668 nee >py 1 _HE ORIGINAL KU KLUX KLAN AND ITS SUCCESSOR oA'Pap er l^ad at Stated Meeting of the MILITARY ORDER OF THE LOYAL LEGION OF THE UNITED STATES COMMANDERY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS October 6, igii J "By COMPANION FIRST LIEUTENANT AND ADJUTANT DUNCAN C I^v^ILNER gSth Ohio Infantry, U. S. V. THE ORIGINAL KU KLUX KLAN AND ITS SUCCESSOR Fifty-six years ago the War of the RcbelHon. or the War for the preservation of the Union, closed its four years of slaughter and destruction. It has been said that no correct history of those eventful years can be written while those who participated are alive. Differences of oi)in!()n and dif- ferences of interpretation will abide. In recent years there seems to be a purpose to rewrite the history of the Civil War with a deeply partisan 1)ias in favor of the South. When the war closed in 1865 it found the South suffering much, because within its borders most of the battles had been fought, and of necessity the regions asso- ciated with the marching of the armies and the fighting, had much of the ruin and desolation associated with war. It is part of the glory of our country that the victorious government, with unparalleled magnanimity dealt so gener- ously with those who took up arms and forced the war to destroy the Union. There was no hanging or banishing the leaders and no confiscation of property, but there was com- plete amnesty and full restoration of i)oIitical rights. Slavery was destroyed as a result of the war. and it left in the South a large ])roportion of the white people chagrined and bitter over their defeat. As time has gone by. many of them do not hesitate to say that they are glad that the Union was preserved and that the slaves were freed. One of the most notorious of Southern fire-caters was U. S. Senator Ben Tillman, known as "Pitchfork Ren," of South Carolina. Shortly before his death he s])oke these words in the Sen- ate: "I never believed it possible that 1 could do it, but slow- ly and by degrees 1 have come to think that it was best for all concerned that the .South was defeated and for me to say it is a marvel to myself. Slavery was a curse which had to be destroyed ere the South and the North and the world could advance." A minority, however, have determined to try to create a sentiment that "the c.iu^^e for which the .South fought was ctern.illy right." ( )ur Companion, Col. W. (I. I'entley, in his striking address "Under the Searchlight." .says: "Certain leaders entered up- on the camjKiign oi education [o show the 'justice of their bUnbwr murk midnight, in the hall of puhlic assembly, upon the river brink, on the lonelv woods-road, in simulation of the public executioti — shot, stabbed, hanged, drowned, mutilaled be\()nd description, tortiu'ed beyond conception. "And almost always by an unknown hand. Only the ter- rible, mysterious fact of death was certain. Accusatifjn by secret denunciation; sentence without hearing; execution without warning, mercy or appeal. In the deaths alone, ter- rible beyond utterance, but in the manner of death — the se- cret, intangible doom from which fate springs — more ter- rible still in the treachery which made a neighbor a disguised assassin — most horrible of all the feuds and hates which his- tory portrays. "And then the wounded — those who escaped the harder fate — the whipped, the mangled, the bleeding, and the torn ; men despoiled of manhood; women gravid with dead chil- dren ; bleeding backs, broken limbs ! Ah ! the woiuided in this silent warfare were more thousands than those who groaned upon the slopes of Gettysburg. "Dwellings, and schools, and churches burned; people driven from their homes and dwelling in the woods and fields. The poor, the weak, the despised, maltreated and persecuted — by whom? Always the same intangible pres- ence, the same invisible power. Well did it name itself 'Tlic Invisible Empire' Unseen and imknown. In one state, ten thousand ; and another, twenty thousand ; in another, forty thousand ; in all, an army greater than the Rebellion, from the moldering remains of which it sprung, could ever put in the field. An 'Invisible Empire,' with a trained and dis- ciplined army of masked midnight marauders, making war upon the weakling 'powers' which the Wise Men had set up in the lately rebellious territory." Is there any good reason why in the year 1921, forty years after the Ku Klux Klan was suppressed, its terrible record should be again repeated? An abundant apology for the review of this tragic history is the fact that misguided peo- ple have resurrected the name and many functions of the old