The Ku Klux Klan During Reconstruction
             The Ku Klux Klan and other intimidators like the Louisiana Knights of the White Camellia, spread rapidly throughout the south as an answer to radical reconstruction. Nathan Bedford Forest formed the Ku-Klux-Klan in Tennessee during 1866. Forest, a former Confederate general and slave trader, was the Ku-Klux-Klan's first Imperial Wizard. This essay will weigh the evidence supported by the traditional view, that is, the Ku Klux Klan was an organization of white Southerners who resisted the horrors of reconstruction and halted the northern encroachment. This traditional view can also be dubbed the, "white is right" or racist view. The other popular view is called the revisionist view and it deems the Ku Klux Klan a violent and disrespectful organization set on overthrowing rule by negros, scalawags, and carpetbaggers. This essay will look at the horrific acts committed by the Klan during the period of radical reconstruction, question the morality of such acts, and conclude that it is indubitable that the Ku Klux Klan was in fact a terrorist organization which hindered social and political integration: that if these evil men had let congress win the new south would have been a better place.
             In 1866 congress was battling with President Johnson over reconstruction policy and congress was winning. The 10 per cent policy and admittance of state governments comprised of former confederates made some think the war was fought in vain. The "Black Codes," laws enacted to repress the black man, had been struck down by the Radical Republicans. The radicals believed they should not accept the enemy back as prodigal sons. The passing of the fourteenth amendment as a stipulation of re-admission to the Union and the erecting of "barbarous" black governments; many southern whites hung up their gray uniforms and put on white hooded cloaks.
             The Ku Klux Klan was forme...