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.