Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama Part 42

The mighty Genii wants two black wethers!

Make them, make them, make them! Presto!

The Great Giantess must have a white barrow. Make him, make him, make him! Presto!

Meet at once--the den of Shakes--the Giant's jungles--the hole of h.e.l.l! The second hobgoblin will be there, a mighty Ghost of valor. His eyes of fire, his voice of thunder! Clean the streets--clean the serpents' dens.

Red hot pincers! Bastinado!! Cut clean!!! No more to be born. Fire and brimstone.

Leave us, leave us, leave us! One, two, and three to-night! Others soon!

h.e.l.l freezes! On with skates--glide on. Twenty from Atlanta. Call the roll. _Bene dicte!_ The Great Ogre orders it!

By order of the Great BLUFUSTIN.

G. S. K. K. K.

A true copy, PETERLOO.

P. S. K. K. K.

The following was circulated around Montgomery in April, 1868:--

K. K. K.

CLAN OF VEGA.

HDQR'S K. K. K. HOSPITALLERS.

_Vega Clan_, New Moon.

3rd Month, Anno K. K. K. 1.

_Order No. K. K._

Clansmen--Meet at the Trysting Spot when Orion Kisses the Zenith. The doom of treason is Death. _Dies Irae._ The wolf is on his walk--the serpent coils to strike. Action! Action!! Action!!! By midnight and the Tomb; by Sword and Torch and the Sacred Oath at Forrester's Altar, I bid you come! The clansmen of Glen Iran and Alpine will greet you at the new-made grave.

_Remember the Ides of April._

By command of the Grand D. I. H.

CHEG. V.

The military authorities forbade the newspapers to publish Ku Klux orders,[1940] and the Klan had to trust to messengers. Verbal orders and warnings became the rule. The Den met and discussed the condition of affairs in the community. The cases of violent whites and negroes were brought up, one by one, and the Den decided what was to be done. Except in the meeting the authority of the Cyclops was absolute.

C. C. Sheets, a prominent scalawag, had been making speeches to the negroes against the whites. The Klan visited him at his hotel at Florence, caught him as he was trying to escape over the roof, brought him back, and severely lectured him in regard to his conduct. They explained to him that the Klan was a conservative organization to hold society together. A promise was required of Sheets to be more guarded in his language for the future. He saw the light and became a changed man.[1941] When a carpet-bagger became unbearable, he would be notified that he must go home, and he usually went. If an official, he resigned or sold his office; the people of the community would purchase a $100 lot from him for $2500 in order to pay for the office. The office was not always paid for; a particularly bad man was lucky to get off safe and sound.[1942]

Objectionable candidates were forced to withdraw, or to take a conservation bondsman, who conducted the office.[1943]

Before the close of 1868 the mysterious element in the power of Ku Klux Klan ceased to be so effective. The negroes were learning. Most of the mummery now was dropped. The Klan became purely a body of regulators, wearing disguises. It was said that in order to have time to work for themselves, and in order not to frighten away negro laborers, the Klan became accustomed to making its rounds in the summer after the crops were laid by, and in the winter after they were gathered.[1944]

The activities of the Klan were all-embracing. From regulating bad negroes and their leaders they undertook a general supervision of the morals of the community. Houses of ill-fame were visited, the inmates, white or black, warned and sometimes whipped. Men who frequented such places were thrashed. A white man living with a negro woman was whipped, and a negro man living with a white woman would be killed.[1945] A negro who aired his opinion in regard to social equality was sure to be punished. One negro in north Alabama served in the Union army and, returning to Alabama, boasted that he had a white wife up North and expected to see the custom of mixed marriages grow down South. He was whipped and allowed a short time in which to return North.[1946] White men who were too lazy to support their families, or who drank too much whiskey, or were cruel to their families, were visited and disciplined. Such men were not always Radicals--not by any means.[1947] Special attention was paid to the insolent and dangerous negro soldiers who were mustered out in the state. As a rule they had imbibed too many notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity ever to become peaceable citizens. They brought their arms back with them, made much display of them, talked largely, drilled squads of blacks, fired their hearts with tales of the North, and headed much of the deviltry. The Klan visited such characters, warned them, thrashed them, and disarmed them. Over north Alabama there was a general disarming of negroes.[1948]

