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Founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tenn., by former Confederate Army officers, the was one of the most powerful groups to emerge in the Reconstruction era in an effort to prevent newly enfranchised black Southerners from putting Republicans in power ....

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... race war if they sent their mostly black state militias against the Klan. In many areas Democratic law-enforcement officials were themselves Klan members or sympathizers. Even where local officers took action, Klan members sat on juries and acquitted accused night riders. By 1871 the violence was so serious that Republicans in Congress gave President Ulysses S. Grant authority to use national troops to restore order in affected districts. Faced with trained soldiers empowered to arrest suspects and hold them without trial, the Klan collapsed with surprising swiftness. Although Southern whites resorted to violence to regain control of the ...