The Ku Klux Klan, Its Origin, Growth, and Disbandment, Part V, Disbandment, Giles County, TNGenWeb (TNGenNet)

Part V, Disbandment

“...all the better elements of society were in constant dread for the safety of their property, persons, and families...”

—Rev. D. L. Wilson

In Part V of The Ku Klux Klan, Its Origin, Growth, and Disbandment, we learn that Whig Republican Governor Brownlow has resigned, and that “in a few days” the Grand Wizard disbanded the Klan:

THE KU KLUX KLAN
ITS ORIGIN, GROWTH, AND DISBANDMENT.

V.

DISBANDMENT.

    ON the 20th of February, 1869, Governor Brownlow resigned his position as Governor to take the seat in the United States Senate to which he had been elected. The last paper to which he affixed his signature as Governor of Tennessee proclaimed martial law in certain counties, and ordered troops to be sent thither. This proclamation was dated February 20, 1869. In a few days it was followed by a proclamation from the “Grand Wizard of the Invisible Empire” to his subjects. It recited the legislation directed against the Klan, and stated that the order had now in large measure accomplished the objects of its existence. At a time when the civil law afforded inadequate protection to life and property, when robbery and lawlessness of every description were unrebuked, when all the better elements of society were in constant dread for the safety of their property, persons, and families, the Klan had afforded protection and security to many firesides, and in many ways contributed to the public welfare. † But, greatly to the regret of all good citizens, he further said, some members of the Klan had violated positive orders; others, under the name and disguises of the organization, had assumed to do acts of violence, for which the Klan was held responsible. The Grand Wizard had been invested with the power to determine questions of paramount importance to the interests of the order. Therefore, in the exercise of that power, the Grand Wizard declared that the organization heretofore known as the Ku Klux Klan was dissolved and disbanded. †

    Members were directed to burn or destroy all regalia and paraphernalia of every description, and to desist from any further assemblies or acts as Ku Klux. They were told, further, that they would continue in the future, as heretofore, to assist all good people of the land in maintaining and upholding the civil laws, and in putting down lawlessness.

    This proclamation was directed to all Realms, Dominions, Provinces, and Dens in the “Empire.” It may be that there were portions of the Empire never reached by it. The Grand Wizard was a citizen of Tennessee; and as no paper in that State could publish the order, because of the stringent law against such publication, there was no way in which the proclamation could be fully distributed. † Where it was promulgated, obedience to it was prompt and implicit.

    But whether obeyed or not, this proclamation terminated the Klans organized existence as decisively as General Lees last general order, on the morning of the 10th of April, 1865, disbanded the army of Northern Virginia. When the office of Grand Wizard was created and its duties defined, it was explicitly provided that he should have “the power to determine questions of paramount importance, and his decision shall be final.” To continue the organization or to disband it was such a question. He decided in favor of disbanding. Therefore, the Ku Klux Klan had no organized existence after March, 1869.

    The report of the Congressional Investigating Committee contains a mass of very disreputable history, which belongs to a later date, and is attributed to the Klan, but not justly so. These persons were acting in the name of the Klan and under its disguises, but not by its authority. They were acting on their own responsibility.

    Thus lived, so died, this strange order. Its birth was an accident; its growth was a comedy, its death a tragedy. It owed its existence wholly to the anomalous condition of social and civil affairs in the South during the years immediately succeeding the unfortunate contest in which so many brave men in blue and gray fell, martyrs to their convictions. There never was, before or since, a period of our history when such an order could have lived. May there never be again!†

D. L. Wilson.

Source: The Ku Klux Klan, Its Origin, Growth, and Disbandment, by D.L. Wilson, published in The Century, Volume 28, Issue 3, July 1884. Transcribed and annotated by Giles County TNGenWeb Researcher Nancy Brown from page images mounted at The Nineteenth Century in Print: Periodicals, Cornell University Library.

Intro Editorial Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V

Foot Notes

† In Appomattox..., Fleming concluded that "The work of the secret orders was successful. As bodies of vigilantes, the Dens and the Councils regulated the conduct of bad Negroes, punished criminals who were not punished by the state, looked after the activities and teachings of Northern preachers and teachers, dispersed hostile gatherings of Negroes, and ran out of the community the worst of the reconstructionist officials. They kept the Negroes quiet and freed them to some extent from the influence of evil leaders. The burning of houses, gins, mills, and stores ceased; property became more secure; people slept safely at night; women and children walked abroad in security; the incendiary agents who had worked among the Negroes left the country; agitators, political, educational, and religious, became more moderate; “bad niggers” ceased to be bad; labor became less disorganized; the carpetbaggers and scalawags ceased to batten on the Southern communities. It was not so much a revolution as the defeat of a revolution. Society was replaced in the old historic grooves from which war and reconstruction had jarred it.

† Implied here is that the Klan was disbanded “in a few days” due to Whig Republican Governor Brownlow’s proclamation of martial law. The proclamation, however, was not nearly as significant as Brownlow’s resignation, which resulted in the Speaker of the Tennessee State Assembly assuming the governorship. The Speaker was Conservative Republican Dewitt Clinton Senter—the same who “removed some three-fourths of the Radical Election Commissioners and appointed Conservatives in their stead,” which gave the Confederates the vote and Senter re-election that fall. (Biography of Dewitt Clinton Senter)

† This statement is simply not credible. The law prohibiting publication of orders from the Klan was enacted as part of the government’s attempt to curtail its activities. Had the Governor been provided with a copy of an order to disband, there can be no doubt whatsoever that he would have ordered its publication immediately—in every newspaper in the state, and likewise the President in every newspaper in the nation. Klan orders and announcements were regularly published, just not in their name (which was held to be secret). See the 1868 “Revised and Amended Prescript of the *** [sic], which was also published in the Pulaski Citizen that year.

† The second birth of the Ku Klux Klan took place in 1915, and was supported by at least some of the same families that had supported the first. See The Ku Klux Klan and Birth of a Nation.

† The frequent references to “class” and “culture” as opposed to ignorance and superstition underline the fact that these men, the former (and future) power of the South, continued to consider themselves “elitists,” despite having lost the War, and huge chunks of their personal wealth. Their elitism applied to not only blacks, but all whom they considered to be “lower classes” of whites.

† Rev. Wilson’s explanation for Klan activities that continued after the order to disband as having been due to both their inability to pass the word, and their inability to enforce the order. According to some sources, however, the Klan did not formally disband until 1877, General Forrest’s order having been nothing more than a ruse to permit the organization to go “underground.” This would, if true, be consistent with the statement above that “...they would continue in the future, as heretofore, to assist all good people of the land in maintaining and upholding the civil laws, and in putting down lawlessness...”

In 1924, Susan Lawrence Davis (1861-1939), published a book titled Authentic History, Ku Klux Klan, 1865-1877 (self-published, New York), in which she claimed that the Klan did not disband until the end (defeat by the Klan) of Reconstruction, 1877, at which time “General Forrest orally communicated to the Grand Dragons of the Invisible Empire, his order of disbandment Number one (No. 1, September, 1877) ...” (p. 312) In her introduction, Ms. Davis cited her sources as including John C. Lester’s notes for a planned unpublished history, as well “Major James R. Crowe, Capt. John B. Kennedy, Judge William Richardson, Capt. Robert A. McClellan, Major Robert Donnel, Capt. DeWitt Clinton Davis, the wives and daughters of many of the original Ku Klux Klan, by my father, Colonel Lawrence Ripley Davis, Colonel Sumner A. Cunningham and General John B. Gordon, and other Ku Klux.” (p. 3).