The tories or "unionists," who had never ceased to commit depredations on their Confederate neighbors, were taken in hand by the Klan. In parts of the white counties where there were neither negroes nor carpet-baggers the Klan's excuse for existence was to hold in check the white outlaws. For years after the war the lives and property of ex-Confederates were not safe. A smouldering civil war existed for several years, and the Klan was only the ex-Confederate side of it.

During the administration of Governor Smith there was no organized militia. The militia laws favored the black counties at the expense of the white ones, and Smith was afraid to organize negro militia; he shared the dislike of his cla.s.s for negroes. There were not enough white reconstructionists to organize into militia companies. The governor was afraid to accept organizations of Conservatives; they might overthrow his administration. So he relied entirely upon the small force of the Federal troops stationed in the state to a.s.sist the state officials in preserving order. The Conservative companies, after their services were rejected, sometimes proceeded to drill without authority, and became a kind of extra-legal militia. In this they were not secret. But the drills had a quieting effect on marauders of all kinds, and the extra-legal militia of the daytime easily became the illegal night riders of the Klan.[1949]

The operations of the Klan, especially in the white counties which had large negro populations, were sometimes directed against negro churches and schoolhouses, and a number of these were burned.[1950] This hostility may be explained in several ways: The element of poor whites in the Klan did not approve of negro education; all negro churches and schoolhouses were used as meeting places for Union Leagues, political gatherings, etc.; they were the political headquarters of the Radical Party;[1951] again, the bad character of some of the white teachers of negro schools or the incendiary teachings of others was excuse for burning the schoolhouses.

The burning of school and church buildings took place almost exclusively in the white counties of northern and eastern Alabama. The school and church buildings of the whites were also burned.[1952] The negroes were invariably a.s.sisted by the whites in rebuilding the houses. Most of the burnings were probably done by the so-called spurious Ku Klux. The teachers of negro schools who taught revolutionary doctrines or who became too intimate with the negroes with whom they had to board were disciplined, and the negroes also with whom they offended.[1953] It was likewise the case with the northern missionaries, especially the Northern Methodist preachers who were seeking to disrupt the Southern Methodist Church. Parson Lakin when elected president of the State University was chased away by the Ku Klux, and life was made miserable for the Radical faculty.[1954] Thieves, black and white, and those peculiar clandestine night traders who purchased corn and cotton from the negroes after dark were punished.[1955]

The quietest and most effective work was done in the Black Belt princ.i.p.ally by the Knights of the White Camelia. Nothing was attempted beyond restraining the negroes and driving out the carpet-baggers when they became unbearable. There were few cases of violence, fewer still of riots or operations on a large scale.[1956] In northern and western Alabama were the most disordered conditions.[1957] The question was complicated in these latter regions by the presence of poor whites and planters, negroes, Radicals and Democrats, Confederates and Unionists.

Tuscaloosa County, the location of the State University, is said to have suffered worst of all. A strong organization of Ku Klux cleared it out. In the northern and western sections of the state politics were more likely to enter into the quarrels. The Radicals--white and black--were more apt to be disciplined because of politics than in the Black Belt. Negroes and offensive whites were warned not to vote the Radical ticket. There was a disposition to suppress, not to control, the negro vote as the Black Belt wanted to do. There were more frequent collisions, more instances of violence.

