y this imitation of slavery because they viewed it as the Southern states trying to reestablish the Democratic Party of the South and not as a reinstitution of a system of inferiority. They felt that too much power too soon after the War may rekindle the feelings of rebellion amongst the Southern Democrats which was something they did not want to repeat. However, they did not realize that the repercussions of allowing these codes to exist would be the literal massacre of thousands of innocent African Americans all in the name of White Supremacy.The organization of the Ku Klux Klan began in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1865 and their reign of terror exists even today. They used the notion of White Supremacy to attack the African American community and to place themselves on an even higher scale than they already thought themselves to be. Former slaveholders fell into a deep trauma and financial depression after the Civil War. Many of these slaveholders were unable to accept the reality that their primary source of income was now to be regarded as a part of the free labor force to be paid for their labor and that they would also need to find employment themselves. This group began experiencing increases in alcoholism and drug use. The former slaveholders became bitter, frustrated, and angry that they had lost their control over others. Many of them did not fully survive the transition from slavery to freedom, just as many African Americans did not recover from this period. Reconstruction was a terrible era for the entire American population.This segment of the population was quite receptive to the Ku Klux Klan and its principles of White Supremacy. There were also other types of Klan members instinctively interested in the ideals of White Supremacy. The first type were the former slaveholders, and Confederate officials that had fought hard in the Civil War to maintain the Southern way of life. The second type were the common criminal...
