
whole stick as instead of pretending to accept their tales
of being moon men and ghosts, they would just identified
the costume men by name. Elias Thomas, a black farmer
from Sparnsburg, South Carolina, for example, when the clan arrived
at his home one night, would open a door and,
upon seeing the robed and hooded men simply say, quote,
come in, gentlemen, inviting them inside like he was expecting

(01:05:30):
them and night. There was nothing unusual about their outfits. Then,
as the klansmen asked if he was ready to die,
clearly intending this to be a threat, Elias calmly responded
that he was not. The robe men then told Elias
that he should pray before they killed him, and he
responded not with fear and terror like they expected, but
by telling them that he wasn't going to do that
because he wasn't the praying type. Likely growing annoyed that

(01:05:54):
this black man was not behaving the way they expected,
they turned their attention to the reason for their visit,
the fact that Elias had dared to vote. But again,
instead of begging for forgiveness or anything like that, Elias
simply told them that it was the quote duty of
a man to vote what he thinks is right. The
likely now frustrated clansmen then threatened to hang Elias, who

(01:06:15):
responded by laughing at them, which really seemed to offend
the costumed clansmen, who were bothered by the fact that
he was not playing along with their little game properly.
Elias was being mean because he wasn't allowing them to
have the kind of fun they planned on having, because
he was not behaving the way they anticipated he would
behave a tactic that clearly worked to some degree, as

(01:06:36):
he clearly lived to tell the tale of their encounter. Others, meanwhile, Austin,
did not just blindly await their fate, nor did they
just sit back and allow this to happen. Many, for example,
even though such resistance potentially risked even worse treatment, made
plans to counter the clans attacks. The free people then
did things like for malicious or self defense packs. Some

(01:06:56):
then slept in one another's homes so that way there
would be multiple peers people there who would be ready
to respond to the Klan try to pay them a visit,
while others, even when taken by surprise, still fought for
their lives. This included women who fought desperately against the
sexual violence that the supposedly superior and civilized men looked
to employ against them. We see one way in which

(01:07:17):
this played out in the aforementioned Murray County, Tennessee, the
home of the most active and most violent clan chapter
in the state. It was and after a couple months
of these nighttime raids, that the Murray Klansmen felt so
uninvincible that they and klansmen from elsewhere in the state
decided to make a show of their power and numbers
by marching through the city of Columbia. In the lead
up to this demonstration, then, some two hundred and fifty

(01:07:39):
clansmen gathered together and camped on the western edge of town. Meanwhile,
some twenty to thirty local African Americans, sick and tired
of months of persecution, instead of being intimidated, also got
together and armed themselves with the various weaponsy clansmen and
not managed to confiscate. These twenty to thirty African American
men then headed down to where the clansmen were camped.

(01:08:00):
Without warning, they, apparently with a fair degree of military discipline,
started shooting upon the camp. As they did, several clansmen
fell to the ground crying out in pain. Still, though
there had been quite a few clansmen in that camp,
and somall some might have been injured by the initial volley,
many more were stall plenty capable, and so they mounted
up and charged the vastly unnumbered African Americans, who, for

(01:08:23):
their part, fell back to some nearby breastworks, where they
answered the Clansmen's charge with yet another volley of gunfire,
after which they continued to show off their military life
discipline as they carefully retreated to a nearby location where
a Federal infantry force who had recently been dispatched to
the region was camped. Now, while these soldiers swiftly assembled
into defensive lines when the Clansmen approached the fact that

(01:08:45):
the matter was they were also significantly outnumbered by the klan.
The clansmen, though dared not attack the federal troops out
of fear of what might be unleashed upon them again,
so seeing us on the lessons of the Civil War
were still quite fresh in their minds, the clan decided
not to push their luck and retreated. Unfortunately, though the
following day, a so called vigilance committee was organized in Columbia,

(01:09:08):
which then took to the streets searching for any African
Americans they could find so as to punish them for
daring to stand up to white people in general and
the clan in particular, regardless of whether or not they
had been involved in the previous night's activities or not,
with likely more than a few undisguised clansmen taking part
in these more out in the open activities, something that

