Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era - The Diigo Meta page

• 23 Jan 14
  

  Jill Strykowski
• 02 Jan 12
  

  Casolyn Chapman

  U.S. History civil war _ reconstruction

• 27 Jan 08
  

  David Voelker

  history racism

  • From 1868 through the early 1870s the Ku Klux Klan functioned as a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists.  The Klan's goals included political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy in response  to newly gained civil and political rights by southern blacks after the Civil War. They were more successful in achieving  their political goals than they were with their social goals during the Reconstruction era.
  • The political terrorism was effective. While Republican gubernatorial candidate Rufus B. Bullock carried the state in April  1868 elections, by November Democratic presidential candidate Horatio Seymour was in the lead. In some counties the contrast  was incredible. In John Reed's Oglethorpe County, 1,144 people had voted Republican in April, while only 116 dared to vote  Republican in November when Reed's armed Klansmen surrounded the polls. In Columbia County armed Klansmen not only intimidated voters but even cowed federal soldiers sent to guard the polling place. Not surprisingly,  while 1,222 votes had been cast in Columbia County for Republican governor Rufus Bullock in April, only one vote was cast for Republican presidential candidate Ulysses Grant in November 1868. Similar political  terrorism and control of the polling places help account for Georgia's quick "redemption" and return to conservative white  Democratic control by late 1871.

    • This example focuses on one county to show how white supremacists used terrorism to defeat Republicans in the South.
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  • By the 1890s many men proudly claimed to have ridden with the Klan and thereby saved Georgia  and the South from "Negro domination." This romanticized vision of the Klan was celebrated in popular novels and laid the  foundation for the more openly organized Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the second Ku Klux Klan, founded in Atlanta in 1915.

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Public Stiky Notes

• 
  David Voelker on 2008-01-27
  This example focuses on one county to show how white supremacists used terrorism to defeat Republicans in the South.

Page Comments

• 
  David Voelker on 2008-01-27
  The entry from the *New Georgia Encyclopedia* explains how the original Klan used violence and terror to reassert white political power in the South during Reconstruction.

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