stitution
of the United States and all laws passed in conformity thereto, and to
protect the States and people thereof from all invasion from any
source whatever; third, to aid and assist in the execution of all
"constitutional" laws, and to protect the people from unlawful arrest,
and from trial except by their peers according to the laws of the land.
But the tests for admission gave further indication of the objects of
the order. No Republican, no Union Leaguer, and no member of the G.
A. R. might become a member. The members were pledged to oppose Negro
equality of any kind, to favor emancipation of the Southern whites
and the restoration of their rights, and to maintain constitutional
government and equitable laws.

Prominent men testified that the order became popular because the whites
felt that they were persecuted and that there was no legal protection,
no respectable government. General (later Senator) Pettus said that
through all the workings of the Federal Government ran the principle
that "we are an inferior, degraded people and not fit to be trusted."
General Clanton of Alabama further explained that "there is not a
respectable white woman in the Negro Belt of Alabama who will trust
herself outside of her house without some protector.... So far as our
State Government is concerned, we are in the hands of camp-followers,
horse-holders, cooks, bottle-washers, and thieves.. .. We have passed
out from the hands of the brave soldiers who overcame us, and are
turned over to the tender mercies of squaws for torture.... I see Negro
police--great black fellows--leading white girls around the streets of
Montgomery, and locking them up in jails."

The Klan first came into general prominence in 1868 with the report
of the Federal commanders in the South concerning its activities. Soon
after that date the order spread through the white counties of the
South, in many places absorbing the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces,
and some other local organizations which had been formed in the upper
part of the Black Belt. But it was not alone in the field. The order
known as the Knights of the White Camelia, founded in Louisiana in 1867
and formally organized in 1868, spread rapidly over the lower South
until it reached the territory occupied by the Ku Klux Klan. It was
mainly a Black Belt order, and on the whole had a more substantial and
more conservative membership than the other large secret bodies. Like
the Ku Klux Klan,