The Ku Klux Klan in Action
The Klan's organized terrorism began most notably on March 31, 1868, when Republican organizer
George Ashburn was murdered in Columbus, Georgia.
Most Ku Klux Klan action was designed to intimidate black voters and white supporters of the
Republican Party. Founded in Tennessee in 1866, the Klan was particularly active in Georgia from 1868
to the early 1870s.
Over the following months Klan-inspired violence spread throughout Georgia's Black Belt and into the
northwestern corner of the state. Most Klan action was designed to intimidate black voters and white
supporters of the Republican Party. Klansmen might parade on horseback at night dressed in outlandish
costumes, or they might threaten specific Republican leaders with violence. Increasingly during 1868
these actions became violent, ranging from whippings of black women perceived as insolent to the
assassination of Republican leaders. It is impossible to untangle local vigilante violence from political
terrorism by the organized Klan, but it is clear that attacks on blacks became common during 1868.
Freedmen's Bureau agents reported 336 cases of murder or assault with intent to kill on freedmen
across the state from January 1 through November 15 of 1868.
The political terrorism was effective. While Republican gubernatorial candidate Rufus Bullock carried the
state in April 1868 elections, by November Democratic presidential candidate Horatio Seymour was in
the lead. In some counties the contrast was incredible. In John Reed's Oglethorpe County, 1,144 people
had voted Republican in April, while only 116 dared to vote Republican in November when Reed's armed
Klansmen surrounded the polls. In Columbia County armed Klansmen not only intimidated voters but
even cowed federal soldiers sent to guard the polling place. Not surprisingly, while 1,222 votes had been
cast in Columbia County for Republican governor Rufus Bullock in April, only one vote was cast for
Republican presidential candidate Ulysses Grant in November 1868. Similar political terrorism and
control of the polling places help account for Georgia's quick "redemption" and return to conservative
white Democratic control by late 1871.
Klanlike violence was also used to control freedpeople's social behavior, but with less success. Black
churches and schools were burned, teachers were attacked, and freedpeople who refused to show
proper deference were beaten and killed. But, black Georgians fought their attackers, rebuilt their
churches and schools, and shot back during attacks on their communities. While these attacks surely
terrorized some freedpeople, they failed to destroy the cultural and social independence blacks had
gained with emancipation.
The Freedmens’ Bureau
In March 1865 the U.S. Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands to
aid African Americans undergoing the transition from slavery to freedom in the aftermath of the Civil
War (1861-65). The Freedmen's Bureau, as it was more commonly known, was the first organization of
its kind, a federal agency established solely for the purpose of social welfare. Under the direction of
Major General Oliver O. Howard, the agency furnished rations to refugees and freedpeople displaced by
the war, established freedmen schools and hospitals, supervised the development of a contract labor
system, and created military tribunals to adjudicate legal disputes. Though operations ceased in Georgia
and other states as early as 1870,
Major General Oliver O. Howard served as director of the Freedmen's Bureau, an agency that provided
social welfare to newly emancipated slaves from 1865 until 1872. Operations of the bureau ceased in
Georgia in 1870.
Oliver O. Howard
the bureau remained a functioning federal agency until 1872, when Congress allowed its authorization
to expire.
On May 20, 1865, Howard appointed Brigadier General Rufus Saxton to oversee the bureau's efforts in
Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida. Saxton had spent the better part of the war on the Sea Islands of
South Carolina as part of a Union occupation force that supervised abandoned plantations and their
African American residents. As the bureau's assistant commissioner, he largely continued his wartime
efforts, encouraging freedpeople to resettle on abandoned or confiscated properties and touting land
acquisition as an essential step on the path to self-sufficiency.
Labor
Saxton's
Brigadier General Rufus Saxton served as the first assistant commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau
assigned to Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida. During his four-month tenure in 1865, Saxton
advocated free labor and land acquisitions for freedpeople.
Rufus Saxton
advocacy of free labor and written contracts helped shape the bureau's efforts for years to come, but
he struggled to bring order to the state's inland territories and in September 1865 was relieved of his
command in Georgia. The bureau's presence expanded under Saxton's successor, Brigadier General
Davis Tillson, and by September 1866 the agency had doled out more than 800,000 rations statewide.
While a majority of the agency's rations went to freedpeople, a surprising number of poor whites
benefited from bureau relief measures as well. In Georgia whites received almost one-fifth of the
agency's rations; regionwide, whites received more than a fourth.
Though not insensitive to freedpeople's aspirations, Tillson was unmoved by the spirit of egalitarianism
that characterized his predecessor's administration. Above all else he prized stability, particularly with
regard to labor and occasionally at the expense of the freedpeople's interests. On Tillson's order,
healthy adult males were denied rations to promote self-sufficiency, and bureau officials were
instructed to vigorously enforce the state's vagrancy laws, which allowed authorities to pair indigent or
idle workers with employers in need of labor.
Tillson meanwhile solicited support from white Georgians, most of whom were initially hostile to the
bureau's efforts. His proposal to enlist judicious white community leaders as bureau agents received
support from delegates attending the state's constitutional convention in October 1865, thereby
conferring a measure of legitimacy on bureau policies while also swelling the agency's understaffed
ranks.
