History Of The Ku Klux Klan

When an American has been born who can write an impartial history of the ten years of our country immediately succeeding Appomattox, and deal fairly with the opposing factions in the bitter and frequently bloody after-struggle, he will find nothing so remarkable and mysterious as the purposes and history of The Invisible Empire, more commonly known as the Ku Klux Klan.

It sprang into being almost in a night; it spread with inconceivable rapidity, until its dens largely dominated the States of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and parts of Arkansas and Louisiana. It defied State and national authority (as they then existed), and under the very nose of the army of the United States it sent forth 100, 000 armed men to do its bidding, passed laws without Legislatures, tried men without courts, and inflicted penalties, sometimes capital ones, without benefit of clergy; it was the most thoroughly organized, extensive, and effective vigilance committee the world has ever seen; or is likely to see; its every act was in defiance of the established order and the spirit and letter of our institutions, and yet I am thoroughly convinced that, among conditions as they existed in the States referred to between 1866 and 1872, scarcely a man in this assembly would have been other than a Ku Klux or a Ku Klux sympathizer.

I do not mean that anyone present could for an instant tolerate or excuse many acts of cruelty and oppression committed by The Invisible Empire, or the still larger number committed in its name by its enemies and reckless and malicious individuals, who had no real connection with the movement; I do not mean that the original design of the organization, treated as an academic question, could meet with the approval of right-minded men; but an individual can be properly judged only in the light of surroundings and the conditions under which he acts; applying this standard, the Ku Klux movement assumes the dignity of a revolution, the protest of a proud and despairing race against conditions not to be endured; not a movement of weaklings or theorists, but of desperate men, challenging fate, and swearing that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should be theirs and their childrens at any cost.

Not all authorities have agreed on what constitutes the right of revolution; it is stated by one that: The right of revolution is the inherent right of a people to cast out their rulers, change their polity, or effect radical reforms in their system of government or institutions, by force or a general uprising, when the legal and constitutional methods of making such changes have proved inadequate, or are so obstructed as to be unavailable. (Blacks Constitutional Law, 2nd Ed., p. 11. ) The general duty of obedience to the laws results from the protection they afford to the lives and property of the citizens and subjects; but when a civil government fails to afford that protection, and ...