he Constitutional Union Guards, the Pale Faces, the White Brotherhood,
the Council of Safety, the '76 Association, the Sons of '76, the
Order of the White Rose, and the White Boys. As the fight against
reconstruction became bolder, the orders threw off their disguises and
appeared openly as armed whites fighting for the control of society.
The White League of Louisiana, the White Line of Mississippi, the White
Man's party of Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs of South Carolina, were
later manifestations of the general Ku Klux movement.

The two largest secret orders, however, were the Ku Klux Klan, from
which the movement took its name, and the Knights of the White Camelia.
The Ku Klux Klan originated at Pulaski, Tennessee, in the autumn of
1865, as a local organization for social purposes. The founders were
young Confederates, united for fun and mischief. The name was an
accidental corruption of the Greek word Kuklos, a circle. The officers
adopted queer sounding titles and strange disguises. Weird nightriders
in ghostly attire thoroughly frightened the superstitious Negroes,
who were told that the spirits of dead Confederates were abroad. This
terrorizing of the blacks successfully provided the amusement which the
founders desired, and there were many applications for admission to the
society. The Pulaski Club, or Den, was in the habit of parading in full
uniform at social gatherings of the whites at night, much to the delight
of the small boys and girls. Pulaski was near the Alabama line, and
many of the young men of Alabama who saw these parades or heard of them
organized similar Dens in the towns of Northern Alabama. Nothing but
horseplay, however, took place at the meetings. In 1867 and 1868, the
order appeared in parade in the towns of the adjoining states and, as we
are told, "cut up curious gyrations" on the public squares.

There was a general belief outside the order that there was a purpose
behind all the ceremonial and frolic of the Dens; many joined the order
convinced that its object was serious; others saw the possibilities of
using it as a means of terrorizing the Negroes. After men discovered
the power of the Klan over the Negroes, indeed, they were generally
inclined, owing to the disordered conditions of the time, to act as a
sort of police patrol and to hold in check the thieving Negroes, the
Union League, and the "loyalists." In this way, from being merely a
number of social clubs the Dens swiftly became