The Emergence Of The Kkk Essay Research

The Emergence Of The Kkk Essay, Research Paper

The occupation by Union troops in the former Confederate states led to the development of the Ku Klux Klan. During the Reconstruction, the process of rebuilding that followed the Civil War, white supremacy reigned supreme in the Southern states (Trelease xxviii). However, early Reconstruction legislation limited the amount of power that whites had over blacks politically and socially. Implementations such as the Reconstruction Act of 1867 created a precedent that made blacks equal with whites, giving them their civil rights as well. Violence and uprisings caused President Grant to send in Union troops to put down the initial attacks and to sustain peace throughout the former Confederacy. These troops, though, caused hatred to run through the minds of the citizens of the South and resulted in more violent attacks. The troops, with their presence in the South, actually caused more harm than good. Terrorist organizations, the Ku Klux Klan being the most prominent and overpowering, began forming and meeting under the cover of darkness. With the withdrawal of the troops, President Grant put the lives of black people in the South in certain jeopardy. Violence immediately rose in the South and the Ku Klux Klan came into existence.

The Reconstruction period was deeply hurt by the overbearing presence of the Civil War. The country, in disarray, needed to get back on track and began reconstructing itself. A temporary settlement was reached during the war in order to create a better country and to get the U.S. back on the right foot. But, as the war ended, the Reconstruction settlement was still left unsettled. The situation became even more strayed with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865, which then made Andrew Johnson, Lincoln s vice president, the Commander-in-Chief. Being from Tennessee and, as well, being a Democrat, Johnson soon made it obvious that the Republican commitment to rebuilding the South and his commitment were completely different. Johnson blamed the Confederate rebellion on a group of wealthy Southerners and therefore fought for a policy of leniency for former rebels and one of neglect for former slaves. Johnson wanted to restore political rights to the Southern states as quickly as he could. By immediately giving the governors of Southern states the right to call a constitutional convention, they would be able to write a new constitution forbidding slavery and prohibiting secession.

All of a sudden, the South grew very optimistic after the realization that they had a friend in the White House. Scheming and extremely rejuvenated, Southern governments reorganized years of chaos under Johnson’s new policy. For example, the Southern governments created and passed a series of acts or laws known as the black codes . These codes, varying in severity from state to state, strongly restricted the rights of freed slaves and hampered their efforts to eventually become an equal in Southern society. The codes were made to leave blacks with a status of in-between that of slave and freed slave.

It was during this time in the mid-to-late 1860s in Pulaski, Tennessee that an informal group of men began what was called a social club at first, named the Ku Klux Klan. Nathan Bedford Forest along with six other officers, after serving in the Confederate army during the Civil War, began the club in the South to be, in effect, a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party (Foner 425, Reconstruction). The Klan s actions were soon directed at the Reconstruction governments because of the dislike and hatred the KKK had for them. In becoming more powerful and having a membership of up to 40,000 by 1868, the KKK became more forceful in their tactics to have Democrats elected into offices around the Southern states (Tourg e 30). The occupation of Union troops in Southern territory aggravated them to the point that there was hatred toward the Union. It was at this time period that the KKK formerly came into existence for the first time.

Aside from the Presidential Reconstruction, Congressional reconstruction occurred and activity continued after 1867. Impeachment hearings against President Johnson were a part of the Congressional reconstruction and reorganization. Johnson, however, was not convicted and removal from office failed by one vote in the Senate. Congressional Republicans felt that Johnson was blocking the implementation of the government’s Reconstruction policy. Congress, therefore, passed the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1869. It extended the power of the Fourteenth Amendment, allowing the protection of the right to vote for blacks by saying that no person could be disallowed the right to vote on the basis of skin-color or race. Another act passed during the Reconstruction was the Civil Rights Act (1875) which disallowed hotels, theaters, or railroads to discriminate or segregate according to color or race. The Supreme Court, however, declared this act unconstitutional in 1883. Many other acts, laws, and codes were passed during the Reconstruction as a result of the change in the country. But the backbone of the Reconstruction was the Reconstruction Act of 1867. In the Reconstruction Act it was stated that the former Confederate states would be required to give equal civil and political rights to blacks as to whites. These governments, on the other hand, were