Civil Government: Power, Nations, and Constitutional Order: Where We Are & How We Got Here

Washington's Klan

Transcript: AI Transcript

Professor: John Weaver

Subject: Civil Government

Genre: Sermon

Dictation Name:

Date: 2004-04-25

Synopsis: John Weaver teaches from Exodus 23:2 that God forbids following a multitude to do evil, applying this principle to the history of Reconstruction. He argues that the original Ku Klux Klan (1865–1869) was a response to the federally sponsored Loyal League, which he calls 'Washington's Klan.' The Loyal League, an arm of the Radical Republicans, used secret oaths, black militias, and disenfranchisement of Southern whites to reconstruct the South into a centralized, nationalist mold. Weaver contends that most atrocities attributed to the Klan were actually committed by Loyal Leaguers disguised as Klansmen to stir racial hatred. He warns that the same centralizing, re-education impulse now threatens liberty by producing global citizens ignorant of founding principles.

[John Weaver] We're meeting today then at historic Fort Jackson and let me just say that any distractions you hear is from the Army Corps of Engineers fixing the shoreline here and this of course is Robert E. Lee's first duty station. So I would encourage you then to listen carefully so as not to be distracted by the outside noise. I want you to open your Bibles, if you would, to Exodus chapter 23. I'm just going to be dealing, basically, with one or two verses and giving a history lesson. And so I want you to look closely at Exodus chapter 23. Very simple passage. In fact, let's just read the first three verses. Verse 2 is the verse I really want to deal with. Exodus chapter 23, verse 1.

[John Weaver] Thou shalt not raise a false report. Put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil. Neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many duress judgment. Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause.

[John Weaver] Now look closely at verse 2. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil. I want to deal with a subject today which I am sure that most people here have never, ever heard spoken of before. The subject is entitled, Washington's Clan, The Loyal League.

[John Weaver] Now, certainly the message that I'm going to be giving today is not a vindication of the modern day Ku Klux Klan. I'm certainly going to be mentioning the Ku Klux Klan, but you've got to remember the original Ku Klux Klan began in 1865. It was disbanded by General Forrest in 1869. He himself had his office expire in 1870, and by 1871, the original Klan, of course, had been disbanded.

[John Weaver] Now, when everyone hears of the KKK, at the mere mention of the words, or at least the mere sight of those representative letters, usually what everyone thinks of is racism, and especially Southern racism. Well, Confederate and United States Congressman J. Best Curry said this, No conquered people have ever written the accepted history of the conquest. And certainly that is true. It may surprise you to know that the original plan that murdered blacks as well as whites was an agency of the federal government. Now, does that surprise you?

[John Weaver] It was the Union clan. It was known as the Loyal League. The KKK, the original KKK, gained its notoriety in its opposition to the Loyal League and its many and varied activities. Now, the Loyal League was originated in the North. It worked for the ideas and policies of the North and was sponsored by the government of Washington, D.C. The Union League, also known as the Loyal Union League or the Union Loyal League or the Loyal League, was a secret organization begun in Ohio in 1862. Now some say 1863. It may have begun in 1862, but originally chartered then in January of 1863. The reason the Loyal League was formed to begin with was to bolster Northern morale and support the policies of Abraham Lincoln. Ohio Republicans established the first Union League in America in 1862.

[John Weaver] And they were doing so to counteract the groups such as the Copperheads. Now, the Copperheads were people who lived in the North who were extremely sympathetic to Southern views and the Southern idea of limited government and a constitutional republic. Not only that, but then Democrats in the North even were winning some victories, and the North was experiencing great defeat on the battlefield. So in an attempt then to arouse enthusiasm for the war effort and to infuse new vitality in the Republican Party, the League then quickly spread throughout the North, serving not only as a social, but as a political force as well. Within one year, the League had spread to 18 northern states and many, many among the Unionists of the South.

[John Weaver] Now, the Loyal League raised troops paid their expenses, sent supplies to the field, and distributed political literature. At the close of the war, it was the Loyal League that worked for the radical reconstruction of the Southern states, for the punishment of Southern leaders, for the confiscation of Southern property, and for Negro suffrage.

[John Weaver] Now, an interesting thing is, as I was doing some research on this, I found that the original power behind the League was a man by the name of Dr. Henry Whitney Bellows, who was a minister at the All Souls Unitarian Church in New York. It was Dr. Bellows who began what is known as the Sanitary Commission, and the Sanitary Commission was not only the forerunner of the Loyal League, but also of the American Red Cross. Now, the interesting thing was, Dr. Bellis had heard Secretary of State William Seward make a speech. And in this speech, the Secretary of State said this, it is time that loyal men had to put the country ahead of the Constitution because a nation on fire made any debate on the sanctity of law out of order, end quote. Now, that was the Secretary of State, and he said it was time that loyal men put the country ahead of the Constitution. In other words, it really didn't matter what the Constitution said.

[John Weaver] They were going to do what they were going to do regardless. Now, after the Freedmen's Bureau, and I'll explain this in just a moment, but after the Freedmen's Bureau's agents and other Northern whites obtained command of the League, in the South, it simply became a machine to control the votes of the blacks. The League ceased to be imported in the North, although it was headquartered in New York City.

[John Weaver] Each southern state had a grand council, and each county had one or more councils. The Loyal League had a constitution and an elaborate ritual that was adopted, making it an oath-bound secret society whose members were sworn to support one another on all occasions, and in elections vote only for Negroes or for Northern men in order to overthrow what they called the Southern white oligarchy. No ex-Confederates were allowed in the Loyal League, and certainly very few Southern Unionists were permitted to join either. at each Southern League meeting. The members were taught from a catechism prepared by the radical Republicans of Congress that they must beware of their white neighbors as their worst enemies, and that the Democratic Party, to which Southern whites had belonged, had opposed emancipation and were still opposed to any rights to the Negroes. In order to prevent the moral control of the Negroes by their former masters, the Loyal League issued what was known as an Exodus Order. Now the Exodus Order just simply meant this. It meant that any Negroes who were still living with their former masters must leave them and then find different housing because they could not stay there at all.

[John Weaver] In these meetings, of course, the Negroes were not just simply taught the equality of men, but they were also taught the right of the Negro to his master's property and to any other property that they desired. The votes of blacks during Reconstruction were controlled by a few white Republican leaders. No black man could break away and vote independently. Negroes who voted with the mass of Southern whites were not only persecuted, Beaten, but in a few instances, they were also killed.