(01:09:28):
was just kind of allowed to happen, as the people
of Columbia either supported such activities or were otherwise to
intimidate it to do anything about it. The clan itself
also actively low to punish those who had dared to
stand up to them, as they also haunted down several
local African Americans who they claimed to have been involved. Others, though,
would flee in Nashville, as in general, larger cities, even

(01:09:51):
though they were also home to the clan, were generally
safer for the African Americans living there, likely because they
lived closer together in neighborhoods and were thus less isolated
and thus less vulnerable. Meanwhile, it should be noted that
while the Murray County Clan were worse than some of
the others its dome, has to be said that all
chapters of the clan to one and greer or another

(01:10:11):
seemingly participated in these kinds of punishments there were meted
out for crimes like voting Republican, belonging to the Union League,
or having served in the Union Army. This included aide
freeman from Marshall County, Tennessee, who were forcely marched on
into a field and gunpoint, where they were compelled to,
on pain of death, swear with Outbrey's hands that they
would never vote for the so called radical ticket again. Indeed,

(01:10:34):
for as much as the clan, its leaders and its
defenders tried to claim that it was not a politically
minded organization, one of the surest ways to tell that
a new chapter had been formed in a region was
if local Republican officeholders all of a sudden started receiving
various threats about what would be done to them if
they did not resign. And to be clear, in some
cases it was more than just written threats, as one

(01:10:56):
Sheriff Webb Murphy's Borough, Tennessee, would be dragged out of
his home at midnight and told that he would be
lynched unless he resigned. Now, Webb would call their buff
and refuse to resign and so while he did not
exactly sleep comfortably for a while, Lee Clan never did
back up their threat, of course, though that may have
simply been because he really didn't need to. Assy County
was home to some eight hundred to eight thousand clan

(01:11:17):
members who paraded through town at least once or twice
a week with impunity, all the while also assaulting freedmen
and women on a nightly basis because there was no
one who could stop them. Indeed, their reign of terror
in Murphysborough was such that the African American residents just
stopped reporting these incidents to the Freedman's Bureau as it
was seemingly pointless and because he clan is threatened to

(01:11:38):
kill anyone who did. Similar scenes of violence would be
repeated all across Tennessee wherever the clan dug its claws in.
For example, on Lincoln County, sixty five year old State
Senator William Wyatt would be dragged out of his home
by some clansmen who proceeded to beat him over the
head with their pistols, knocking him unconscious before leaving him
in that condition with wine seemingly getting off easy compared

(01:12:00):
to at least two other men were killed in that
county alone, while a number of Unionists, rather than deal
with the clan violence and harassments, simply opted to flee
the area altogether. That being said, the clan wasn't just
about political intimidation, as they also looked to control the
behavior of African Americans, like, for example, the time they
whipped a woman sixty five times because her white employer

(01:12:22):
was of the opinion that she needed to be quote
unquote disciplined. Meanwhile, the surest thing that would attract clan
attention were reports of African Americans organizing to defend themselves,
as they continued to have visions of slave rebellion type
incidents where African Americans would rise up in exact a
bloody revenge on the entire white population. The clan then
liked to portray themselves as protectors of their white neighbors,

(01:12:45):
as they protected them not only from such uprisings, but
also from the supposed rampant criminality of the recently freed people.
The thing was for as much as their fellow white
Southerners did not care all that much about what they
did to their black neighbors, there were times when their
assaults on other whites because of political affiliations crossed the
line and brought on public disapproval of the clan. Indeed,

(01:13:06):
there were even sometimes that the violence against African Americans
crossed the line it became too much even for the
average races to bear. Like, for example, Morgan Field in
December eighteen sixty eight, the clans crimes against African Americans
got so bad that the local shaff for arrested fire
suspected clansmen, and the locals actually guarded their town against
any potential clan reprisals, which seems to be a pretty

(01:13:28):
clear indication that everyone was just tired of their shit.
In such cases, it often fell to the clan leadership
to make a public show of cleaning up their own
mess by first insisting that such acts were not in
the spirit of the clan. They would then declare that
going forward, all their members would be expected to behave
according to a set of rules that were designed to
prevent whatever offense it had been committed from happening again,