He
Laborers harvest a bean crop in coastal Georgia, circa 1890. Following their emancipation from slavery
during the Civil War, African American agricultural workers received assistance in negotiating contracts
from the Freedmen's Bureau, which functioned in Georgia from 1865 to 1870.
Bean Harvesting
reinforced the agency's commitment to free labor as well, instituting uniform contracts for agricultural
work and a wage scale to ensure that freedpeople enjoyed sufficient compensation for their labor. In
upper and middle Georgia, male hands were to receive $12 to $13 per month and female hands were to
receive $8 to $10 dollars per month in addition to food and lodging; the rates were slightly higher along
thecoast and in the fertile fields of southwest Georgia. When planters lacked sufficient cash to pay their
workers, they were permitted to pay a share of the crop at the end of the season, an arrangement that
anticipated the sharecropping and tenancy systems that characterized the state's agricultural economy
for the better part of the next century. (Other forms of tenancy existed during the antebellum era.)
Many planters resented federal intrusion into their affairs, however, and despite the efforts of the
bureau's field officers, the agency never achieved full compliance.
Land
If contract reform was Tillson's most constructive contribution to the bureau's experiment in Georgia,
land restoration was arguably his most memorable. In January 1865, as the Civil War neared its end,
Union general William T. Sherman issued his famous Field Order No. 15, which granted possessory title
of abandoned lands along the southern coastline to emancipated slaves. Freedmen worked the land on
Sherman's reservation until the fall of 1865, when U.S. president Andrew Johnson overturned Sherman's
order and instructed bureau officials to arrange "mutually satisfactory" agreements between planters
and freedpeople holding competing claims to coastal properties.
Though
A family, pictured in the 1880s, stands outside old slave quarters on St. Catherines Island. The island
served as the headquarters for Tunis Campbell, an agent of the Freedmen's Bureau who was assigned to
supervise land claims and resettlement on five Georgia islands after the Civil War.
St. Catherines Island
bureau agents in Georgia moved slowly in hopes that Congress might intervene, the unenviable task of
restoring coastal land to its original owners ultimately fell to Tillson. At the behest of African American
bureau agent Tunis Campbell, headquartered on St. Catherines Island, many freedpeople resisted the
agency's efforts, but by the summer of 1866 land restoration was all but complete. Later legislation
allowed a modest number of Georgia's freedpeople to exchange legitimate land grants for warrants
guaranteeing smaller parcels of land in South Carolina, but most had little choice but to work for their
former masters, and many lost faith in their northern benefactors.
Reorganization
When Tillson retired from the agency in January 1867, Howard appointed Colonel Caleb C. Sibley to
assume control of the bureau's efforts in Georgia. To improve efficiency and accountability, Sibley
reorganized the Georgia agency into ten subdistricts shortly after taking office, and appointed salaried
army officers to oversee the agency's work in each locale.
Sibley's reorganization imposed a degree of order on the unwieldy agency, but corruption persisted
among rank-and-file agents despite his reforms. Under Tillson's administration civilian agents had
collected fees from planters when sanctioning labor contracts with freedmen, an arrangement that
relieved the financially distressed agency of onerous labor costs but also fostered corruption among
agents whose sympathies lay with planters rather than the bureau. At the behest of officials in
Washington, D.C., Sibley abolished the fee system and relieved the vast majority of civilian agents of
their duties.
Apart from those structural reforms, Sibley largely maintained the course set by his predecessors until
October 1868, when he retired from the agency. His successor, Colonel John R. Lewis, inherited a leaner
organization with fewer agents and dwindling resources but nonetheless carried on the bureau's work
energetically, particularly in the field of education.
Education
Due
African American schoolchildren are pictured in Liberty County, circa 1890. The Freedmen's Bureau
established numerous schools in Georgia from 1865 to 1870, and local education societies continued to
administer the schools after the bureau's closure.
Liberty County Schoolchildren
to its limited resources, the Georgia bureau worked closely with northern benevolent societies to
provide educational opportunities for tens of thousands of freedpeople statewide. The bureau most
often provided logistical support and funds for the construction or purchase of school buildings while
benevolent societies shouldered a majority of the teaching costs. Freedmen were expected to
contribute funds as well, both to offset financial shortfalls and to inculcate a sense of responsibility that
would survive the agency's presence.
In the first year alone, this arrangement provided for the establishment of more than sixty schools, and
by 1868 teachers at bureau-sponsored schools had taught some 30,000 freedpeople to read. Even as
other projects were winding down, Lewis reinforced the bureau's commitment to education, stepping
up oversight and assistance and encouraging the organization of local education societies capable of
administering freedmen schools long after the bureau's closure.
When Lewis left the agency in April 1870 to become the state's first school superintendent, the bureau's
work was all but over in Georgia. The bureau's initial charter lasted for only one year, but Congress
extended its authorization in 1866; it remained a federal agency until 1872, though operations in
Georgia and other states ceased by 1870.
Along with insufficient resources and white intransigence, the agency's indefinite future at times
stymied its effectiveness and limited its scope of reform. Those limitations notwithstanding, the bureau
was an import source of support for Georgia's freedpeople, providing educational opportunity,
furnishing rations for the sick and indigent, ensuring a measure of justice, and perhaps most important,
bringing some stability for Georgians of both races as they adjusted to the realities of postbellum life.