1868

January–March

 * Event 1

April–June

 * June 1, 1868

FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION

News of the recent acquittal of President Andrew Johnson in impeachment proceedings has been overshadowed lately by reports of terrorist action by white-sheeted mobs across Tennessee. Nashville's Daily Press and Times, a supporter of the federally imposed reconstruction regime, never misses an opportunity to condemn the "cowardly, horse-borrowing squad of devils" called the Ku Klux Klan.

The paper tells how Klansmen today broke up a prayer meeting at a black church and "whipped the leaders on their bare backs so as to disable them from walking for several days." It tells how the marauders burned a new schoolhouse for blacks, taking care to remove the school's bible first and leave it under a tree. It tells of the letter in which the Klan informed Gov. W.G. Brownlow of its plans to "send him to hell."

But it can only hint at what befell an undercover agent sent by Gov. Brownlow to infiltrate a Klan cell: The Klansmen convinced the man to disrobe for the initiation ceremony, and "the gang then subjected him to a nameless outrage, the grossest that can be conceived," before defiantly sending him back to the governor.

"Better revolutionize gently, gentlemen," the paper tauntingly warns the outlaws. "Have a wholesome remembrance of 1861. You went up then like a rocket and came down like a stick."

--by Tom Wood

Source: Daily Press and Times, 5/8-7/10/1868

(Originally published in Nashville Scene, 5/27/93)