[John Weaver] Now, the Loyal League died out about 1870, but not before it had succeeded and literally become incorporated with the Freedmen's Bureau and other forces which were permanently trying to array blacks against whites and opposing political parties. Let me tell you just a little bit about the Freedmen's Bureau. The Freedmen's Bureau had a rather large title. When we think of the Freedmen's Bureau, we normally think of a bureau that just simply existed for the benefit of black folks. Well, listen to the title. The Bureau of Freedom, or the Bureau of Freedmen, Abandoned Lands and Refugees. Now that is the full title of the Freedmen's Bureau.

[John Weaver] It shows the extent of its power and also its jurisdiction. The Freedmen Bureau, abandoned lands and refugees, controlled 4 million ex-slaves and millions of whites, that is, the refugees who were displaced by the war, and tens of millions of acres of property that were confiscated from the traders, that is, Southerners and Southern Confederates. So the Freedmen's Bureau then not only controlled the 4 million ex-slaves, it also controlled all the whites who had their property confiscated, who were now counted as refugees, and of course it then had control over all of the land that had been confiscated as well. The commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau was General Oliver Otis Howard.

[John Weaver] Now, General Howard's right arm had been blown off at the Battle of Seven Pines. This severe wound embittered him intensely against the South. Howard himself describes his agency's power. Listen to what General Howard said concerning the Freedmen's Bureau. I quote, The law establishing the Bureau committed it to the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freeing men from the rebel states. And this almost unlimited authority gave me scope and liberty of action.

[John Weaver] Legislative, judicial, and executive powers were combined in my commission. I controlled all abandoned land solely for the purpose of assigning, leasing, and selling them to refugees and freedmen." In other words, General Howard is saying that basically he was a dictator. He was also telling us that basically the Freedmen's Bureau was a shadow government for the North in the South, and it was backed up by armed forces.

[John Weaver] Now, let me just give you several things that may shock you. In fact, I hope some of the quotes that I give you will indeed shock you. But let's consider just for a moment the goal of reconstruction. I foresee, as I began studying this issue, that probably there will need to be many more messages in the future explaining this. But when you see how broad this spectrum is, it's absolutely amazing. So consider for a moment the goal of Reconstruction. You see, the South, it was determined by the Radical Republicans in Congress, had to be ruled with an iron hand and forced into Reconstruction. Now, the Loyal League and the Free Men's Bureau were led by the Radical Republicans who were in control of Congress. In fact, most of the Loyal League officers were federal employees.

[John Weaver] Judge James Edmund, was National Union League President from 1863 to 1869. Simultaneously, he was also the Republican Commissioner of the General Lands Office in Washington. It was through his efforts the National Council of the League joined forces with Republican leaders to combine their resources for a Southern organizing campaign to bring loyalty and nationalized patriotism to the Traitorous South. The process then fused the League with the Republican Party. So all the Loyal League was then was an extension of the Congressional Republican Party.

[John Weaver] The South, as it existed according to Reconstruction, embracing the concepts that it embraced, that is the concept of a limited government, a constitutional republic, states' rights, And the right of self-defense could not be allowed to continue. It must be reconstructed. Thus, the League then was operating in concert with what you and I would know as the Republican Party, and it was an instrument then in reconstructing the South.

[John Weaver] Now, Republican Thaddeus Stevens, who was a wicked, wicked man, by the way, he was also a congressman. And here is a letter that was written to him by Gilly F. Watson, who was the lead chairman in Virginia. This letter was written December the 5th, 1865.

[John Weaver] Now, I'm going to show you why Southerners could not be allowed to vote. I'm going to tell you later how they were disenfranchised by the Reconstructionists. That is, they could not vote. And here is why. Gilly F. Watson wrote this letter on December 5, 1865 to Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Listen carefully. Honorable Thaddeus Stevens, honored sir, having been appointed as a committee of correspondence by our loyal league, we take pleasure in addressing you as one of the leading men of the nation, and in calling your attention to a few facts, which we think clearly show that Virginia is not yet prepared for restoration of civil rights. Your attention has doubtless been called to the elections in this city and state since the surrender of Lee's army, and you could not have overlooked the animus exhibited in those elections."

[John Weaver] Now listen to what he says,"...in every instance Avowed rebels have been chosen over union candidates. And in one instance, the president had the election set aside, that is, the one of mayor, because the choice of the people was a rebel officer. This spirit is rampant with the people today as ever, and is being exhibited in the General Assembly now in session. On the organization of that body yesterday, Colonel James B.

[John Weaver] Baldwin was elected speaker over a conservative gentleman, and we believe for the reason that he was a member of the Confederate Convention in Congress, the aid of Governor Letcher to muster the Virginia militia into the Confederate service, and afterwards a Confederate colonel. Mr. Baldwin is a man of ability, an old-line Whig, and opposed to secession before the war commenced. But when Virginia entered into the arena of strife, he pitched headlong into the fight, and no man then surpassed him in violence.

[John Weaver] Now, let me just stop momentarily. He's talking about Colonel John B. Baldwin. Those of you who know your history know it was this Colonel John B. Baldwin who, before the war actually broke out, approached President Abraham Lincoln and told him, If you will just simply undo these unjust and ungodly tariffs, the South will come back. We're not going to put up with these tariffs of 40 and 50 and 60 percent. It was Colonel Baldwin who was trying to persuade President Lincoln to head off the war. And now this gentleman says Colonel Baldwin was the man that no one surpassed in violence. Let me continue. He says in the Senate, Captain Harrison was elected sergeant at arms over Mr. Thompson, the old incumbent.

[John Weaver] His great recommendation being that he fought against the United States government. Clerks, doorkeepers, all were chosen for their rebellious proclivities over men of Union sentiments, thus showing the old Adams still living. and that the general government will have other troubles with this people as soon as the military power is removed. We represent the loyal people of this section, many of whom have fought and bled and lost their all in defense of the stars and strikes.

[John Weaver] Let me just pause there. What about all those southern men who had lost all they had in defense of their state? But he says, We represent the loyal people of this section, many of whom have fought and bled and lost all their all in defense of the stars and stripes. Are these men to be turned over to an excited and infuriated mob by the United States representatives?

[John Weaver] Or are the rebels to be held in check till their passions have subsided and they've had their constitutions and laws amended to conform to the requirements of Congress? Is it not the imperative duty of Congress to see that the amended laws of Virginia before admitting her representatives to seats? Are the loyal citizens, the freedmen, the national debt, the Confederate debt, all to be left open questions, to be acted upon as the rebels may feel inclined? Are the leaders of the rebels to become leaders in Reconstruction? These are questions that hold at bay the vitality of the Union and should be settled satisfactorily before any national privileges, we have forfeit all, are granted.

