I'm the one who posted that the Klan wasn't founded by Democrats, or rather refuted Buttsoiler's (and somebody else's --- Markle?) claim that it was, and I proved it. I've been doing it here for literally years, which says much about the level of self-delusion around here.
The Ku Klux Klan Founded
The white supremacist group was founded on December 24th, 1865.
In the hood: two members of the Ku Klux Klan, c.1870
The war between the States ended in 1865 with the North victorious and the Confederate South defeated. Slavery in the South was now illegal, the former slaves had the vote and groups of white Republicans started collecting batches of them and escorting them to the polls. The situation was resented and small white terrorist groups formed at various places to keep the blacks down and white supremacy intact. Far the best known would be the Ku Klux Klan.
The Klan began in Tennessee, in the small town of Pulaski, near Memphis. It was founded by Confederate army veterans at a drinking club there and the strange but memorable name was a combination of ‘clan’ and the Greek word kuklos, meaning ‘circle’ or, in this case, social club. Dressed up in scary costumes with hoods and masks, members rode about at night threatening and frightening blacks.
They demanded that blacks either vote Democrat or not vote at all. They met defiance with beatings, whippings and sometimes murder. They burned blacks’ houses down and drove black farmers off their land and they extended their hostilities to southern whites who opposed them and the so-called ‘carpetbaggers’, white infiltrators from the North.
The Ku Klux Klan founded | History Today
I already posted that history. I've got plenty more too.
You should read you own link. Here, lemme read it back to you:
It was founded by Confederate army veterans at a drinking club there and the strange but memorable name was a combination of ‘clan’ and the Greek word kuklos, meaning ‘circle’ or, in this case, social club.
This is exactly what I described, with the exception that I didn't mention "drinking" (and I don't know that to be true, don't remember it coming up in my sources) and that I gave all six names of the founders, plus the address of the building.
Buttsoiler's assertion however was that it was "created by Democrats", an assertion for which there is zero evidence. I couldn't remember who else made the same claim but there is no evidence that McCord, Jones, Kennedy, Lester, Crowe or Reed had any political affiliation. At least some of them may not have even been old enough to vote.
Your link above moves quickly in two sentences into the Reconstruction resistance without noting that the social club founded by McCord, Jones, Kennedy, Lester, Crowe and Reed was, as I also noted,
taken over by pre-existing elements called "night rides" or "slave patrols" that had existed since at least the eighteenth century, plus the added elements described below...
That means that McCord, Jones, Kennedy, Lester, Crowe and Reed
were no longer involved in it. It was completely out of their hands by 1866. Some histories erroneously date the creation of the KKK
to 1866, using a public parade of that summer as a starting point. But by then the original six were gone and there is no record of them being further involved. They simply disappear.
In short it was not founded AS a white supremacist group. That element commandeered it after it was founded.
I also noted the Klan was one of dozens of such vigilante groups erupting all over the defeated Confederacy at that time. These included:
- Caucasian Club(s) (Louisiana 1869)
- Constitutional Union Guard (North Carolina 1868-70)
- Heggie's Scouts (Mississippi)
- Heroes of America (South Carolina)
- Knights of the Black Cross (Mississippi)
- Knights of the Rising Sun (Texas 1868)
- Knights of the White Camellia (Louisiana 1867-69)
- Knights of the White Carnation (Alabama)
- Men of Justice
- Native Sons of the South (Mississippi)
- Order of Pale Faces (Tennessee 1869 or 1867)
- Order of the White Rose
- Red Caps (Tennessee)
- Red Jackets (Tennessee)
- Red Strings (South Carolina)
- Robertson Family (Mississippi)
- Society of the White Rose (Mississippi)
- Seymour Knights (Louisiana)
- White League (Louisiana 1874)
- White Brotherhood (North Carolina 1868-70)
- Yellow Jackets (Tennessee)
This is all going on at the same time --- the White South resisting the result of the War. What we call today "insurgents'.
Notice the recurring theme of "
Knights" especially, along with the occasional "Brotherhood", "Heroes" etc.
That's how they supposedly saw themselves, or at least how they presented themselves --- as chivalrous knights
holding up tradition (i.e. resisting change), "protecting white womanhood" and the Old Days. That's why they're a
social force (as well as part of what made them überconservative). In fact when Simmons restarted his new version of the Klan in 1915 he officially called it the "
Knights of the Ku Klu Klan" and took with him several members of an impromptu lynch mob called the "
Knights of Mary Phagan", which had lynched a Jewish factory manager (Leo Frank) on an unproven accusation that he had brutally murdered one of his workers, a young girl by that name. The idea of "knights" was supposed to represent a vigilante-justice posse protecting white Protestant Christian women through their "chivalry".
Back in the immediate postwar, the Reconstructionists and Carpetbaggers arriving in the devastated South were seen as an
occupying army, which is this part:
They demanded that blacks either vote Democrat or not vote at all. They met defiance with beatings, whippings and sometimes murder. They burned blacks’ houses down and drove black farmers off their land and they extended their hostilities to southern whites who opposed them and the so-called ‘carpetbaggers’, white infiltrators from the North.
This is part of the same insurgent resistance. Republicans had never even been IN the South before (Lincoln's name never appeared on a ballot there), and these groups were resisting the newcomers' arrival --- but in 1866 "Republican" to the conservative white South didn't mean a political party -- it was synonymous with "invader" and "occupier" and "carpetbagger" --- those elements arriving from outside to (as they saw it) take over and "destroy" their previous lifestyle.
And here's the part y'all keep missing ---
they resisted them not because they were a political party but because they were "invaders", "occupiers" and '"revenooers" (i.e. government agents) ALL of whom were seen as "taking our land, our resources, our food" etc etc, and with it the old lifestyle. (This also explains why the concept of "Republican" -- synonymous with Lincoln, the man who had defeated, humiliated and, as they saw it, raped their land, became unthinkable for the next ninety-nine years. An emotional connection rather than an analytical one, which is why it hung on so long in a divided party).
This is also what Eric Foner means in his often misquoted description of the Klan:
"In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy. It aimed to destroy the Republican party’s infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life.
Usually on this board the crucial phase "in effect" is omitted, as is "the planter class and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy". That's usually edited out so that it looks like Foner is limiting his statement to "the Democratic party", rather than describing them as one of the entities that stood to benefit as a result. But actively, it was about
insurgent resistance to occupation.
The racial part is a different dynamic from the "occupying army" resistance. After the Civil War with the land and economy devastated plus a new black population competing for livelihoods, newly-freed blacks were, out of resentment, harassed, beaten, whipped, hung, even in at least one case skinned --- SKINNED, with the carcass hung on display --- for simply "walking into town" or "expecting to be paid fair wages". That undercurrent was already there, and the Klan and its co-contemporary groups were out to "protect" white women (white racists both in the South and elsewhere seem to have had a masculinity thing, a theme that would emerge as a pretext over and over in rampant lynchings that went on largely unabated until WW2). And those actions were taking place by individuals, by gangs, by ad hoc posses or by organized groups like the Klan.
So on one hand these insurgents were resisting outside forces (military occupation and opportunists) and on the other hand resisting internal forces (the freed slaves). All to preserve the Old Ways of the Old South. Or to put all this another way, in many respects it could be said that the War simply
did not end at Appomattox in 1865.
That calculates out to a "her", a "troupe" and an unknown event. None of which are part of a "you guys" I have any association with ---- unless you're actually trying to impugn baseball fans, which I find even more bizarro.
Just kidding, but the press/"media" is a two-edged sword that, IMHO, is worth the bullshit.
