t General Forrest's connection with the Klan is known it is
amusing to read the testimony he gave before the Ku Klux Committee of
Congress in 1871.[9] Though evading questions aimed to elicit definite
information, yet he was willing to speak of the general conditions
that caused the development of the organization in Tennessee. He
stated that it was meant as a defensive organization among the
Southern whites to offset the work of the Union League, which had
organized, armed and drilled the negroes, and had committed numerous
outrages on the whites; to protect ex-Confederates from extermination
by Brownlow's "loyal" militia, to prevent the burning by negroes of
gins, mills, dwellings, and villages, which was becoming common; to
protect white women from criminal negro men; in short to make life and
property safe and keep the South from becoming a second San Domingo.
He stated that about the time the order arose he was getting as many
as fifty letters a day from his old soldiers who were suffering under
the disordered conditions that followed the war, whose friends and
relatives were being murdered, whose wives and daughters were being
insulted, etc. They wanted advice and assistance from him. Not being
able to write himself, on account of a wounded shoulder, he kept a
secretary busy answering such letters. Most of the defensive bodies,
Forrest stated, had no names and had no connection with one another.
He admitted that he had belonged to the Pale Faces, and that he fully
approved of the objects of the Klan. A copy of the original Prescript
was shown to him and he was able to say that he had never seen it
before. In his day, the Revised and Amended Prescript was used, which
was never discovered by any investigating committee. He maintained
that the order was careful in admitting new members, only sober,
mature, discreet gentlemen being allowed to join. At one time, Forrest
estimated, so a newspaper reporter stated, that the Klan had 40,000
members in Tennessee and 550,000 in the entire South. This estimate
was probably not exaggerated if the entire membership of all the
orders similar to the Klan be counted in. Forrest refused to give the
names of members. It is likely, from several bits of evidence, that he
had much to do with consolidating the order, giving it a military
organization, and making its work effective.

General John B. Gordon, the most prominent military man, next to
Forrest, who was connected with the Klan