The most famous parade and riot of the Ku Klux Klan occurred in Huntsville, in 1868, before the presidential election. A band of 1500 Ku Klux[1958] rode into the city and paraded the streets. Both men and horses were covered with sheets and masks. The drill was silent; the evolutions were executed with a skill that called forth praise from some United States army officers who were looking on. The negroes were in a frenzy of fear, and one of them fired a shot. Immediately a riot was on. The negroes fired indiscriminately at themselves and at the undisguised whites who were standing around. The latter returned the fire; the Ku Klux fired no shots, but formed a line and looked on. Several negroes were wounded, and Judge Thurlow, a scalawag, of Limestone County, was accidentally killed by a chance shot from a negro's gun. The whites who took part received only slight wounds. Some of the Ghouls were arrested by the military authorities, but were released.[1959] This was, in the annals of the Radical party, a great Ku Klux outrage.

Another widely heralded Ku Klux outrage was the Patona or Cross Plains affair, in Calhoun County, in 1870. It seems that at Cross Plains a negro boy was hired to hold a horse for a white man. He turned the horse loose, and was slapped by the white fellow. Then the negro hit the white on the head with a brick. Other whites came up and cuffed the negro, who went to Patona, a negro railway village a mile away, and told his story. William Luke, a white Canadian, who was teaching a negro school at Patona, advised the negroes to arm themselves and go burn Cross Plains in revenge and for protection. Thirty or forty went, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Luke, and made night hideous with threats of violence and burning, but finally went away without harming any one. The next night Luke and his negroes returned, and fired into a congregation of whites just dismissed from church. None were injured, but Luke and several negroes were arrested. There were signs of premeditated delay on the part of some of the civil authorities, so the Ku Klux came and took the Canadian and four negroes from the officers, carried them to a lonely spot, and hanged some and shot the rest.[1960]

In Greene County the county solicitor, Alexander Boyd, an ex-convict, claimed to have evidence against members of the Ku Klux organization. He boasted about his plans, and the Ku Klux, hearing of it, went to his hotel in Eutaw and shot him to death.[1961]

Another famous outrage was the Eutaw riot, in 1870. Both Democrats and Radicals had advertised political meetings for the same time and place.

The Radicals, who seem to have been the latest comers, asked the Democrats for a division of time. The latter answered that the issues as to men or measures were not debatable. So the Democrats and Radicals held their meetings on opposite sides of the court-house. The Democrats' meeting ended first, and they stood at the edge of the crowd to hear the Radical speakers. Some of the hot bloods came near the stand and made sarcastic remarks. One man who was to speak, Charles Hays, was so obnoxious to the whites that even the Radicals were unwilling for him to speak. He persisted, and some one, presumably a Conservative, pulled his feet out from under him, and he fell off the table from which he was speaking. The negroes, seeing his fall, rushed forward with knives and pistols to protect him. A shot was fired, which struck Major Pierce, a Democrat, in the pocket. Then the whites began firing, princ.i.p.ally into the air. The negroes tore down the fence in their haste to get away. After the whites had chased the negroes out of town the military came leisurely in and quelled the riot.[1962] The campaign report of casualties was five killed and fifty-four wounded. As a matter of fact only one wounded negro was ever found, and no dead ones.[1963]

A common kind of outrage was that on James Alston, the negro representative in the legislature from Macon County in 1870. Alston was shot by negro political rivals just after a League meeting in Tuskegee.

They were arrested, and Alston asked the whites to protect him. The Democratic white citizens of Tuskegee guarded him. The carpet-bag postmaster in Tuskegee saw the possibilities of the situation and sent word to the country negroes to come in armed, that Alston had been shot.