Klan in a newly-organized society which has added to its anti-negro platform anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, and anti-alien born. It is to the credit of our country that there has come a loud protest from people both North and .South against any renewal of such an imlawful night-riding association witli its hypocritical profession of super-patriotism and its sup- planting the orderly administration of the courts. Many of the best white men and women of the South op- pose the new Klan because of personal knowledge of the old crowd, and denounced the exhibition as a damnable outrage, caricaturing history and helping to create further hatred and prejudice against the Negro and should be suppressed. The managers shut off the talk by getting the band to strike up its music. Air. Dixon acknowledged that part of the purpose of his book and of the play was to create and deepen the abhor- rence of the colored people. On account of its slanders upon the Union soldiers and its influence to intensify race hatred and prejudice the movie was not allowed to be shown in a number of cities and sev- eral states. It is said that some of the scenes have been eliminated. Dixon's story may have as an antidote another story written by Albion W. Tourgee, "A Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools." Judge Tourgee was an officer in the Union Army. After the war he settled in the South, bought property and planned to become a citizen and help build up a desolate country, and with no purpose of unfriendliness to the South- ern people. A Southern author wrote of Tourgee: 'Tie is a learned and laborious jurist and possesses literary gifts of a high order. His judicial career, in spite of abundant criticism, redounded to his credit and his greatest fault is disregard for the honest prejudices of the good people among whom he saw fit to cast his fortunes." Judge Tourgee says of "The Fool's Errand" : "The one merit which the story claims is that of honest, uncompro- mising truthfulness of portraiture. Its pictures are from life." This book, and the twelve volumes of the report of the Congressional committee appointed to investigate the "Ku Klux Klan" furnish abundant material for the strongest indictment that can truthfully be made against this secret society. Judge Tourgee said : "This new Reign oi Terror had come so stilly and cjuietly upon the world, that none realized its fearfulness and extent. At first a subject of careless laugh- ter, then contemptuous ridicule, and finally a question of in- credulous horrtjr." lie said the ])eople who were the chief sufferers were, in the main, humble people. Their wrongs were not told in the j)ul)lic j)ress. He sums up the history of the Klan in these words: "Of tile slain there were enough to furnish forth ;i battle field, and from all these three classes, the Negro, the scala- wag and the carpetbagger — all killed with deliberation, overwhelmed bv inimbers, roused from slumber and the on occasion, to their 'carpetbag' and 'scalawag' friends — these titles denoting respectively Northern and Sonthern men \vho took the Negroes' side. The very violence of the Order, which at last tnrned against it, the old Sonthrons themselves, hronght it into disrepnte with its original insti- tutors, who were not sorry when l*\'deral marshals i)nt np to it by President Grant, hunted den after den of the law- breakers to the death." Prof. Goldwin Smith, the distinguished English author, wrote "The United States," an outline of political history. 1492-1871. After the Congressional plan of reconstruction passed, he said : "Ostensibly the Negro was master of the states ; but his utter ignorance, incapacity and credulity made him the dupe and tool of white adventurers from the North, named Carpetbaggers, who, in alliance with some apostate Southern whites named Scalawags, got the governments of a number of the Southern states into their hands. There en- sued a reign of roguery, jobbery and peculation under the military protection of the party dominating the North. States were loaded with debt and the money was stolen by the car- petbaggers. In the appointment of judges and the administra- tion of justice the same corruption prevailed. This was not the way to reconcile races. To wreak vengeance for their wrongs and avenge their pride thus wounded to the quick, the whites organized a secret society called the Ku-Klux- Klan, parties from which were sent forth by night and com- mitted horrible atrocities on the negroes. Like secret socie- ties in general, the Ku-Klux-Klan went beyond its original design, became the organ of