[the OlLine Rebel]

That’s sort of what I thought I’d heard.

That the KKK was NOT the “burning and lynching” society it became later.

But I really don’t know much about it.

Anyway, Forrest himself has never sounded like a terrible guy.

[Wallace T.]

The first Klan was just one of a number of guerrilla groups that resisted the Northern occupation (Reconstruction) of the defeated South. Confederate veterans were disenfranchised and the newly freed slaves were exploited by Northern carpetbaggers and Southern scalawags, who took over the Southern state houses, stole farms from their rightful owners, and imposed heavy taxes and martial law. The first Klan was the equivalent of the French Resistance or the Polish Underground in World War II. Only the agreement to withdraw Federal occupation forces as part of a deal that permitted the electoral votes of two Southern states to support the Republican Presidential candidate, Rutherford Hayes, ended Reconstruction. The Klan and similar groups disbanded. The second Klan, which was established 40 years after the end of Reconstruction, had no continuity with the first Klan. The second Klan, which was actually stronger in Northern and Western states like Indiana and Oregon, had anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant ideologies, not just merely anti-black.