They swarmed into Tuskegee, and, thinking the whites had shot Alston, were about to burn the town. The white women and children were sent to Montgomery for safety. About the same time the negroes murdered three white men. The excitement reached Montgomery, and a negro militia company was hastily organized to go to the aid of the Tuskegee negroes. General Clanton got hold of the sheriff, and they succeeded in turning back the negro volunteer company. The affair pa.s.sed off without further bloodshed, and Alston was notified to leave Tuskegee.[1964]

There were no collisions between the United States soldiers and the night riders. At first they were on pretty good terms with one another. The soldiers admired their drills and parades and the way they scared the negroes. One impudent Cyclops rode his band into Athens, and told the commanding officer that they were there to a.s.sist in preserving order, and, if he needed them, would come if he scratched on the ground with a stick.[1965]

While there was not much dependence upon central authority,[1966] there was a loose bond of federation between the Dens. They cooperated in their work; a Den from Pickens County would operate in Tuscaloosa or Greene and _vice versa_. Alabama Ku Kluxes went into Mississippi and Tennessee, and those states returned such favors. When the spurious organizations began to commit outrages, each state claimed that the other one furnished the men.[1967]

The oath taken by the Ku Klux demanded supreme allegiance to the order so far as related to the problems before the South. Members of the order sat on juries and refused to convict; were summoned as witnesses and denied all knowledge of the order; were members of the legislature, lawyers, etc.

It is claimed that no genuine members of the order were ever caught and convicted.[1968]

Though the Klan was almost wholly a Democratic organization,[1969] it took little share in the ordinary activities of politics, more perhaps in the northern counties than elsewhere. In Fayette County, in 1870, the Klan went on a raid, and when returning stopped in the court-house, took off disguises, resolved themselves into a convention, and nominated a county ticket.[1970] Nothing of the kind was done in south Alabama; indeed, the const.i.tution of the White Camelias forbade interference in politics.[1971]

The Union League meetings were broken up only when they were sources of disorder, thievery, etc. When cases of outrage were investigated, it was almost invariably found that they had no political significance. Governor Lindsay sent an agent into every community where an outrage was reported, and in not a single instance was a case of outrage by Ku Klux discovered.

It is probably true that few, if any, of the leading Democratic politicians were members of the Klan or of any similar organization. Under certain conditions they might be driven by force of circ.u.mstances to join in local uprisings against the rule of the Radicals. But as a rule they knew little of the secret orders. There were various reasons for this. The Conservative leaders saw the danger in such an organization, though recognizing the value of its services. It was sure to degenerate. It might become too powerful. It would have a bad influence on politics and would furnish too much campaign literature for the Radicals. It would result in harsh legislation against the South. The testimony of General Clanton[1972] and Governor Lindsay[1973] shows just what the party leaders knew of the order and what they thought of it. The Ku Klux leaders were not the political leaders.[1974] The newspapers of importance opposed the order. The opposition of the political leaders to the Klan in its early stages was not because of any wrong done by it to the Radicals, but because of fear of its acting as a boomerang and injuring the white party.

It was the middle cla.s.ses, so to speak, and later the lower cla.s.ses, who felt more severely the tyranny of the carpet-bag rule, who formed and led the Klan. The political leaders thought that in a few years political victories would give relief; the people who suffered were unable to wait, and threw off the revolutionary government by revolutionary means.[1975]

The work of the secret orders was successful. It kept the negroes quiet and freed them to some extent from the baleful influence of alien leaders; the burning of houses, gins, mills, and stores ceased; property was more secure; people slept safely at night; women and children were again somewhat safe when walking abroad,--they had faith in the honor and protection of the Klan; the incendiary agents who had worked among the negroes left the country, and agitators, political, educational, and religious, became more moderate; "bad n.i.g.g.e.rs" ceased to be bad; labor was less disorganized; the carpet-baggers and scalawags ceased to batten on the southern communities, and the worst ones were driven from the country.[1976] It was not so much a revolution as a conquest of revolution.[1977] Society was bent back into the old historic grooves from which war and Reconstruction had jarred it.

