3
The Klansmen of the first Ku Klux Klan were promoting white supremacy, and their main motivation was to terrorize black people. Later, they attacked those white citizens who promoted the government’s ideas and handled former slaves as equal members of the society granting them jobs or places to live. As Bond suggests the Klan was not violent when it was established. The members were wearing their white costumes to frighten the population every night. Bond claims that the Klansmen chose such costumes because blacks were highly religious and believed in ghosts. By wearing these masks the Klan members resembled to ghosts, so the blacks were afraid of integrating themselves in the society and accepting memberships in the Congress.With the increasing number of Confederate veterans and the American government’s additional laws about promoting greater freedom to the black population, threats were not enough to gain the Klan’s goals and to maintain white supremacy. So attacks, lynching, and hangings were becoming more frequent, and the Klan was present in not only Tennessee, but also in most Southern states (14-15).
The KKK was active until the middle of the
1870s, and the groups could not be stopped by any Reconstruction governments. McVeigh suggests that there is evidence showing that the Klan could stay active because its members came from higher, influential levels of the American society. The writer also claims that Reconstruction government members were taking part in the Klan’s actions, and they did not actively fight against the horror of the Hooded Order. The situation changed when in 1869 Ulysses S. Grant was elected, so the Republican Party could continue its radical operation in the South after Andrew Jackson’s weak leadership (35).
In 1870 Republican governors of the Southern states asked for the help of the Congress because they knew that they were not powerful enough to stop the growing of the Klan. The Congress accepted three Enforcement Acts, which contained a law directly aiming at the KKK. The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 declared that certain actions were federal offenses including terrorizing someone not to hold office or action in terms of the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments. Moreover, the act gave additional power to the president to arrest accused individuals without charge, and to send federal forces to suppress Klan violence. This authority was used by President Grant few months after the Congress had passed the bill in 1871.