(01:13:50):
while also promising to punish any violators. Now, whether such
statements had any basis in reality was far less important
than the fact that they were made publicly. With statements
usually being printed in the local paper, as the goal
was to keep the public on their side and not
risk a larger backlash against the Klan as a whole.
After all, the clan was only allowed to function because

(01:14:11):
they were seen as being on the side of the
average Southern white. It was critical then to continue to
court public opinion. They would then do things like old
parades or make a point of finding Confederate widows and
orphans who were suffering so that they might make a
show of giving them some money to alleviate their problems.
It is for the same reason that the clan also
looked to portray themselves as a moralizing force Mike for example,

(01:14:33):
the time when the Murphysborough Clan forced a man who
would run off on his wife to return to her.
It was then, through betraying themselves as good, upstanding citizens
and agents of morality, while also acting as a way
for the anger and frustrated former Confederates to let out
their rage against a vulnerable population, that the Glan was
able to spread so far so fast as they were

(01:14:54):
allowing racist Suntherners to not only indulge in their darkest impulses,
but also pretend to be doing so for the benefit
fit a society at large in the process. Indeed, the
spread of the ku Klux Klan from Pulaski to all
of Tennessee was so complete that by July eighteen sixty eight,
the State commander of the Freedman's Bureau, General W. P.
And Carlin, would report that quote, complaints are continually coming

(01:15:15):
in of outrages committed by the ku Klux Klan. The
colored people are leaving their homes and are fleeing to
the towns in large cities for protection. They say it
is impossible for them to work during the day and
keep watch during the night, which is necessary for them
to do in order to save their lives. The only
choice left to many such individuals and was to flee
to cities where they would have no means of supporting

(01:15:36):
themselves other than have to rely upon the government to
do so, an outcome which the General did not approve of,
but nor could he, in good conscience give them any
other advice. Inass's opinion, then that quote, the Ku Klux
organization is so extensive and so well organized and armed,
that it is beyond the power of anyone to exert
any moral influence over them. Powder and ball is the

(01:15:57):
only thing that will put them down. Governor Brownlow was
clearly thinking along those same lines, as he had the
legislature pass a law that would enable sheriffs to hire
individuals from other counties to put down uprisings. The problem was,
by this point sheriffs and Tennessee were either sympathetic to
the Klan or were too intimidated by them to take
any kind of active stance against them. So the governor

(01:16:19):
then sought the aid of the federal government to deal
with this growing problem. In response to his request, some
small detachments of federal troops were then sent to Sumner
and Murray Counties bought, this did nothing to address the
larger clan issue. Indeed, in June, the governor would receive
a telegram from a Congressman who reported that the Clan
had come looking for him, and it was obvious that
they had bad intentions, as when the clansmen had searched

(01:16:42):
the train for the congressman, they had been carrying some
combination of pistols and robes. Deeply unnerved by the continued
threat that the Clan presented, Governor Brownlow then put in
another equest to the federal government for even more troops. However,
he would be informed that there were not enough men
available to meet his needs. Brownlow, though, does not want
to just back down, so on the twenty seventh of July,

(01:17:03):
he called for a special session of the Tennessee State Legislature,
and which when he demanded that quote these organized bands
of assassins and robbers be declared outlaws by special legislation
and punished with death wherever found. The legislature then basically
gave the governor what he wanted, as he set the
minimum penalty for any who was a member of who
assisted or even just encouraged a secret organization that went

(01:17:26):
about in disguise for the quote purpose of disturbing the
peace or alarming the peaceable citizens, at a fine of
five hundred dollars and five years in prison, basically making
it a criminal offense to be a part of, or
even just associated with the clan as long as it
continued its terroristic activities. On top of that, the legislature
also extended these penalties to anyone who advised disobedience of

(01:17:47):
the law, or anyone who threatened and or intimidated a voter,
again just criminalizing the clan's activities, plus a also put
in place other lesser penalties for any officials who, whether
deliberately or not, failed to enforce these law laws, as
they looked to undermine the whole the clan had on
the local government. Meanwhile, in this same session, the legislature
also made it fully legal for an individual who was