private malice and inaugurated a reign of terror. At last the scandal of the system grew insuiTerable, military protection was withdrawn from the carpetbagging governments, which fell, and the whites were enabled to reinstate themselves in power. They did not fail, practically, to disfranchise the Negro, either by driving him from the polls' or refusing to count his vote. So it is still." It might be supposed that a society with such an infamous history would be allowed to remain in a dishonored grave. Recently, the name and the society has been resurrected. Some thirty years after the original Ku Klu.x Klan had been suppressed by the Federal authority by direction of Presi- dent Grant, there was published a novel by Thomas Dixon, called "The C lansman. ' It was one of a series of stories planned by the author to give a new version of events con- neced with the history of the Rebellion, especially relating to the Reconstruction period. Dixon had no personal knowl- edge of these events, as he was born in 1864. His father was a Confederate soldier, and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He claims that his novel develops the true story of the Ku Klux Klan. In his preface he says he sought "to preserve both the letter and the spirit of this remarkable period." The book is an effort to glorify the Confederate attempt to destroy the Union. It caricatures the truth of history and also citizens of the Republic who were loyal. The author attempts to sugar-coat his false history by a flattering account of Abraham Lincoln as "The Friend of the South." "The Clansman" took a new lease of life by the creation of the remarkable moving picture film called "The Birth of a Nation," prepared by David Wark Griflfith, in collabora- tion with Dixon, and the book and the picture may be con- sidered together. They form a gross libel on the cause of the Union and upon many of the public leaders, and upon Union soldiers. Slavery was justified, the rebellion was right, and freedom for the Negro was a crime. Percy Hammond, in a review of "The Birth of a Nation'' at its first exhibition, said : "It would be more admirable as drama were it less partial as propaganda. Mr. Griffith, the son of a Confederate brigadier, explicitly sees the 'Lost Cause' as a hallowed one, with its followers suffering, not ignobly, the injustice and cruelty which are the prime at- tributes of most of their antagonists in the play. The Ku Klux, about the holiness of whose exploits historians (Presi- dent Wilson among them) express some doubts, are pictured as exalted seraphim, members of a righteous and indignant hierarchy who did no wrong. Sherman's army, on the other hand, is visualized as a drunken mob addicted to murder and rapine, pillaging a sweet and lovely countryside. The cap- tion to this episode infers a sneer at the 'great conqueror.' who marches to the sea while Southern women and children subtly brought into contrast are hungry and in tears. Lee is to Grant as Hyperion to a wharf rat and Thaddeus Stevens — at his worst an honest big(jt — is presented as an evil and carnal niisceganist with a mulatto sweetheart." Mr. Hammond said: "1 confess the prejudice of ime whose father and grandfather marched with Sherman to the sea. and whose best boyhood friend was the statesman who ilrafled the [''ourtcenth .Xmendmenl." lie also says at llu- exhibitiitn of "'ihe I'irlh of a .\ali(»n, Ihe crowd cheeretl the .St.'irs and P)ars and was not moved by the .Stars and .Stri])es. It a])|)lautle(l 'l)i\ie' and greeted '.Marching 1 Inough (ieorgi.i' with silence." The writer of this paper witnessed the early exhibition of this picture at the Illinois theater, rmd ;it the close spoke from the balcony to the great As to the sins of the carpetbagger he is eloquent, but ex- pressed Httle appreciation of the anti-slavery spirit. Mr. Wilson, however, felt the compulsion to denounce the Ku Klux Klan while giving some apologies for some of its work. He said "it became the chief object of the night-riding comrades to silence or drive from the country the principal mischief makers of the reconstruction regime, whether white or black." In carrying out their plans violence was their favorite method and Mr. Wilson says "houses were surrounded in the night and burned and the inmates shot as they fled, as in the dreadful days of border warfare. Men were dragged from their houses and tarred and feathered. Some who de- fied the vigilant visitors came mysteriously to some sudden death." He also said that the Ku Klux made no nice dis- crimination in favor of the men and women who came solely and unselfishly to help