extent immediately after the war- has been increased since that time, by the course which our people believe has been wrongfully pursued toward them. Whether right or wrong, it is the impression of the southern mind it is the conviction. of my own mind, . . that we have not been met in the proper spirit. We, in Georgia, do not believe that we have been allowed proper credit for our honesty of purpose. We believe that if our people had been trusted, as we thought we ought to have been trusted if we had been treated in the spirit which was manifested on the Federal side at Appomattox CourtHouse.. if this had been the spirit in which we had been treated, the alienation would have been cured. . .

The people of the South appreciate, I think, very fully and very justly the conduct of General Grant in protecting . . the soldiers who surrendered there, when there was all this talk about punishing for "treason," &c.; but I think that the bad faith was in this: The conduct of the Federal army, officers and soldiers, from General Grant down, at Appomattox Court-House, led our people to feel that a liberal, generous, magnanimous policy would be pursued toward them. They felt that they were at liberty to construe that conduct into a pledge, as it were; and as the sort of policy which that conduct apparently pledged has not been pursued towards us — as the policy has been one of distrust instead of liberality and magnanimity, our people feel that the faith which was pledged to them has been violated. . . We do not claim that we had any written pledge from General Grant and his army, any further than that we should not be disturbed, so long as we obeyed the laws.

We felt there was a moral obligation arising from the circumstances .; we had no written pledge except that contained in our paroles; and we think that that written pledge itself has been broken in the fact that we have been deprived of rights which we had inherited. . . In that particular our people feel that the Government has not kept faith with us. We have been disfranchised.

General Forrest's Explanations

Ku Klux Report, vol. xiii, pp. 6-32. General Forrest was head of the Klan after 1868. The first extract is from a newspaper interview in 1868 which Forrest claimed was not correct; the second is from his testimony in 1871.

[1868, 1871]

[1] IT is true that I have never recognized the present government in Tennessee as having any legal existence, yet I was willing to submit to it for a time, with the hope that the wrongs might be righted peaceably.

I loved the old government in 1861; I love the old Constitution yet. I think it the best government in the world if administered as it was before the war. I do not hate it; I am opposing now only the radical revolutionists who are trying to destroy it. I believe that party to be composed, as I know it is in men who would Tennessee, of the worst men on God's earth hesitate at no crime, and who have only one object in view, to enrich themselves. . . If the militia were simply called out, and do not interfere with or molest any one, I do not think there will be any fight. If, on the contrary, they do what I believe they will do, commit outrages, or even one outrage, upon the people, they and Mr. Brownlow's government will be swept out of existence; not a radical will be left alive. If the militia are called out, we can not but look upon it as a declaration of war, because Mr. Brownlow has already issued his proclamation di recting them to shoot down the Ku-Klux wherever they find them; and he calls all southern men Ku-Klux. . . There is such an organization, not only in Tennessee but all over the South, and its numbers have not been exaggerated. . . In Tennessee there are over forty thousand; in all the Southern States about five hundred and fifty thousand men. . . It is a protective, political, military organization. . . The members are sworn to recognize the government of the United States. It does not say anything at all about the government of the State of Tennessee. Its objects originally were protection against the Loyal Leagues and the Grand Army of the Republic; but after it became general it was found that political matters and interests could best be promoted within it, and it was then made a political organization, giving its support . . to the democratic to the democratic party. . . I

have no powder to burn killing negroes. I intend to kill the radicals. . . There is not a radical leader in this town [Memphis] but is a marked man; and if a trouble should break out, not one of them would be left alive. I have told them that they were trying to create a disturbance, and then slip out and leave the consequences to fall upon the negro. . . Their houses are picketed, and when the fight comes not one of them would ever get out of this town alive. . . If the militia attack us, we will resist to the last; and, if necessary, I think I could raise 40,000 men in five days ready for the field. . . Since its organization the leagues have quit killing and murdering our people. There were some foolish young men who put masks on their faces and rode over the country frightening negroes; but orders have been issued to stop that, and it has ceased. You may say further that three members of the Ku-Klux have been courtmartialed and shot for violations of the orders not to disturb or molest people. . . There is a limit beyond which men can not be driven, and I am ready to die sooner than sacrifice my honor. This thing must have an end, and it is now about time for that end to come.

