They Called Themselves the K.K.K.

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

  The soldier’s flagrant disregard for racial etiquette likely outraged his former master: in the South a black person was forbidden to speak to a white person unless spoken to first, let alone flaunt his freedom and his new station. To many white Southerners, this small violation of racial etiquette would have reinforced their greatest fear: the bottom rail was on top.

  A former slave from Texas remembered the warning about wounded white pride that his father had given him near the war’s end, when he was eighteen. “My father kept pointing out that the War wasn’t going to last forever,” recalled Martin Jackson, “but that our forever was going to be spent living among the Southerners, after they got licked.”

  President Abraham Lincoln called for a swift and lenient Reconstruction. “With malice toward none; with charity for all,” President Lincoln had offered in his second inaugural address just a few weeks before Lee’s surrender. “Let us strive . . . to bind up the nation’s wounds [and to achieve] a just, and a lasting peace.”

  But Lincoln would not live to guide the country through Reconstruction and a just and lasting peace. Just five days after Lee’s surrender, a Southern sympathizer gunned down the president.

  Abraham Lincoln was shot on April 14, 1865, and died the next morning. That day, Vice President Andrew Johnson took the oath as president.

  Library of Congress

  “I ’lect [recollect] Uncle Charlie Burns what drive de buggy for Massa Charles, come runnin’ out in de yard and holler, ‘Everybody free, everybody free,’ and purty soon sojers comes and de captain reads a ’mation [proclamation]. And Law me, dat one time Massa Charley can’t open he mouth, ’cause de captain tell him to shut up, dat he’d do de talkin’. Den de captain say, ‘I come to tell you de slaves is free and you don’t have to call nobody master no more.’”

  —Sarah Ford. Ford was about fifteen the day the Yankees arrived on the Texas plantation. In 1936 she recalled that her master didn’t like her father, because “he had spirit.” Her spirited father immediately borrowed a wagon, loaded up his family, and moved to another part of Texas, where he built a cabin on a patch of land.

  Library of Congress

  CHAPTER 2

  “Boys, Let Us Get Up a Club”

  In the days and weeks that followed surrender, battle-weary Confederate soldiers began to wind their way home across rutted roads, fallow fields, and burned-out homes and barns. Most were on foot, and they felt grateful for two things: they were alive, and they had been permitted to keep their mules or horses, which they desperately needed to plant a spring crop. Some had been permitted to keep their service revolvers and government-issued guns.

  In Tennessee, six Confederate officers found their hometown of Pulaski clouded with gloom and disappointment. Like most white Southerners who had sided with the Confederacy, these men—John Lester, Calvin Jones, Richard Reed, James Crowe, Frank McCord, and John Kennedy—believed they had fought valiantly for a noble cause: to preserve a government and way of life that they considered superior and a covenant with God, only to be defeated by a more powerful industrial North. The despair they felt at their “Lost Cause” filled their letters and diaries. So did defiance and fear at what the coming months might bring.

  The Pulaski townspeople, like countless white Southerners, felt a deep sense of grief and loss. Their beloved state had sent more than 110,000 soldiers to the Confederates; 31,000 other Tennesseans fought for the Union. Now hatred and strife festered like an open sore among relatives and friends who had chosen opposing sides.

  Four of the six Pulaski men are shown in these photographs taken about twenty years after the war: (from left) John C. Lester, James R. Crowe, Calvin Jones, and John Kennedy. Missing: Richard Reed and Frank McCord.

  Tennessee State Library and Archives

  In this illustration, the crosses symbolize the Confederacy’s Lost Cause, a term coined by white Southerners after the war. The stars in the Rebel flag light the night sky.

  Currier and Ives, 1872, Library of Congress

  All that fall and winter after surrender, town newspapers such as the Pulaski Citizen published lists of the Confederate dead. Bodies were still being recovered and identified, relatives notified.

  Most white Southerners scarcely knew a family that didn’t mourn a relative or friend killed or wounded in the war. Nearly one out of every five Confederate soldiers ages thirteen to forty-three were dead from battle wounds or from camp diseases such as typhoid, dysentery, and pneumonia. Throughout the countryside and on the city and town streets, black mourning wreaths and ribbons hung from doors; widows and mothers of fallen sons were garbed in black dresses; and veteran soldiers hobbled on crutches, some with empty trouser legs or empty shirtsleeves pinned in place.

  Tennessee had witnessed more battles than any other state except Virginia, including three of the deadliest battles of the war. But it wasn’t just the dead soldiers that the Pulaski citizens grieved; they also grieved the battle-scarred land, with its charred, limbless trees. Shattered hills. Burned-up houses. Ruined plantations. Miles of broken fences. Empty henhouses and hog pens. Artillery had caused much of the damage; marauding Yankees were to blame for the rest.