[John Weaver] Now listen to what he says. Virginia is no more fit for Union legislation now than she was in 1863. Six of the seven presses in the city are rebel organs and the leading ones are living on the rebellious reputations of the past. What are the friends of the Union to gain by hurriedly taking into fellowship these disorganized hordes? Nothing. Better it would be for Congress to say to these people, we will manage your political affairs till your passions cool.

[John Weaver] You can go to work on your farms and your stores and elsewhere and restore shattered fortunes. And when you're ready to elect union members of Congress and of the legislature, when you have passed union laws and adopted a union constitution, we will give you union representation. But until then, it shall not be. Let this course be adopted. Let General Butler, better known as Beast Butler, Let General Butler be sent here with plenary powers as military governor, and Virginia will become herself again. Any other course, in our opinion, will lead to trouble, anarchy, and confusion.

[John Weaver] Very respectfully, yours, Gilly F. Watson, Chairman."

[John Weaver] Now, did you hear what that man said? The man said, look, Virginia, in choosing people whom she desires to rule over her, they're just choosing the wrong people. And these wrong people have the wrong ideas. And therefore, we, the radical Republicans in Congress, must say to Virginia and to the other states, we will manage your political affairs until you are able to do as we tell you and think the way we tell you to think.

[John Weaver] I find it interesting he closes with this one sentence. He says, let General Butler be sent here with plenary powers as military governor and Virginia will become herself again. How can Virginia become herself if she is made into something she is not and was not? Well, very obviously, the goal of the Loyal League was to reconstruct the South so that the South could think and act like good Unionists. The second goal was the goal of re-education. One of the ways the South was to be re-educated was by repopulating the South with loyal Northerners on land confiscated from Southerners. And did you realize that many Southerners were then shipped to the North in order to transform them into loyal and progressive Unionists?

[John Weaver] Now let me tell you. That little escapade was not something just simply thought up. But if you study your Bibles, you'll find out in 2 Kings 17 when the king of Assyria captured the ten northern tribes whose capital was in Samaria. He then took the ten northern tribes and brought them to Assyria and other places and then he repopulated Samaria with people from all other countries. And so they were taking the loyal unionists and bringing them down south and taking loyal southerners and sending them up north in order to change their thinking.

[John Weaver] Now, the Freedmen's Bureau also had a peacetime federal educational mandate. It was not only to teach freedmen in order that they could survive as freemen, but it was also to transform the whites into being good citizens. Let me give you a quote. I hope it kind of ruffles your feathers, but J.P. Wickersham, who was a noted radical Republican, stated this. Now, as I give you his quote, I want you to think of the brilliant men and women we had in the South. I want you to think of R.L. Dadney. I want you to think of Robert E. Lee. I want you to think of Mary Gay, a diarist, Mary Boykin Chestnut. I want you to think of our poet laureate. I want you to think of all the men who were genuine scholars and literary agents here in the South.

[John Weaver] But listen to what he said. What can education do for the non-slaveholding whites of the South? The great majority are deplorably ignorant. As long as they're ignorant, they will remain tools of political demagogues and therefore be incapable of self-government. Excuse me? I thought the South had gotten along admirably well until then, but he says, as long as they're ignorant, they will remain tools of political demagogues and therefore be incapable of self-government. They must be educated. A Republican form of government cannot last long without providing a system of free schools. Ignorant voters endanger liberty. Are you listening?

[John Weaver] I'm still quoting J.P. Wickersham. With free schools in the South, there will be no rebellion in the future. When our youth learn to read similar books, similar lessons, we will become one person possessing one organic unity." So, he says, what we're going to do is we're going to re-educate the South and get them to think the way we think so they will act the way we act. Congress enforced a federalized education into the South through new state constitutions which compelled tax-supported schools controlled by Washington. The Freedmen's Bureau put the law into motion and soon 2,118 schools were placed upon confiscated land under the Freedmen's Bureau control.

[John Weaver] Now, I want you to compare what I just read to you with what Confederate General Patrick Cleaver said. Patrick Cleaver gave a dire warning concerning the subjugation of the South. Let me just go back before I read this and give you what J.P. Wickersham said again. With free schools in the South, there will be no rebellion in the future. When our youth learn to read similar books, similar lessons, we will become one person possessing one organic nationality. Now listen to the warning General Patrick Cleburne gave. He said, every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late. We can give but a faint idea when we say it means the loss of all we now hold sacred.

[John Weaver] Slaves and all other personal property, lands, homesteads, liberty, justice, safety, pride, manhood. It means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy. that our youth will be trained by northern school teachers, will learn from northern school books their version of the war, will be impressed upon all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant debtors as traitors, our main veterans as fit objects for derision. It means the crushing of southern manhood, the hatred of our former slaves, who will on a spy system be our secret police." Do you know something?

[John Weaver] Everything that General Patrick Cleburne warned against came to pass. Everything that J.P. Wickersham desired came to pass. You know what we've done today? We have sired an entire generation of people who know nothing of the founding principles of our founding fathers. We've started a generation of people who could care less about their heritage or their history. We now have a generation of people who know nothing of true liberty and true freedom.

[John Weaver] Government is now in every area and every avenue of our lives, and we now have come to the place where we expected to be there. We expected to do literally everything for us. In fact, our attitude has become, well, after all, Are they not doing this for our good? You see, the truth is this. Unknowingly, most of us have been molded into good little nationalists and good little internationalists.

[John Weaver] We're being educated not only to be loyal unionists, but to be global citizens. What was begun as an endeavor to re-educate the South into centralist views has now become an indoctrination for North and South in global views. The Loyal League and the Freedmen's Bureau were not only interested in reconstruction, but also in re-education. The third truth is this. The third goal was redistribution and regulation, redistribution and regulation.

[John Weaver] Did you know, and since I began this message talking about the original Ku Klux Klan, but do you realize that there was a committee of 21 who heard the reports, the eyewitness accounts, and even the hearsay accounts concerning the actions of the Ku Klux Klan before Congress. And there's ample evidence to prove that most of the atrocities that were attributed to the Klan were in fact committed not only by other anti-Reconstructionist organizations and outlaws impersonating the Klan, but also by loyal leaguers themselves who were black union leaguers and who disguised themselves as Klansmen, and they would attack the Negro Hamlets in order to instill hatred of white people into the blacks. You've got to understand the mentality of the Reconstructionist governors. The Reconstructionist governors that we had hated the South, hated the Constitutional Republic, hated everything we had. Let me tell you that in the summer of 1865, Governor Brownlow of Tennessee, who was a Scalawag governor, a Reconstructionist governor, he was also a Methodist preacher. I don't know how well he preached, but he's sometimes known as Parson Brownlow.