Spurious Ku Klux Organizations

After an existence of two or three years the Ku Klux Klan was disbanded in March, 1869, by order of the Grand Wizard. It was at that time illegal to print Ku Klux notices and orders in the newspapers. It is probable, therefore, that the order to disband never reached many Dens. However, one or two papers in north Alabama did publish the order of dissolution, and in this way the news obtained a wider circulation.[1978] Many Dens disbanded simply because their work was done. Otherwise the order of the Grand Wizard would have had no effect. Numbers of Dens had fallen into the hands of lawless men who used the name and disguise for lawless purposes.

Private quarrels were fought out between armed bands of disguised men.

Negroes made use of Ku Klux methods and disguises when punis.h.i.+ng their Democratic colored brethren and when on marauding expeditions.[1979] This, however, was not usual except where the negroes were led by whites. Horse thieves in northern and western Alabama, and thieves of every kind everywhere, began to wear disguises and to announce themselves as Ku Klux.

All their proceedings were heralded abroad as Ku Klux outrages.[1980]

In Morgan County a neighborhood feud was resolved into two parties calling themselves Ku Klux and Anti Ku Klux, and frequently fights resulted. In Blount and Morgan counties (1869) former members of the Ku Klux organized the Anti Ku Klux along the lines of the Ku Klux, held regular meetings, and continued their midnight deviltry as before. It was composed largely of Union men who had been Federal soldiers.[1981] In Fayette County the Anti Ku Klux order was styled, by themselves and others, "Mossy Backs" or "Moss Backs," in allusion to their war record. They were regularly organized and had several collisions with another organization which they called the Ku Klux. The Radical sheriff summoned the "Moss Backs" as a _posse_ to a.s.sist in the arrest of the Ku Klux, as they called the ex-Confederates.[1982] As long as the Federal troops were in the state it was the practice of bands of thieves to dress in the army uniform and go on raids.

The Radicals took care that all lawlessness was charged to the account of Ku Klux. It was to their interest that the outrages continue and furnish political capital. Governor Smith accused Senator Spencer and Hinds and Sibley, of Huntsville, of fostering Ku Klux outrages for political purposes.[1983]

The disordered condition of the country during and after the war led to a general habit among the whites of carrying arms. This fact and the drinking of bad whiskey accounts for much of the shooting in quarrels during the decade following the war. Few of these quarrels had any connection with politics until they were catalogued in the Ku Klux Report as Democratic outrages. As a matter of fact, nearly all the whites killed by whites or by blacks were Democrats. The white Radicals were too few in number to furnish many martyrs.[1984] The anti-negro feeling of the poorer whites found expression after the war in movements against the blacks, called Ku Klux outrages. In Winston County, a Republican stronghold, the white mountaineers met and pa.s.sed resolutions that no negro be allowed in the county. General Clanton stated that he found a similar prejudice in all the hill counties.[1985]

In the Tennessee valley the planters found difficulty in securing negro labor because of the operations of the spurious Ku Klux. In Limestone, Madison, and Lauderdale counties the tory element hated the negroes, who lived on the best land, and attempts were made to drive them off. The tories were incensed against the planters because they preferred negro labor.[1986] Judge W. S. Mudd of Jefferson County testified that the anti-negro outrages in Walker and Fayette counties were committed by the poorer whites, who did not like negroes and wanted a purely white population there. In the white counties generally the negro held no political power and hence the outrages were not political, but because of racial prejudice. In the north Alabama mountain counties the majority of the whites were in favor of deportation and colonization of the blacks.

But in nearly every county there was also the large landholder, formerly a slaveholder, who wanted the negro to stay and work, and who treated the ex-slave kindly. The poorer whites who had never owned slaves nor much property wanted the negro out of the way.[1987] As a general rule, where the population was exclusively white, the people disliked the negro and wanted no contact with the black race. They wanted a white society, and all lands for the whites. In one precinct in Jefferson County, where all the whites were Republican, an organization of boys and young men was formed to drive out the negroes and keep the precinct white. In the black counties exactly the opposite was true. The secret orders merely wanted to control negro labor and keep it, regulate society, and protect property.