  The Pulaski townspeople also felt pain and anger at the sight of the Union flag that flew over their courthouse. As in most Southern towns, Union soldiers swarmed everywhere, taking charge, flaunting their blue uniforms and victory. In newspaper editorials, the feelings of white Southern writers oscillated between anger and dread. To them, peace seemed almost as terrible to bear as war.

  A man sits in the scarred Tennessee countryside where Union soldiers carried Missionary Ridge in November 1863. The three-day battle left 5,815 Union men and 6,670 Confederates dead.

  Library of Congress

  The returning six soldiers didn’t admit in writing to these feelings. Instead, one of the men later described the days after the war as full of restlessness and boredom. He attributed the feelings to the return to civilian life and to the strict restrictions imposed on the men who had fought for or otherwise supported the Confederacy.

  “[We] could not engage at once in business or professional pursuits,” explained John Lester, a captain in the Tennessee Confederate infantry. “Few had capital to enter mercantile or agricultural enterprises. There was a total lack of amusements and social diversions which prevail wherever society is in a normal condition.”

  To pass the time, the six friends got in the habit of meeting at night in a law office that belonged to Calvin Jones’s father. There is no record of their conversations during these evenings. But as the men were well educated—most were college graduates and four aspired to be lawyers and one became editor of the Pulaski Citizen—it’s likely that they discussed the politics of Reconstruction of the Union.

  The painful subject of Reconstruction was on every white Southerner’s mind. How would the United States be put back together? How would the North treat the eleven Confederate states and their war heroes? Who would head the local and state governments in the South? Would the North let the South choose its own leaders? Would the North allow the South to get on its feet again? Or would the North fix the rules to suit itself?

  At night the men lounged in this Pulaski law office belonging to Judge M. Jones, father of Calvin Jones.

  Tennessee State Library and Archives

  The men had reason to worry. Like most Confederates, they were Democrats, and the Republicans were in control now. Although some moderate Republicans believed that the South had suffered enough, radical Republicans wanted the defiant South to pay, and to pay bitterly. They blamed the South for the war—a war that cost nearly 620,000 lives on both sides and 1 million wounded. It was a frightful toll for a nation that totaled 31 million people, a number that compares to 5 million troops dead today. The war cost was staggering in economic terms, too, as direct costs exceeded an estimated $6.6 billion, or nearly $22 trillion today.

  The six Pulaski men may have discussed the new president’s plan for the South
. Abraham Lincoln had been a Republican, but his vice president, Andrew Johnson, was a Southern Democrat from Tennessee. Although Johnson had sided with the Union during the war, he sided with the South over Reconstruction. As a native-born Southerner, Johnson understood his fellow white Southerners, and he shared their views on politics and race. As a Democrat, Johnson believed in limited government.

  In 1864, Republicans nominated Andrew Johnson, a Democratic senator from Tennessee who remained loyal to the Union during the war. Republicans hoped the Southern-born Johnson would unite the country.

  Library of Congress

  After Lincoln’s death, Johnson took the oath of office. He began to reconstruct the Southern states on his own, without the help of Congress, which was not in session. Right away, he began to pardon former Confederate soldiers and other supporters of the Confederate army. All these men had to do was swear an oath of loyalty to the United States. Then they could become citizens again and exercise their right to vote.

  Johnson did not immediately pardon the most important Confederates, about 10,000 to 15,000 men in all. Any white Southern man who was somebody during the war had to travel to Washington and request a special pardon from President Johnson in order to vote again. These individuals included former federal officials, high-ranking Confederate officers, political leaders, and graduates of West Point or Annapolis who had joined or aided the Confederacy, and all ex-Confederates whose taxable property was worth more than $20,000, or about $262,625 today.

  These powerful men belonged to the planter class, the wealthy men who owned thousands of acres of land and, before the war, hundreds of slaves. It angered them that men who were nobodies before the war could vote but important men like themselves could not until they were officially pardoned.

  Some prideful Confederates refused to swear allegiance to a government that was, in their eyes, deliberately humiliating them. Most, however, wanted to take the oath, to become citizens again, and the sooner the better, so they could vote. They didn’t want outsiders telling them what to do, especially carpetbaggers, as they disparagingly called the Northern Republicans who moved south, carrying all their belongings in a carpetbag, or suitcase, and who seemed determined to take advantage of the defeated South.

  It’s possible that the six men from Pulaski discussed the issue of the freed people, too. What should be done with the four million freed men, women, and children who made up 40 percent of the South’s total population? There was no doubt the former slaves were free, but free to do what?

  In vast numbers, the freed people were leaving the plantations and farms to roam the countryside. Some were searching for family members sold in slavery to distant plantations. Others were looking for new places to live and to work. Some were moving to Southern cities and towns, crowding into shantytowns, looking for schools, food, and medical care. Some were trying to escape cruel masters or trying to get north.

  In this half-finished sketch, Confederate soldiers in Richmond, Virginia, swear an oath of loyalty to the United States. While newsworthy events were photographed as early as the 1850s, newspapers could only publish engravings. Newspapers either sent sketch artists to render drawings that could become engravings or hired engravers to create engravings from photographs.

