Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [155]
Sometime during the fall of 1866, Forrest may have accepted an invitation from his former artillery commander John Morton to assume leadership of the Ku Klux Klan. By this time the KKK has evolved from its origins as a loose association of pranksters into a serious and secret terrorist organization intended to defend the interests of former Confederates disenfranchised by the terms of the surrender.
1867
March 2: The United States Congress passes the Reconstruction Act, providing for states of the former Confederacy to be placed under martial law.
May 7: Ads for the Planters Insurance Company of Tennessee, N. B. Forrest, President, run in the Memphis paper.
In a letter to another former Confederate Forrest states that he is “settling up my affairs as rapidly as possible, believing as I do that Every thing under the laws that will be inaugurated by the military authority will result in ruin to our people.”
1868
February 5: Planters Insurance Company files for bankruptcy.
Late February: KKK operations, previously confined to relatively nonviolent scare tactics, veer in the direction of whippings and lynchings.
Early March: Forrest visits KKK Grand Dragon John B. Gordon in Atlanta, to discuss a new insurance venture in Memphis and perhaps to confer on Klan matters.
June 10: After much controversy in the course of a meeting in Nashville, Forrest is elected delegate to the National Democratic Convention in New York as the Democrats try to organize opposition to the candidacy of Ulysses S. Grant for the presidency.
July 27: During the Democratic convention in New York, Tennessee’s Reconstruction governor William G. Brownlow calls a special legislative session to declare Klan members outlaws punishable by death. Brownlow calls up state militia to take military action against the KKK.
July: During his visit to the New York convention, Forrest obtains a pardon from President Johnson.
August 11: In an address to a large crowd on the steps of the Brownsville courthouse, Forrest denounces Brownlow as a scalawag and a carpetbagger, urges black men in his audience to “stand by the men who raised you,” and promises, “If they bring this war upon us, there is one thing I will tell you: that I shall not shoot any negroes so long as I can see a white radical to shoot, for it is the radicals who will be to blame for bringing on this war.”
August 28: In a long interview published by the Cincinnati Appeal (and later reprinted by the New York Times), Forrest affirms the existence of the Ku Klux Klan, estimating 40,000 members in Tennessee and 500,000 more in the rest of the South. Forrest describes the Klan as “a protective, political, military organization … sworn to recognize the Government of the United States.”
September 6: Following the New York Times reprinting of the August Appeal interview, Forrest writes a letter retracting many of his August statements about the KKK.
October 28: In a letter published by the New York Times, Forrest denounces ex-Union General Judson Kilpatrick as “a blackguard, a liar, a scoundrel, and poltroon.” Kilpatrick had accused Forrest of atrocities at Fort Pillow. Forrest’s letter amounts to a challenge to a duel, and Forrest’s second proposes it might best be fought “mounted and with sabers,” as both parties were cavalrymen. Kilpatrick does not respond to the challenge.
November 3: Ulysses S. Grant is elected president of the United States.
December: Members of the Southern aristocracy begin to publish statements to the effect that the increasingly violent KKK has outlived its usefulness. At this point Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana and Alabama have been readmitted to representation in the U.S. Congress.
1869
February 20: Governor Brownlow declares martial law in nine Klan-ridden Tennessee counties.
February 25: Brownlow resigns as Tennessee governor to take a seat in the U.S. Senate. The Tennessee governorship automatically passes to the Speaker of the State Senate, DeWitt Clinton Senter, who runs for