(01:18:09):
to only being threatened and harassed by members of such
a costume criminal organization to kill members offset organization in
that moment. That being said, should the individual in question
not be in a position to kill the members of
the aforementioned costume organization in that moment, they were then
empowered to sue those who had taken part in such
harassment for ten thousand dollars. Furthermore, the legislature empowered Governor

(01:18:31):
Brownlaw to organize a state Guard Force, a military force
that he could then dispatch to aid And County where
ten union men certified that citizens could not be protected
and the laws could not be enforced without military assistance,
with Brownlaw further being authorized to declare martial law in
any local where such conditions were met. A series of
laws that presented a clear and present danger to the

(01:18:51):
clan and their allies, which I can say with confidence
because in the wake of the special session, the conservative
forces of Tennessee, including several former Confederate officers who also
happened to be prominent clan members, suddenly reached out to
the governor to promise that the clan would stop its activities,
asking a return than Brownlaw promised to not call out
the militia, and while he was at it, also removed

(01:19:12):
the restrictions that had been placed upon Confederate leaders like
themselves when it came to voting and serving in the government.
As you see, they claimed that they were afraid that
the governor would use the militia to impact that year's
congressional and presidential elections, which is just another one of
those cases where every accusation from these people is a confession,
as that was exactly what they were trying to do
with their clan activities. Now, Brownlow and his radical Republican

(01:19:35):
allies had no interest in lifting the restrictions that had
been placed upon Confederate traders. They were, though, willing to
hold off calling out the militia and instead just bring
in federal troops in the name of keeping the peace,
a situation that was more appealing to the Conservatives, who
were less worried about what the federal troops might do
with all the restrictions that were placed upon them, versus
what an undisciplined militia force with potentially free your reign

(01:19:57):
might be able to do. It was and with the
the conservative forces in Tennessee that federal troops were asked
for and a regiment was soon dispatched. To be clear, though,
Governor Brownlow would still call from militia companies to be organized,
but in doing so he declared that he did not
want to call them into action. That being said, he
also made it clear that if he were quote compelled

(01:20:17):
to put down armor roters my force, I proposed to
meet them with such numbers and in such manner as
the exigency shall demand, whatever may be the consequences, I
will not be deterred from the discharge of my duty
herein by threats of violence from rebel speakers or rebel newspapers,
nor by any means of intimidation. Governor Brownlow then was
very much keeping as proverbial guns within arm's reach in

(01:20:39):
the wake of people like General Nathan Bedford Forrest openly
declaring in public that if Brownlow called out the militia,
his government would be swept away, a threat that Forrest
backed up by asserting that theyclared not only had forty
thousand members in Tennessee, but five hundred and fifty thousand
all across the southern United States, a threat which he
focused specifically on quote unquote radical leaders, as he stated

(01:21:01):
that quote, I have no powder to burn killing negroes
and tend to kill the radicals. Furthermore, the former Confederate
general would assert that, quote there is not a radical
leader in this town, but is a marked man, and
if trouble should break out, none of them would be
left alive again. Even as these starts were being made,
the Concertive leaders and former Confederates in Tennessee were actively

(01:21:24):
encouraging their followers in the clan to keep things quiet
and more or less behave themselves for the time being,
And so while there would still be murderers and the like,
for the most part, general clan activity did drop off
significantly through August, September, and October. It was and only November,
with the elections so close and Brownlow seemingly content to
leave matters in the hands of the federal troops that

(01:21:45):
the Klan went back on the word and picked up
their terroristic activities in earnest. However, they tail the clan's
attempts to influence the eighteen sixty eight elections and its
other crimes all across the South in the coming years
will have to remain for now, a story for another time.
Thank you for listening to Distorted History. If you would

(01:22:07):
like to help out, please rate and review the podcasts
and tell your friends if you think they'll be interested.
If you would like ad free in early episodes, I
set up such a feed over at patreon dot com
slash Distorted History. By paying ten bucks a month, you
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on Spotify or likely through your podcast app as long
as it uses an RSS feed. I will continue to

(01:22:29):
post sources on koffee and Twitter, though, as it's just
a convenient place to go to access that information. Regardless.
Once again, thank you for listening and until next time.

(01:23:01):
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The First Klan Part 1 Birth and Reconstruction

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