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George Washington to New Hampshire, 29 December 1777
(Detail, GLC03706)
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Reconstruction:
The First Class Men of Our Town
by Caroline Scudder
Mamaroneck High School, Mamaroneck, NY
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Excerpt from Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States (Washington, 1872), printed in Dorothy Sterling. ed., Trouble They Seen: The Story of Reconstruction in the Words of African Americans. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994.
In early 1866 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, granting
citizenship to all persons born or naturalized United
States. In June of the same year Congress proposed the
14th Amendment to the Constitution, and in the mid-term
elections of 1866 Republicans were elected to Congress
by a two-thirds margin. 1866 also marked the founding
of the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee.
Originally started as a "social club," the KKK
would quickly evolve into an organization whose primary
function was to use fear and intimidation to force blacks
into submission. With Congressional Reconstruction well
under way by 1867, many blacks were elected to positions
in the local, state, and federal governments. This visible
extension of rights to blacks was a sharp contrast to
the racist ideologies of the Ku Klux Klan.
The KKK would ultimately be responsible for hundreds of
murder cases and the intimidation of thousands of Republicans,
both black and white. In response to Klan violence, the
first Enforcement Act was passed by Congress in May of
1870, empowering the Federal government to prosecute crimes
committed by anti-black groups. A year later Congress
passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which served to expand President
Grant's ability to fight Klan violence. Although a large
number of Klansmen had been arrested by 1872, the impact
of the KKK was clear. In 1873 the first of the "redeemer"
governments was elected in Texas and Southern Democrats
would move to steadily regain control of their legislative
assemblies.
Abram Colby was a former slave and a member of the Georgia
legislature who had been beaten savagely by the KKK in
1869 in an effort to end his political activities as a
Republican. Earlier attempts to bribe the legislator had
failed and Colby, who was permanently injured by the assault,
refused to bow to intimidation and remained active in
Georgia politics. His testimony was gathered by a joint
committee from the Senate and House investigating the
"The Conditions and Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary
States" in 1872.
Colby: On the 29th of October 1869, [the Klansmen] broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead. They said to me, "Do you think you will ever vote another damned Radical ticket?" I said, "If there was an election tomorrow, I would vote the Radical ticket." They set in and whipped me a thousand licks more, with sticks and straps that had buckles on the ends of them.
Question: What is the character of those men who were engaged in whipping you?
Colby: Some are first-class men in our town. One is a lawyer, one a doctor, and some are farmers. They had their pistols and they took me in my night-clothes and carried me from home. They hit me five thousand blows. I told President Grant the same that I tell you now. They told me to take off my shirt. I said, "I never do that for any man." My drawers fell down about my feet and they took hold of them and tripped me up. Then they pulled my shirt up over my head. They said I had voted for Grant and had carried the Negroes against them. About two days before they whipped me they offered me $5,000 to go with them and said they would pay me $2,500 in cash if I would let another man go to the legislature in my place. I told them that I would not do it if they would give me all the county was worth.
The worst thing was my mother, wife and daughter were in the room when they came. My little daughter begged them not to carry me away. They drew up a gun and actually frightened her to death. She never got over it until she died. That was the part that grieves me the most.
Question: How long before you recovered from the effects of this treatment?
Colby: I have never got over it yet. They broke something inside of me. I cannot do any work now, though I always made my living before in the barber-shop, hauling wood, etc.
Question: You spoke about being elected to the next legislature?
Colby: Yes, sir, but they run me off during the election. They swore they would kill me if I stayed. The Saturday night before the election I went to church. When I got home they just peppered the house with shot and bullets.
Question: Did you make a general canvas there last fall?
Colby: No, sir. I was not allowed to. No man can make a free speech in my county. I do not believe it can be done anywhere in Georgia.
Question: You say no man can do it?
Colby: I mean no Republican,either white or colored.
Excerpt from Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States (Washington, 1872)
1. What factors might have motivated Colby to provide this first hand account of the KKK's use of intimidation?
2. Aside from the obvious use of violence, what other tactics did the Ku Klux Klan use to promote their agenda?
3. The activities of the KKK were one piece of a larger picture of Southern resistance towards Reconstruction policies. What other efforts were being made at this time by whites to restrict the rights of blacks?
4. Discuss the implications of the fact that the "very best citizens" within a town tended to direct Klan violence.
5. Given the nature of Klan violence, what motivations would a white southerner have for allying himself with the Republican Party at this point in time?
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