[John Weaver] But he said in 1865 that the persecutors of Union men, that is, he's talking about ex-Confederates, He says, the persecutors of Union men have forfeited all rights to protection and life. The same year, one delegate in the Tennessee Constitutional Convention stated that the only right the rebels had was to be hanged. There's ample documentation that the Unionists, in seeking revenge for what happened during the war, used their position to jail their enemies on trumped-up charges On the vaguest of rumors and hearsay evidence, cavalry units calmly put the torch to the homes of citizens.

[John Weaver] Vengeful Unionists formed the Loyal League ostensibly to suppress crime, keep order, and maintain discipline among the Negro population. In fact, it was the Loyal League that acted to intimidate their political opponents and the ex-Confederates, worsening, of course, the wartime situation were all of the infamous carpetbaggers and scalawags who sought personal profit and political power by exploiting the plights of both the black and the white. The radical Republicans declared that the Southern states would have to be reconstructed before they could ever be readmitted to the Union. Until then, now listen, ex-Confederates had no rights of citizenship. Southern whites were completely disenfranchised with no legal standing. They could not vote. They could not hold public office or petition for redress of grievances.

[John Weaver] Do you realize the South was then divided into five military districts? Throughout the South, it was the freed Negroes who then formed the black militias under the Union League or the Loyal League, and in most of the instances, they were given the task of enforcing martial law. Led by corrupt officers and self-serving politicians, the Union League became the most violent and murderous arm of Reconstruction to blacks and whites alike. Now let me tell you what Parson or Governor Brownlow said to show you the animosity, the hatred that existed in 1865 and 1866 when the South had been defeated. Governor Brownlow said this, if I had the power I would arm and uniform in the federal habilimates every wolf and panther and catamount and tiger and bear in the mountains of America, every crocodile in the swamps of Florida and South Carolina, every Negro in the Southern Confederacy, and every devil in hell, and turn them on the rebels in the South until it exterminated every rebel from the face of God's green earth. Every man, woman, and child south of the Mason-Dixon line I would like to see Richmond and Charleston captured by Negro troops, commanded by Butler the Beast.

[John Weaver] We will crowd the rebels into the Gulf of Mexico and drown the entire race as the devil rid the hogs of the Sea of Galilee. I am one of those who believe the war has ended too soon. We have whipped the rebels, but not enough. The second army of invasion will, as they ought to, make the entire South as God found the earth without forming voids. They will not and ought not to leave one rebel fence rail outhouse, one dwelling in the eleven seceded states. As for the rebel population, let them be exterminated. When the second war is wound up, which should be done with swift destruction, let the land be surveyed and sold out to pay expenses. Let the first army then be the largest division and do the killing. The second, let the second division be armed with pine torches and spirits of turpentine and let them do the burning. Let the third and last division be armed with surveyors' compasses and chains that will survey the land and settle it with loyal people.

[John Weaver] Burn and kill, burn and kill until the whole rebel race is exterminated. Now those are the words of one Reconstructionist governor. I'm sure that He probably had the best interests of the South in mind at the time, don't you? No, of course not. That was what our forefathers faced, that kind of attitude. Joe Crew, who was a Union League militia captain in Lawrence, South Carolina, is quoted as telling his men that if they wanted provisions and could not afford them, they should go into the fields and take what they wanted. If whites did not settle them the way they thought was right, they should burn them out of house and home because matches are cheap. In North Carolina, one company of the militia was commanded by Colonel George Kirk. He was known as Bloody Kirk or Cutthroat Kirk, during the war between the states, because Colonel Kirk led pro-union guerrillas in East Tennessee, and he committed there many atrocities.

[John Weaver] His crimes were denounced as a disgrace to the 19th century. What Colonel Kirk did was this. He arrested 50 to 60 men who were alleged to have some connection with the Klan. When some of them obtained a writ of habeas corpus, Kirk, Colonel Kirk, defied the state Supreme Court by saying, these things have played out now. Kirk then proceeded to place a noose around the necks of these men and hang them temporarily, not killing them, but hang them temporarily, trying to force them into confessing that they were Klansmen. Well, they were not Klansmen and they were not about to confess that they were Klansmen.

[John Weaver] Come to find out, the order for this torture came from Governor Holden himself, who was the governor of North Carolina. When news of this got back to some of the northern senators, it certainly upset them. Listen to what Senator Bayard of Delaware said, and he was speaking before Congress about the crimes that had been perpetrated by Colonel Kerr. He said, and here's his quote, here are the facts.

[John Weaver] 50 or 60 unarmed men were taken without writ without color of law of any kind, dragged from their homes, kept by Kirk, threatened with death instantly should an attempt be made for their rescue. Not only were they to be murdered as helpless prisoners, but the women and children of the town were to be put to fire and sword. And such conduct as this, Senators, is absolutely justified on the floor of the United States Senate." What was he saying? He is saying, we're the ones who've loosed these men. We're the ones who are responsible.

[John Weaver] You see, property was stolen. Lives were destroyed. Homes burned. Rape and robbery and pillage, all in the direction of the federal government. Albion Torgi, who was the famous carpetbagger Supreme Court judge in North Carolina, wrote, now listen to what he wrote, that the Ku Klux Klan had broken into 4,000 to 5,000 homes, that is 4,000 to 5,000 homes, burned 14, murdered 13 in one county.

[John Weaver] Later on, he said he was misquoted. He said, I wrote 4 arsons instead of 14. Between 4 to 500 broken into instead of four and five thousand. I said that thirteen murders were committed in the state, not in the district. Still later it was found that all of the house burnings were perpetrated by Governor Holden's Union League to provoke the Klan into action. So out of all that he said the Klan did, they actually did none of it. It was the Loyal League that was doing all of it.

[John Weaver] You see, the corruption and the tyranny of Reconstruction are well documented. In North Carolina, the carpetbag Republican legislatures of 1868 and 1869 illegally authorized $28 million. Now, you're talking 1868 and 1869. They illegally authorized $28 million in railroad bonds, which New York carpetbagger Milton Littlefield used to buy boats. The military government suspended the rights of habeas corpus, In Gaston County alone, the Loyal League members torched 28 barns belonging to whites in one week. All of these actions were intended to create ill will between the black and the whites and to do so for political gain. You see, the purpose of Reconstruction was to destroy the decentralized republic that we had that was established by our founding fathers. And once the political and military power was centralized in Washington, D.C., the pretense of protecting the former slaves was abandoned.

