Beginning of Essay
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 in the Southern stat ....

Middle of Essay
.... 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 their states from 1874 to 1877, the Klan as an organization disappeared by the end of 1872. However, at the turn of the century the story of the Klan was popularized in Thomas B. Dixo ....