the Negro, and charged that those who came upon an errand of mercy and humanity had bitter thoughts toward the white people. Mr. Wilson summed up the work of the Klan in these words, "brutal crimes were committed ; the innocent suffered with the guilty, a reign of terror was brought on and society was infinitely more disturbed than defended." James Ford Rhodes has written the "History of the United States— 1850 to 1877." Prof. Dodd, of the University of Chicago, and an open sympathizer with the South, acclaims ^Ir. Rhodes as the great historian of our day. It seems to me that Mr. Rhodes has large sympathy with the South. He gives considerable space to the "Ku Klux Klan," and says, "its object was to intimidate the negroes from voting, to terrify them into good behavior and make them amenable in the matter of industry to the whites." He says, also, when the Negroes realized that they owed their freedom to the North and it was evident that their former masters as a mass had no sympathy with any of their ambitions, it was natural that they went with the carpet- baggers. In the reports of the racial conflicts in almost all cases the results showed that Negroes alone were killed and wounded. Many Southern reports of outrages held the Negroes and carpetbaggers alone responsible. Mr. Godkin, editor of the Nation, ridiculed these Southern versions of the outrages, by paraphrasing Artemus Ward's account of a fearful thrash- ing he once administered to a very powerful antagonist, with whom he grappled at a railroad station. "According to Mr. Ward he grappled with his antagonist and violently dashed him to the ground, himself iniderneath ; then he got his enemy's hand lirmly twisted in his hair. The foe still showing some signs of activity, Mr. Ward inserted a piece of his cheek hetween the foe's teeth and kept it there for some time, after which his antagonist slunked off, having ineffectually as a last resort jumped up and down on the triumphant showman's stomach. The ht)rrible outrages at the South are done in plain imitation of Ward and result in victories of an entirely similar character." This sarcastic account of Mr. Godkin is entirely appropri- ate to many of the outrages charged against the Negroes from that day to our own. Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, in his "History of the United vStates — 1870 to 1895," gives this picture of the "Ku Klux Klan :" "The chief instrumentality at first used for keeping col- ored voters from the polls was the Ku KIu.k Klan, a secret society organized in Tennessee in 1866. It sprung from the old night patrol of slavery times. Then, every Southern gentleman used to serve on this patrol, whose duty it was to whip severely every Negro found absent from home without a pass from his master. Its first l^ost bcllidn work was not ill meant, and its severities came on gradually. Its greatest activity was in Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, where its awful mysteries and gruesome rites spread utter panic among the superstitious blacks. Men visited Negroes' huts and 'munimicked' about at first with sham magic, not witli arms at all. One would carry a flesh bag in the shape of a heart and go around 'hollering for fried nigger's meat.' Another would put on an India-rubber stomach to startle the negnt by swallowing jjailfuls of water, .\nother represent- ing that he had hem killed at Manassas, since which time '.someone had built a turnpike over his grave and he h.id to scratch like hell to get up through the gravel.' The lodges were 'dens' ; the members 'ghouls' ; 'giants,' 'goblins,' 'titans,' 'furies,' 'dragons' and 'hydras,' were names of ditlerent classes among the ofiicers. "Usually the mere existence of a Men" anywhere was suffi- cient to nnder docile every Negro in llu- vicinity. If more were recpiired, a half do/en 'ghouls,' making their nocturnal rounds in their hideous masks and long, white gowns, fright- ened all but the most hardy. Any who showed light were whipped, maimed or killed, tre;itinent which was extended. As a result of their failure to use these early opportunities to give the Negro a chance and also to seek their own best interests, new and extreme legislation was enacted, and then came the sad Reconstruction days, when "carpetbaggers" used the ignorant negro as a means to get power and gain. The South determined to sacrifice everything rather than allow the ex-slaves a reasonal)le exercise of their rights and liberties, and they helped to bring upon themselves the dark days of anarchy and robbery. A prominent advocate of the rights of the Negro wrote: "The memory of those