[John Weaver] You remember each slave was promised, what, 40 acres and a mule? And they're still waiting on the 40 acres and the mule.

[John Weaver] Now, things, understandably, were not going well. The Ku Klux Klan, the original one, as I said earlier, was organized in 1865. It was disbanded by order of General Forrest in 1869. No one succeeded him after 1870. By 1871, all of the original Klan was gone. But still, Congress held hearings on the supposed atrocities committed by the Klan. You've got to understand that hearsay and rumors were accepted as well.

[John Weaver] In fact, the testimony fills 13 volumes. There were 21 members of this committee who heard all of the testimony given concerning the Klan. Thirteen of the 21 members condemned the Klan. The rest produced what was known as a minority report, exonerating the Klan. I want to close by giving you this quote this morning, and I want you to listen to what the minority report from Congress was concerning the activities of the Ku Klux Klan from 1865 1869. Quote, had there been no wanton oppression in the South, there would have been no Ku Kluxism.

[John Weaver] Had there been no rule of the tyrannical, corrupt, carpetbagger, scalawag rule, there would have been no secret organizations. From the oppression and corruption of the one sprang the vice and the outrage of the other. When the testimony before us is analyzed, the carpetbaggers, the freedmen's bureau agents, and the loyal leaguers, the union leaguers, who went into these states took as the theme of their harangues the wrongs the blacks had suffered and the right they had to take whatever they pleased of the property they had labored to acquire for their masters. When, in secret sworn organizations, that is the loyal league, Hatred of a white race was instilled in the minds of these ignorant people by every art and while that bad men could devise. When the blacks were formed into military organizations and the white people of these states were denied the use of arms, when arson, rape, robbery, and murder were things of daily occurrence, when the great masses of the most intelligent whites were disenfranchised and the ballot was put into the hands of the blacks by

[John Weaver] the government at Washington, when every promise made and every law enacted was broken and disregarded by the federal authorities, whenever it suited their purposes to do so, when even the courts were closed and the federal officers, who were by Congress absolute rulers and dispensers of what they called justice, ignored, insulted, and trampled upon the rights of the ostracized and disenfranchised white men, while the officials pandered to the enfranchised blacks on whose vote they relied, In short, when the people saw that they had no rights which were respected, no protection from insults, no security even for their wives and little children, and that what little they had saved from the ravages of war was being confiscated by taxation and rendered valueless by the debts for which men who owned nothing had pledged it, and saw that all their complaints and remonstrances, however honestly and humbly presented to Congress, were either wholly disregarded as evidence of rebellious and unsubdued spirit, many of

[John Weaver] them took the law into their own hands and did deeds of violence which we neither justify nor excuse. But all history shows that bad government will make bad citizens. And when the corruption, extortion, and villainy of the governments which Congress has set up and maintained over Southern states are thoroughly understood and made known, as we trust they will be someday, the world will be amazed at the long-suffering and the endurance of the Southern people. Isn't that amazing? Here the minority report said, look, if Congress had left the South alone and not treated her as a conquered territory and not tried to force her.

[John Weaver] In the reconstruction things would have been entirely different. As I said in the beginning the original plan was disbanded in 1869 most of the atrocities committed were done by the loyal. And many of those atrocities that had been supposedly committed by the Klan were done by loyal leaguers dressed as the Klanmen to produce hatred between the blacks and the whites. You see, while we deplore unbiblical, unconstitutional, and unnecessary violence, We must remember that such violence is wicked and wrong not just when one person does it, but it is just as wicked and just as wrong when a multitude of persons do it, even when the civil government does it. When God says, Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil, It applies to civil governments as well as to individuals. Wrong is wrong. Are you listening?

[John Weaver] Might does not make right. And just because you have a number, just because you have a majority, just because you have a multitude does not mean that what that majority has voted for or wants is right by any stretch of the imagination. Right is determined by God. Wrong is determined by God. And God tells us individually, familially, ecclesiastically, civilly, and nationally, thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil. We must learn to do what's right and stand on our own. even if everyone else does wrong.

[John Weaver] I would encourage you, you go home, get on your computers, check out the Loyal League, the Union League, and you'll find it was the original Klan, Washington's Klan, for the destruction of the South. Father, we ask in the name of Jesus Christ today that you would help us to do that which is right and holy. May we always follow thee and thy word and stand for thy truth, regardless of what others do, regardless of what multitudes do. May we honor thee in every area of our lives. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Washington's Klan

John Weaver | SermonAudio

Lecture Metadata	Details
Speaker	John Weaver
Source	SermonAudio
Media ID	62404152632
Subject	Civil Government
Course	Civil Government: Power, Nations, and Constitutional Order: Where We Are & How We Got Here
Genre	Sermon
Date	2004-04-25
Dictation Name
Book	Book 009: Civil Government: Power, Nations, and Constitutional Order — Chapter 4
Source Timed Segments	62

Formatted Transcript

Introduction and Scripture Reading

Weaver opens at Fort Jackson, reads Exodus 23:1-3, and focuses on verse 2: 'Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.' He introduces the topic 'Washington's Klan, The Loyal League.'

We're meeting today then at historic Fort Jackson, and let me just say that any distractions you hear is from the Army Corps of Engineers fixing the shoreline here, and this, of course, is Robert E. Lee's first duty station. So I would encourage you then to listen carefully so as not to be distracted by the outside noise. I want you to open your Bibles, if you would, to Exodus chapter 23. I'm just going to be dealing, basically, with one or two verses and giving a history lesson. And so I want you to look closely at Exodus chapter 23. Very simple passage. In fact, let's just read the first three verses. Verse 2 is the verse I really want to deal with. Exodus chapter 23, verse 1.

"Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment: Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause." Now look closely at verse 2: "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." I want to deal with a subject today which I am sure that most people here have never, ever heard spoken of before. The subject is entitled, "Washington's Klan, The Loyal League."

The Original Klan vs. the Loyal League

Weaver distinguishes the original Klan (1865–1869) from modern perceptions, asserting it was a response to the Union-sponsored Loyal League, which he calls the real 'Washington's Klan.'

Now, certainly the message that I'm going to be giving today is not a vindication of the modern day Ku Klux Klan. I'm certainly going to be mentioning the Ku Klux Klan, but you've got to remember the original Ku Klux Klan began in 1865. It was disbanded by General Forrest in 1869. He himself had his office expire in 1870, and by 1871, the original Klan, of course, had been disbanded.

