Mary - Journeytohistory

Chapter 13Losing the Peace275outraged them, they could protest vigorously to the president, as Wade Hamptondid in 1866, and expect quick relief. These white Southerners were determinedto guide their own destiny and control blacks. When RadicalReconstruction made this impossible, in 1867 they struck with fury and rage.The violence, which culminated in the Ku Klux Klan movement, did notarise solely, however, from the establishment of Radical Reconstruction andthe consequent elimination of many Southern white men from public life. Asearly as 1866, when Southern whites had almost complete charge of Reconstruction,a kind of guerrilla warfare was carried on against both blacks andwhites who represented the Washington government in the South. The head ofthe Freedmen's Bureau in Georgia, for example, complained that bands of mencalling themselves Regulators, Jayhawkers, and the Black Horse Cavalry werecommitting the "most fiendish and diabolical outrages on the freedmen" withthe sympathy not only of the populace but of the reconstructed governmentstoo. There were scores of these coercive organizations all over the South. Theywere formed as white protective societies, and while Southern leaders enactedthe new Black Codes, these organizations were engaged in "keeping the Negroin his place" and sniping at Northerners who had come south.Secret societies grew and spread when it became apparent to Southernersthat their control was to be broken by Radical Reconstruction. For ten years after1867 there flourished the Knights of the White Camelia,Whjte protel,thethe Constitutional Union Guards, the Pale Faces, the White"0 'ieties illthe SOllthBrotherhood, the Council of Safety, the '76 Association, andthe Knights of the Ku Klux IUan. Among the numerous local organizationswere the White League of Louisiana, the \Vhite Line of Mississippi,and the Rifle Clubs of South Carolina. \Vhite Southerners expected to do by extralegalor blatantly illegal means what had not been allowed by law: to exerciseabsolute control over blacks, drive them and their fellows from power, and establish"white supremacy." Radical Reconstruction was to be ended at all costs,and the tactics of terrorist groups were the first step of Southern white leaderstoward achieving this goal.The Camelias and the Klan were the most powerful of the secret orders.Armed with guns, swords, or other weapons, their members patrolled someparts of the South day and night. Scattered Union troops proved wholly ineffectualin coping with them, for the members were sworn to secrecy, disguisedthemselves and their deeds in many ways, and had the respectViolencepe"petTnted"J;"jllst blocl, bythe ClIl1Ielias lindthe (