The Ku Klux Klan
The ‘invisible empire’ of the Klan, writes Louis C. Kleber, was the answering organization in the Southern states to the Radical regimes imposed by the victorious North.
For Americans, the Civil War and the years surrounding that epic conflict between the stages remain the most poignant, dramatic and destructive period of the Republic’s history. One of its manifestations was the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan.
Shrouded in secrecy, powerful in capability, determined to accomplish its goals, it was an organization described by Senator John Sherman, brother of General William T. Sherman, as ‘armed, disciplined oath-bound members of the Confederate Army’. As such, the Klan was the child of the Civil War and its aftermath.
The South had seen no need for the war. After all, they joined the Union as sovereign states in a voluntary association and they could leave the same way. To the North, the vital question was not slavery but the preservation of what it considered an indissoluble union.
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