Now, when everyone hears of the KKK, at the mere mention of the words, or at least the mere sight of those representative letters, usually what everyone thinks of is racism, and especially Southern racism. Well, Confederate and United States Congressman J. Best Curry said this: "No conquered people have ever written the accepted history of the conquest." And certainly that is true. It may surprise you to know that the original Klan that murdered blacks as well as whites was an agency of the federal government. Now, does that surprise you? It was the Union Klan. It was known as the Loyal League. The KKK, the original KKK, gained its notoriety in its opposition to the Loyal League and its many and varied activities. Now, the Loyal League was originated in the North. It worked for the ideas and policies of the North and was sponsored by the government of Washington, D.C. The Union League, also known as the Loyal Union League or the Union Loyal League or the Loyal League, was a secret organization begun in Ohio in 1862. Now some say 1863. It may have begun in 1862, but originally chartered then in January of 1863. The reason the Loyal League was formed to begin with was to bolster Northern morale and support the policies of Abraham Lincoln. Ohio Republicans established the first Union League in America in 1862.

Origins and Purpose of the Loyal League

The Loyal League began in Ohio in 1862–1863 to bolster Northern morale, support Lincoln, and counteract Copperheads. It spread rapidly, serving as a political force for Radical Republican aims.

And they were doing so to counteract the groups such as the Copperheads. Now, the Copperheads were people who lived in the North who were extremely sympathetic to Southern views and the Southern idea of limited government and a constitutional republic. Not only that, but then Democrats in the North even were winning some victories, and the North was experiencing great defeat on the battlefield. So in an attempt then to arouse enthusiasm for the war effort and to infuse new vitality in the Republican Party, the League then quickly spread throughout the North, serving not only as a social, but as a political force as well. Within one year, the League had spread to 18 northern states and many, many among the Unionists of the South.

Now, the Loyal League raised troops, paid their expenses, sent supplies to the field, and distributed political literature. At the close of the war, it was the Loyal League that worked for the radical reconstruction of the Southern states, for the punishment of Southern leaders, for the confiscation of Southern property, and for Negro suffrage.

The League's Role in Reconstruction

After the war, the League pushed for radical Reconstruction: punishment of Southern leaders, confiscation of property, and Negro suffrage. It became a machine to control black votes and instill hatred of Southern whites.

Now, an interesting thing is, as I was doing some research on this, I found that the original power behind the League was a man by the name of Dr. Henry Whitney Bellows, who was a minister at the All Souls Unitarian Church in New York. It was Dr. Bellows who began what is known as the Sanitary Commission, and the Sanitary Commission was not only the forerunner of the Loyal League, but also of the American Red Cross. Now, the interesting thing was, Dr. Bellows had heard Secretary of State William Seward make a speech. And in this speech, the Secretary of State said this: "It is time that loyal men had to put the country ahead of the Constitution because a nation on fire made any debate on the sanctity of law out of order," end quote. Now, that was the Secretary of State, and he said it was time that loyal men put the country ahead of the Constitution. In other words, it really didn't matter what the Constitution said.

They were going to do what they were going to do regardless. Now, after the Freedmen's Bureau, and I'll explain this in just a moment, but after the Freedmen's Bureau's agents and other Northern whites obtained command of the League in the South, it simply became a machine to control the votes of the blacks. The League ceased to be important in the North, although it was headquartered in New York City. Each southern state had a grand council, and each county had one or more councils. The Loyal League had a constitution and an elaborate ritual that was adopted, making it an oath-bound secret society whose members were sworn to support one another on all occasions, and in elections vote only for Negroes or for Northern men in order to overthrow what they called the Southern white oligarchy. No ex-Confederates were allowed in the Loyal League, and certainly very few Southern Unionists were permitted to join either. At each Southern League meeting, the members were taught from a catechism prepared by the radical Republicans of Congress that they must beware of their white neighbors as their worst enemies, and that the Democratic Party, to which Southern whites had belonged, had opposed emancipation and were still opposed to any rights to the Negroes. In order to prevent the moral control of the Negroes by their former masters, the Loyal League issued what was known as an Exodus Order. Now the Exodus Order just simply meant this: it meant that any Negroes who were still living with their former masters must leave them and then find different housing because they could not stay there at all.

In these meetings, of course, the Negroes were not just simply taught the equality of men, but they were also taught the right of the Negro to his master's property and to any other property that they desired. The votes of blacks during Reconstruction were controlled by a few white Republican leaders. No black man could break away and vote independently. Negroes who voted with the mass of Southern whites were not only persecuted, beaten, but in a few instances, they were also killed.

The Freedmen's Bureau as Shadow Government

The Freedmen's Bureau controlled millions of ex-slaves, white refugees, and confiscated lands. General Howard described his power as legislative, judicial, and executive combined, backed by armed force.

Now, the Loyal League died out about 1870, but not before it had succeeded and literally become incorporated with the Freedmen's Bureau and other forces which were permanently trying to array blacks against whites and opposing political parties. Let me tell you just a little bit about the Freedmen's Bureau. The Freedmen's Bureau had a rather large title. When we think of the Freedmen's Bureau, we normally think of a bureau that just simply existed for the benefit of black folks. Well, listen to the title: The Bureau of Freedom, or the Bureau of Freedmen, Abandoned Lands and Refugees. Now that is the full title of the Freedmen's Bureau. It shows the extent of its power and also its jurisdiction. The Freedmen's Bureau, Abandoned Lands and Refugees, controlled 4 million ex-slaves and millions of whites, that is, the refugees who were displaced by the war, and tens of millions of acres of property that were confiscated from the traitors, that is, Southerners and Southern Confederates. So the Freedmen's Bureau then not only controlled the 4 million ex-slaves, it also controlled all the whites who had their property confiscated, who were now counted as refugees, and of course it then had control over all of the land that had been confiscated as well. The commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau was General Oliver Otis Howard.

Now, General Howard's right arm had been blown off at the Battle of Seven Pines. This severe wound embittered him intensely against the South. Howard himself describes his agency's power. Listen to what General Howard said concerning the Freedmen's Bureau. I quote: "The law establishing the Bureau committed it to the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen from the rebel states. And this almost unlimited authority gave me scope and liberty of action. Legislative, judicial, and executive powers were combined in my commission. I controlled all abandoned land solely for the purpose of assigning, leasing, and selling them to refugees and freedmen." In other words, General Howard is saying that basically he was a dictator. He was also telling us that basically the Freedmen's Bureau was a shadow government for the North in the South, and it was backed up by armed forces.