frightful carpetbag days still haunts the South and stands today as the most persuasive arguments against the extension of ne- gro suffrage. * * * Had the Southern whites them- selves undertaken patiently and courageously the political leadership of the colored people instead of sulking in their tents like the Homeric Achilles and leaving them a prey to the unscrupulous adventurers who swarmed from the North like vultures, the story of this epoch of Negro domina- tion would have been far different." A Negro finely educated, and standing high among the leaders of his race, writes about these sad times as follows : "During those dark years the blacks were nuich more sinned against than sinning. They were sinned against by their white leaders who, in the main, used them to advance their personal and party interest and who employed the posi- tions they thus gained to steal the people's money to enrich themselves at the expense of the states. There were colored leaders who followed closely in the footsteps of the white leaders in perverting public trusts to corrupt ends, but the chief malefactors, the biggest scoundrels, were members of the white race. In these circumstances the blacks were the helpless victims of the misrule of their own leaders and of the organized lawlessness of the Southern whites. * * * Nor did they get any training in personal and civic right- eousness from their own leaders of either race. For these leaders initiated them promptly by the power of exami)le. into the great and tloiu-ishing American art and industry of graft." In connection with the troubles of the Reconstruction days a number of secret societies were formed, among them the "Knights of the White Camellia," the "Pale Faces," the "Constitutional Union Guards," the "White Brotherhood." With similar purpose, but in the end supplanting all the rest, there came into existence the "Ku Klux Klan," an "Invisible Empire of the South." Its original organization was in the village of Pulaski, Tenn., and its brst purpose was simply as a club for associa- tioii and amusement. It was soon discovered that by means of the secrecy of their society, the mysteries as to the times and places of their meetings, their disguises and parades when their companies rode out in the night with their white masks and tall cardboard hats ; and men and horses sheeted in ghostly covering, and with horses' feet muffled so that they could move in almost complete silence, they became a source of terror, especially to the ignorant and superstitious negroes. It was soon recognized as a new machine for political power. The organization multiplied in a number of states and became a great source of lawlessness, outrage and terrorism. In the published plans of the Klan they de- clared their purposes to be "to protect the people from indig- nities and wrongs, to succor the suffering, particularly the families of dead Confederate soldiers, to enforce what they chose to recognize as the real laws of the states." They also audaciously added "to defend the Constitution of the United States and all laws in conformity thereto." Such an unlicensed power could not be kept in control, and it inaugurated a reign of terror in many parts of the South. The distinguished Negro from whom we have already quoted, said : "When Congress intervened by its reconstruc- tion measures to defeat the reactionary program of the South, there swept over that section a crime-storm of dev- astating fury. The old master class organized their pur- pose in respect to the Negro and their hatred of everything Northern into a secret society known as the "Ku Klux Klan." which was nothing else than a gigantic conspiracy for the conunission of crime. Lawlessness and violence tilled the land and terror stalked abroad by day and night. The Ku Klux Klan burned and nun-dered by day and it burned and murdered by night. The Southern states had actually relapsed into barbarism. During that period a new generation was conceived and born to the South of both races that was literally conceived in lawlessness and born in- to crime producing conditions. Lawlessness was its inher- itance and the red splotch of violence its birthmark. * * " 'JV> the carpetbag governments belongs, however, the intro- ducti(jn into the South for the first time the I'ublic School, with the right of eacli child in tlu- state, regardless of race and ^olor, to an education at the hands of the state." W'oodrow Wilson, in liis "History of the .American Peo- ple," leans very strongly in favor of his native and beloved .South. I le has little to say as to the wrt>ng of slavery or its terrible mi