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7  Ex-Slaveholders and the Ku Klux Klan Exploring the Motivations of Terrorist Violence Michael W. Fitzgerald The Ku Klux Klan is one of the best-known organizations in American history : the most recognizable group expression of militant white supremacy. The general public may not make fine distinctions regarding the era and circumstance, or distinguish between the myriad kindred groups, but it is a universally understood image. Hooded figures populate television and the cinema with frequency, and one can enter any bookstore and encounter works on the Klan. Since the events of 11 September 2001, this interest has intersected with the wider issue of terrorism. There are terminological issues regarding the use of this emotion-laden word, but by any sensible definition, the Ku Klux Klan of the Reconstruction era qualifies. The Klan is rightly viewed as America’s most important terrorist movement, an assessment that enhances its contemporary resonance.1 Historians have responded to the obvious importance of this topic, producing a sea of scholarship. Hefty bibliographic volumes have appeared devoted to the Ku Klux Klan alone, and even if one limits the literature to the Reconstruction era, it is daunting.2 Despite this outpouring, the movement’s pattern of participation has received sparse attention. Steven Hahn recently referred to “interpretive disagreements” over the Klan’s social composition and leadership, among other things.3 This makes sense: it is difficult to define the membership of a shadowy criminal conspiracy undertaking acts of violence in disguise. Nor is it easy to distinguish between the nebulous Klan and bodies of ad hoc nightriders. Furthermore, uncovering the social basis of the movement has long involved laborious census research. For these reasons, perhaps, there are only a relative handful of local studies of Ku Klux Klan participation during the Reconstruction era—fewer than one might expect 144 Michael W. Fitzgerald given the significance. Still, most scholars affirm that nightriders were mostly younger Confederate veterans, but the analysis seldom extends much further into the antebellum era. Allen Trelease, in his White Terror, articulates what is still the prevailing emphasis: “the Klan was drawn from every rank and class of white society.”4 The composition of the Ku Klux Klan intersects with important issues, especially the crucial one of its social intent. Historiographically, the place to start is with Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, the standout work in the modern literature. Foner’s book argues that the Reconstruction political struggles grew out of the conflict over the future of the plantation regime. He too sees the Klan as a cross-class social movement , but he emphasizes that the agenda was substantially directed toward elite ends. In his view, “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.” And he insisted that freedmen had “good reason” to blame the South’s aristocratic classes for the violence. The explicit goal was generally political repression, but for Foner the wider impulse was to restore white supremacy in all the ways it had been threatened.5 Other prominent scholars of Reconstruction have come to similar conclusions about the Klan’s motivation. The composition and intention of the Ku Klux Klan remain indistinct. One way to address these issues is through examination of a single state: an endeavor small enough to be manageable but large enough in scope to gain meaningful insight. The subject of this study is Alabama, which is a plausible choice for several reasons. Alabama suffered a long and well-documented outbreak, with hundreds of indictments under federal anti-Klan legislation and congressional testimony on the subject filling three full volumes. The Ku Klux Klan first spread outside Tennessee here, and Alabama was about the last place in which the movement continued to operate. Beyond this unfortunate profusion of evidence, the state has fair claim of being typical of the Deep South, at least. Cotton was the dominant crop, and Alabama had no huge and atypical urban concentrations. No obvious reason exists why the experience here should be unrepresentative of events elsewhere. Racist vigilantism in Alabama was hardly limited to the Ku Klux Klan; it included groups like the Knights of the White Camelia and numerous variants and also local clusters who utilized similar techniques. The intent of this essay is to assess the confusion of contending motivations in view of what can be determined about the perpetrators. Some years ago, for a study published inAgriculturalHistory,Icompiledalistofindividualsaccusedofparticipation...

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