John Brown Gordon

White southern Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan in the aftermath of the Civil War. The organization’s efforts to return the South to its prewar status were marked by violence against white Republicans and southern blacks. In 1871, after hearing reports of whippings and lynchings, the U.S. Congress established the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States in order to investigate the Klan and other secret organizations.

John Brown Gordon, an Atlanta lawyer and former lieutenant general in the Confederate army, was one of the men questioned by the committee. Although he did not name the organization to which he belonged, Gordon was a prominent member of the Georgia Klan. In his testimony, excerpted below, Gordon contends that these secret organizations were founded in response...