The White Backlash 423rituals, exotic symbols, and other paraphernalia calcu-
lated to impress unsophisticated people, they enrolled
the freedmen in droves and marched them to the
polls en masse.
Powerless to check the League by open methods,
dissident Southerners established a number of secret
terrorist societies, bearing such names as the Ku
Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camelia, and
the Pale Faces. The most notorious of these organi-
zations was the Klan, which originated in Tennessee
in 1866. At first it was purely a social club, but by
1868 it had been taken over by vigilante types dedi-
cated to driving blacks out of politics, and it was
spreading rapidly across the South. Sheet-clad
nightriders roamed the countryside, frightening the
impressionable and chastising the defiant. Klansmen,
using a weird mumbo jumbo and claiming to be the
ghosts of Confederate soldiers, spread horrendous
rumors and published broadsides designed to per-
suade the freedmen that it was unhealthy for them to
participate in politics:
Niggers and Leaguers, get out of the way,
We’re born of the night and we vanish by day.
No rations have we, but the flesh of man—
And love niggers best—the Ku Klux Klan;
We catch ’em alive and roast ’em whole,
Then hand ’em around with a sharpened pole.
Whole Leagues have been eaten, not leaving a man,
And went away hungry—the Ku Klux Klan....When intimidation failed, the Klansmen resorted
to force. After being whipped by one group in
Tennessee, a recently elected justice of the peace
reported, “They said they had nothing particular
against me... but they did not intend any nigger
to hold office.” In hundreds of cases the KKK
murdered their opponents, often in the most grue-
some manner.
Congress struck at the Klan with three Force
Acts(1870–1871), which placed elections under fed-
eral jurisdiction and imposed fines and prison sen-
tences on persons convicted of interfering with any
citizen’s exercise of the franchise. Troops were dis-
patched to areas where the Klan was strong, and by
1872 the federal authorities had arrested enough
Klansmen to break up the organization.
Nevertheless the Klan contributed substantially
to the destruction of Radical regimes in the South.
Its depredations weakened the will of white
Republicans (few of whom really believed in racial
equality), and it intimidated many blacks. The fact
that the army had to be called in to suppress it was a
glaring illustration of the weakness of the
Reconstruction governments.
Gradually it became respectable to intimidate
black voters. Beginning in Mississippi in 1874, terror-
ism spread through the South. Instead of hiding
behind masks and operating in the dark, these terror-
ists donned red shirts, organized into military compa-
nies, and paraded openly. Mississippi redshirts seized
militant blacks and whipped them publicly. Killings
were frequent. When blacks dared to fight back, heav-
ily armed whites put them to rout. In other states
similar results followed.
Terrorism fed on fear, fear on terrorism. White
violence led to fear of black retaliation and thus to
even more brutal attacks. The slightest sign of resis-
tance came to be seen as the beginning of race war,
and when the blacks suffered indignities and persecu-
tions in silence, the awareness of how much they
must resent the mistreatment made them appear
more dangerous still. Thus self-hatred was displaced,
guilt suppressed, aggression justified as self-defense,
and individual conscience submerged in the animality
of the mob.
Before long the blacks learned to stay home on
election day. One by one, “Conservative” parties—
Democratic in national affairs—took over southern
state governments. Intimidation was only a partial
explanation of this development. The increasing
solidarity of whites, northern and southern, was
equally significant.
The North had subjected the South to control
from Washington while preserving state sovereignty
in the North itself. In the long run this discrimina-
tion proved unworkable. Many Northerners had
supported the Radical policy only out of irritation
with President Johnson. After his retirement their
enthusiasm waned. The war was fading into the past
and with it the worst of the anger it had generated.
Northern voters could still be stirred by refer-
ences to the sacrifices Republicans had made to
save the Union and by reminders that the
Democratic party was the organization of rebels,
Copperheads, and the Ku Klux Klan. “If the Devil
himself were at the helm of the ship of state,” wrote
the novelist Lydia Maria Child in 1872, “my conscience
would not allow me to aid in removing him to make
room for the Democratic party.” Yet emotional appeals
could not convince Northerners that it was still neces-
sary to maintain a large army in the South. In 1869 the
occupying forces were down to 11,000 men. After Klan
disruption and intimidation had made a farce of the
1874 elections in Mississippi, Governor Ames appealed