Goals of Reconstruction: Re-education and Centralization

Radical Republicans sought to destroy the South's limited-government, constitutional republic. They used re-education, confiscation, and population transfers to mold Southerners into loyal Unionists and global citizens.

Now, let me just give you several things that may shock you. In fact, I hope some of the quotes that I give you will indeed shock you. But let's consider just for a moment the goal of Reconstruction. I foresee, as I began studying this issue, that probably there will need to be many more messages in the future explaining this. But when you see how broad this spectrum is, it's absolutely amazing. So consider for a moment the goal of Reconstruction. You see, the South, it was determined by the Radical Republicans in Congress, had to be ruled with an iron hand and forced into Reconstruction. Now, the Loyal League and the Freedmen's Bureau were led by the Radical Republicans who were in control of Congress. In fact, most of the Loyal League officers were federal employees.

Judge James Edmunds was National Union League President from 1863 to 1869. Simultaneously, he was also the Republican Commissioner of the General Lands Office in Washington. It was through his efforts the National Council of the League joined forces with Republican leaders to combine their resources for a Southern organizing campaign to bring loyalty and nationalized patriotism to the traitorous South. The process then fused the League with the Republican Party. So all the Loyal League was then was an extension of the Congressional Republican Party. The South, as it existed according to Reconstruction, embracing the concepts that it embraced—that is, the concept of a limited government, a constitutional republic, states' rights, and the right of self-defense—could not be allowed to continue. It must be reconstructed. Thus, the League then was operating in concert with what you and I would know as the Republican Party, and it was an instrument then in reconstructing the South.

Now, Republican Thaddeus Stevens, who was a wicked, wicked man, by the way, he was also a congressman. And here is a letter that was written to him by Gilly F. Watson, who was the lead chairman in Virginia. This letter was written December the 5th, 1865.

Now, I'm going to show you why Southerners could not be allowed to vote. I'm going to tell you later how they were disenfranchised by the Reconstructionists. That is, they could not vote. And here is why. Gilly F. Watson wrote this letter on December 5, 1865, to Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Listen carefully. "Honorable Thaddeus Stevens, honored sir, having been appointed as a committee of correspondence by our loyal league, we take pleasure in addressing you as one of the leading men of the nation, and in calling your attention to a few facts, which we think clearly show that Virginia is not yet prepared for restoration of civil rights. Your attention has doubtless been called to the elections in this city and state since the surrender of Lee's army, and you could not have overlooked the animus exhibited in those elections."

Now listen to what he says, "...in every instance avowed rebels have been chosen over union candidates. And in one instance, the president had the election set aside, that is, the one of mayor, because the choice of the people was a rebel officer. This spirit is rampant with the people today as ever, and is being exhibited in the General Assembly now in session. On the organization of that body yesterday, Colonel James B. Baldwin was elected speaker over a conservative gentleman, and we believe for the reason that he was a member of the Confederate Convention in Congress, the aid of Governor Letcher to muster the Virginia militia into the Confederate service, and afterwards a Confederate colonel. Mr. Baldwin is a man of ability, an old-line Whig, and opposed to secession before the war commenced. But when Virginia entered into the arena of strife, he pitched headlong into the fight, and no man then surpassed him in violence.

Now, let me just stop momentarily. He's talking about Colonel John B. Baldwin. Those of you who know your history know it was this Colonel John B. Baldwin who, before the war actually broke out, approached President Abraham Lincoln and told him, "If you will just simply undo these unjust and ungodly tariffs, the South will come back. We're not going to put up with these tariffs of 40 and 50 and 60 percent." It was Colonel Baldwin who was trying to persuade President Lincoln to head off the war. And now this gentleman says Colonel Baldwin was the man that no one surpassed in violence. Let me continue. He says, "In the Senate, Captain Harrison was elected sergeant at arms over Mr. Thompson, the old incumbent.

His great recommendation being that he fought against the United States government. Clerks, doorkeepers, all were chosen for their rebellious proclivities over men of Union sentiments, thus showing the old Adams still living, and that the general government will have other troubles with this people as soon as the military power is removed. We represent the loyal people of this section, many of whom have fought and bled and lost their all in defense of the stars and stripes. Let me just pause there. What about all those southern men who had lost all they had in defense of their state? But he says, "We represent the loyal people of this section, many of whom have fought and bled and lost all their all in defense of the stars and stripes. Are these men to be turned over to an excited and infuriated mob by the United States representatives?

Or are the rebels to be held in check till their passions have subsided and they've had their constitutions and laws amended to conform to the requirements of Congress? Is it not the imperative duty of Congress to see that the amended laws of Virginia before admitting her representatives to seats? Are the loyal citizens, the freedmen, the national debt, the Confederate debt, all to be left open questions, to be acted upon as the rebels may feel inclined? Are the leaders of the rebels to become leaders in Reconstruction? These are questions that hold at bay the vitality of the Union and should be settled satisfactorily before any national privileges, we have forfeit all, are granted."

Now listen to what he says. "Virginia is no more fit for Union legislation now than she was in 1863. Six of the seven presses in the city are rebel organs and the leading ones are living on the rebellious reputations of the past. What are the friends of the Union to gain by hurriedly taking into fellowship these disorganized hordes? Nothing. Better it would be for Congress to say to these people, 'We will manage your political affairs till your passions cool.' You can go to work on your farms and your stores and elsewhere and restore shattered fortunes. And when you're ready to elect union members of Congress and of the legislature, when you have passed union laws and adopted a union constitution, we will give you union representation. But until then, it shall not be. Let this course be adopted. Let General Butler, better known as Beast Butler, let General Butler be sent here with plenary powers as military governor, and Virginia will become herself again. Any other course, in our opinion, will lead to trouble, anarchy, and confusion."

Very respectfully, yours, Gilly F. Watson, Chairman. Now, did you hear what that man said? The man said, look, Virginia, in choosing people whom she desires to rule over her, they're just choosing the wrong people. And these wrong people have the wrong ideas. And therefore, we, the radical Republicans in Congress, must say to Virginia and to the other states, "We will manage your political affairs until you are able to do as we tell you and think the way we tell you to think." I find it interesting he closes with this one sentence. He says, "Let General Butler be sent here with plenary powers as military governor and Virginia will become herself again." How can Virginia become herself if she is made into something she is not and was not? Well, very obviously, the goal of the Loyal League was to reconstruct the South so that the South could think and act like good Unionists. The second goal was the goal of re-education. One of the ways the South was to be re-educated was by repopulating the South with loyal Northerners on land confiscated from Southerners. And did you realize that many Southerners were then shipped to the North in order to transform them into loyal and progressive Unionists?

