Reconstruction and the Rise of the Ku Klux Klan

Few nations in the last millennium have been so devastated by loss of life and property as the South in 1865. Perhaps only the Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Serbians, and in turn the Germans themselves in the Second World War endured such suffering. A Union general bragged that crows flying over the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia would need to pack their own lunches. The Union conquerors then proceeded with the Reconstruction of the South by laying on heavy taxes, confiscating much of their remaining wealth in cotton and other goods, and forcing the sale of land under tax duress.

They gave the right to vote to blacks, but took it away from Confederate veterans.  They removed from Confederate veterans and their families all recourse to civil law and justice.  They sent in swarms of Northern school teachers to teach their children to be ashamed of their fathers and their Southern heritage. They released upon them a reign of terror with a constant threat of depredations and outrages at the hands of the Union League.  Political opportunists from the North constantly promised blacks that the properties of whites would be confiscated and given to them, if they voted Republican.  Many of them also promised that Republican voting blacks would be given political and racial hegemony over the whites.  The Union League regularly promised to hang blacks that did not vote Republican. Many blacks were, in fact, beaten or murdered for resisting Union League political objectives.  These circumstances made forceful underground resistance to Radical Reconstruction inevitable.