  Alfred Waud, Library of Congress

  As the former slaves exercised their new freedom, they created a labor shortage for the planters and farmers, who needed them to cultivate and harvest the crops. Desperate to control the labor, some planters and farmers used force, even killing those freed slaves who dared to leave. They also turned to their state and local governments for help in coercing the freed men, women, and children back to work in the fields. Encouraged by President Johnson, Southern lawmakers quickly passed laws called the Black Codes.

  A freedman is sold to pay his fine in Monticello, Florida, as legislated by the Black Codes.

  Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 19, 1867; Library of Congress

  Most of the Black Codes were based on the former Slave Codes. The laws varied from state to state and even from town to town, but all severely restricted the lives of the freed people, just as the Slave Codes had. Once more, the freed people were forced to work in labor gangs from sunup to sundown. They were forbidden to have visitors, hold meetings, and leave plantations without permission.

  Other aspects of the Black Codes were based on Northern vagrancy laws. Unemployed black people were arrested and fined for vagrancy. If unable to pay their fines, they were auctioned off to an employer, usually their former master, and forced to work for him. Several states enacted laws that allowed courts to declare black parents incapable of supporting or properly raising their children, who were then assigned to white guardians as unpaid labor.

  All this happened while Congress was not in session. By the time Congress reconvened in December 1865, President Johnson had reconstructed most of the South. Republicans in Congress were furious. Johnson had put responsibility for Reconstruction back into the hands of white Southerners, who had then reelected the same men who had been leaders before the war. The Republicans were livid about the Black Codes, too, especially since the laws applied only to unemployed black people and not jobless white people. They accused white Southern lawmakers of returning the freed people to slavery.

  President Johnson vehemently opposed Republican plans for Reconstruction. Here, the artist Thomas Nast portrays Johnson as a hypocrite.

  Harper’s Weekly, October 27, 1866; American Social History Project

  Some Republicans, the Radical Republicans, accused the president of betraying the sacrifices made by the North during the war. Committed to black rights, the Radical Republicans called Johnson’s Reconstruction policies too lenient, and they rushed to change the program. That December, they refused to seat any Southern senator or representative who had been in power during the Confederacy. They also ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, and got busy on legislation to ensure civil rights.

  In April 1866 over President Johnson’s veto Congress passed a Civil Rights Act. The act made any person born in the United States a citizen (except American Indians) and entitled to rights protected by the United States government. This act further protected the rights of the freed people by invalidating the Black Codes and by granting black people the same rights as white people.

  The notion of racial equality was a great insult to white Southern pride. During slavery, the racial rules had been clear. Now some blacks openly challenged the authority of whites. Some dared to sit down in the presence of white people. Some refused to tip their hats to white people or to yield the sidewalk. Some refused to call their former owners “master” and refused to answer to “Uncle” or “boy” or “Auntie” or “Mammy.” And some were buying guns and hunting with dogs, something that had been forbidden to most blacks during slavery.

  Outside the galleries of the House of Representatives, men and women cheer at the passage of the Civil Rights Bill in April 1866. The bill granted citizenship to black people and forbade discrimination against them. President Johnson had vetoed the bill, arguing that it “operate[d] in favor of the colored and against the white race.”

  Harper’s Weekly, April 28, 1866; Library of Congress

  Southern newspapers warned their white readers about the dangers of tolerating such insolent behavior. In editorials, writers speculated nervously about where all of this freedom and racial equality might lead.

  Like many white Southerners, Lester, Crowe, Jones, Kennedy, Reed, and McCord may have discussed the racial tension that hovered like a storm cloud over the South. A race riot in nearby Memphis had erupted in early May, sparked by the collision of two horse-drawn carriages, one driven by a white man, the other by a black man. When police arrested the black driver, black Union soldiers protested. A white mob quickly gathered, and the incident exploded into three days of racial violence. Aided by city police and firemen, white men brutally attacked black people throughout the city, killing forty
-six blacks and two whites. White mobs looted and destroyed twelve black schools, four black churches, and hundreds of black homes.

  A Harper’s Weekly reporter blamed rumors for the violence in Memphis, Tennessee. This wood engraving depicts the murder of freedmen.

  Harper’s Weekly, May 26, 1866; Library of Congress

  Afterward, some white Southerners claimed that the black soldiers were drunk and disorderly and that their behavior had provoked the white citizens, who had no choice to protect themselves. Others blamed the North for imposing black soldiers on the South, who symbolized all that the South had lost.

  Southern newspapers such as the Pulaski Citizen blamed the riot on the laws that barred the most important Confederates—those who held more than $20,000 in taxable property—from voting. “When people abroad condemn Memphis because of the recent outrages,” reported the newspaper, “let them remember that the people of Memphis—property holders of this city—have no share, no voice, or vote in municipal government.”