[2] They [the Ku Klux orders] were like the Loyal Leagues, and met occasionally and dispersed again. The Loyal Leagues existed about that time, and I think this was a sort of offset gotten up against the Loyal Leagues. I think that organization arose about the time the militia were called out, and Governor Brownlow issued his proclamation stating that the troops would not be injured for what they should do to the rebels; such a proclamation was issued. . . There were a great many northern men coming down there, forming leagues all over the country. The negroes were holding night meetings; were going about; were becoming very insolent, and the southern people all over the State were very much alarmed. I think many of the organizations did not have any name; parties organized themselves so as to be ready in case they were attacked. Ladies were ravished by some of these negroes, who were tried and put in the penitentiary, but were turned out in a few days afterward. There was a great deal of insecurity in

the country, and I think this organization was got up to protect the weak. . . I was getting at that time [1867-68] from fifty to one hundred letters a day and had a private secretary writing all the time. I was receiving letters from all the Southern States, men complaining, being dissatisfied, persons whose friends had been killed, or their families insulted, and they were writing to me to know what they ought to do. . . I think this organization was more in the neighborhood of places where there was danger of persons being molested, or in large negro counties, where they were fearful that the negroes would rise up. . . I do not think it existed at all in the poorer neighborhoods, where there was no danger of insurrection. There were a great many fires at that time, burning of gin-houses, mills, &c.

"The Whites Must and Shall Rule"

House Misc. Doc. no. 154, 41 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 321. This extract from an address of Colonel Alcibiade de Blanc is important since the writer was the Grand Commander of the Knights of the White Camelia in Louisiana. [November 30, 1868]

WE had hardly parted with our muskets when we heard the harsh voice of poltroons and speculators, who had kept hidden during the war, and that voice proclaimed. . that we were out of the Union; and that we could re-enter it but on their own terms and what are they? That we should renounce the rights appertaining to our race, and forever submit to the domination of liberated slaves; that we should consent, not only to be degraded, but to degrade ourselves. . . Had the acceptance, on our part, of negro suffrage and negro supremacy been announced as a condition to the acceptance of our surrender. . . we would have fallen and been buried in the confederate uniform.

The seeds of the most vindictive hostility have been sown in the hearts of the black race. They have been taught to disregard the rights of property, to violate their contracts with us. They have been told that we intend to reduce them back to slavery, and instructed to procure and keep power and lead to slaughter us. What were, in this locality, the counsels impart ed by their leaders? . . "If you are not rich enough to buy a

gun or a knife, you rich enough to buy a box of matches, and, with those matches, you can destroy in a few minutes what the whites have labored forty years to win." What were the instructions everywhere given and to be followed by the freedmen, in case a difficulty should occur between them and the whites? "Your wives will remain at your employer's house and kill the women and children. As to you, do not forget it, the order from the government is that you shall commence with the men and stop at the cradle."

We have witnessed the revolting spectacle of excited negroes riding through our streets and on the public roads with guns on their shoulders, revolvers and dirks hanging at their sides, matches in their hands, yelling, cursing, and threatening to shoot down and cut the throats of the whites, to destroy their property... There is not a locality in which the negroes have not perpetrated depredations, robberies, arson, rape, and murder, and, in every instance, they have been protected by the villains who have represented us as being ready to resist the laws and the authority of the land. If we have the audacity to defend our flesh against the dirk, and the gun, or defend our property against a firebrand when the dirk, the gun, and the firebrand are held by a black hand- the oft-rehearsed cry, "the rebels are again in open resistance against the government," is thrown to the four winds of the heavens. That cry awakens every echo of the American Capitol, and alarms the tender and magnanimous heart of every loyalist...

We are ruined; every branch of industry is cramped and paralyzed; anxiety, trouble, scarcity, humiliations are at the threshold of every southern home; and a tax- an intolerable, a spoliating tax threatens to despoil us of the remnants of our property and of the scant fruits of a discouraged and dying industry. It bears heavily on the mansions of the once wealthy and still more heavily on the dwelling of the poor; it spares not the humble cabin of the freedmen. . . Is it reasonable to expect that we will tamely submit to this plunder, this spoliation, and that we will kiss the hands of the robbers of our rights, the murderers of our States? ..