Now let me tell you. That little escapade was not something just simply thought up. But if you study your Bibles, you'll find out in 2 Kings 17 when the king of Assyria captured the ten northern tribes whose capital was in Samaria. He then took the ten northern tribes and brought them to Assyria and other places and then he repopulated Samaria with people from all other countries. And so they were taking the loyal unionists and bringing them down south and taking loyal southerners and sending them up north in order to change their thinking.

Now, the Freedmen's Bureau also had a peacetime federal educational mandate. It was not only to teach freedmen in order that they could survive as freemen, but it was also to transform the whites into being good citizens. Let me give you a quote. I hope it kind of ruffles your feathers, but J.P. Wickersham, who was a noted radical Republican, stated this. Now, as I give you his quote, I want you to think of the brilliant men and women we had in the South. I want you to think of R.L. Dabney. I want you to think of Robert E. Lee. I want you to think of Mary Gay, a diarist, Mary Boykin Chesnut. I want you to think of our poet laureate. I want you to think of all the men who were genuine scholars and literary agents here in the South.

But listen to what he said. "What can education do for the non-slaveholding whites of the South? The great majority are deplorably ignorant. As long as they're ignorant, they will remain tools of political demagogues and therefore be incapable of self-government." Excuse me? I thought the South had gotten along admirably well until then, but he says, "As long as they're ignorant, they will remain tools of political demagogues and therefore be incapable of self-government. They must be educated. A Republican form of government cannot last long without providing a system of free schools. Ignorant voters endanger liberty." Are you listening?

I'm still quoting J.P. Wickersham. "With free schools in the South, there will be no rebellion in the future. When our youth learn to read similar books, similar lessons, we will become one person possessing one organic unity." So, he says, what we're going to do is we're going to re-educate the South and get them to think the way we think so they will act the way we act. Congress enforced a federalized education into the South through new state constitutions which compelled tax-supported schools controlled by Washington. The Freedmen's Bureau put the law into motion and soon 2,118 schools were placed upon confiscated land under the Freedmen's Bureau control.

Atrocities and the Minority Report

Weaver cites evidence that Loyal Leaguers committed atrocities while disguised as Klansmen. A Congressional minority report exonerated the original Klan, blaming oppression by carpetbaggers and the Loyal League for the violence.

Now, I want you to compare what I just read to you with what Confederate General Patrick Cleburne said. Patrick Cleburne gave a dire warning concerning the subjugation of the South. Let me just go back before I read this and give you what J.P. Wickersham said again: "With free schools in the South, there will be no rebellion in the future. When our youth learn to read similar books, similar lessons, we will become one person possessing one organic nationality." Now listen to the warning General Patrick Cleburne gave. He said, "Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late. We can give but a faint idea when we say it means the loss of all we now hold sacred.

Slaves and all other personal property, lands, homesteads, liberty, justice, safety, pride, manhood. It means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by northern school teachers, will learn from northern school books their version of the war, will be impressed upon all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision. It means the crushing of southern manhood, the hatred of our former slaves, who will on a spy system be our secret police." Do you know something? Everything that General Patrick Cleburne warned against came to pass. Everything that J.P. Wickersham desired came to pass. You know what we've done today? We have sired an entire generation of people who know nothing of the founding principles of our founding fathers. We've started a generation of people who could care less about their heritage or their history. We now have a generation of people who know nothing of true liberty and true freedom.

Government is now in every area and every avenue of our lives, and we now have come to the place where we expect it to be there. We expect it to do literally everything for us. In fact, our attitude has become, "Well, after all, are they not doing this for our good?" You see, the truth is this: unknowingly, most of us have been molded into good little nationalists and good little internationalists. We're being educated not only to be loyal unionists, but to be global citizens. What was begun as an endeavor to re-educate the South into centralist views has now become an indoctrination for North and South in global views. The Loyal League and the Freedmen's Bureau were not only interested in reconstruction, but also in re-education. The third truth is this: the third goal was redistribution and regulation, redistribution and regulation.

Did you know—and since I began this message talking about the original Ku Klux Klan—but do you realize that there was a committee of 21 who heard the reports, the eyewitness accounts, and even the hearsay accounts concerning the actions of the Ku Klux Klan before Congress? And there's ample evidence to prove that most of the atrocities that were attributed to the Klan were in fact committed not only by other anti-Reconstructionist organizations and outlaws impersonating the Klan, but also by loyal leaguers themselves who were black union leaguers and who disguised themselves as Klansmen, and they would attack the Negro hamlets in order to instill hatred of white people into the blacks. You've got to understand the mentality of the Reconstructionist governors. The Reconstructionist governors that we had hated the South, hated the Constitutional Republic, hated everything we had. Let me tell you that in the summer of 1865, Governor Brownlow of Tennessee, who was a Scalawag governor, a Reconstructionist governor—he was also a Methodist preacher. I don't know how well he preached, but he's sometimes known as Parson Brownlow.

But he said in 1865 that "the persecutors of Union men"—that is, he's talking about ex-Confederates—he says, "the persecutors of Union men have forfeited all rights to protection and life." The same year, one delegate in the Tennessee Constitutional Convention stated that the only right the rebels had was to be hanged. There's ample documentation that the Unionists, in seeking revenge for what happened during the war, used their position to jail their enemies on trumped-up charges. On the vaguest of rumors and hearsay evidence, cavalry units calmly put the torch to the homes of citizens. Vengeful Unionists formed the Loyal League ostensibly to suppress crime, keep order, and maintain discipline among the Negro population. In fact, it was the Loyal League that acted to intimidate their political opponents and the ex-Confederates, worsening, of course, the wartime situation. Were all of the infamous carpetbaggers and scalawags who sought personal profit and political power by exploiting the plights of both the black and the white. The radical Republicans declared that the Southern states would have to be reconstructed before they could ever be readmitted to the Union. Until then—now listen—ex-Confederates had no rights of citizenship. Southern whites were completely disenfranchised with no legal standing. They could not vote. They could not hold public office or petition for redress of grievances.

Do you realize the South was then divided into five military districts? Throughout the South, it was the freed Negroes who then formed the black militias under the Union League or the Loyal League, and in most of the instances, they were given the task of enforcing martial law. Led by corrupt officers and self-serving politicians, the Union League became the most violent and murderous arm of Reconstruction to blacks and whites alike. Now let me tell you what Parson—or Governor—Brownlow said to show you the animosity, the hatred that existed in 1865 and 1866 when the South had been defeated. Governor Brownlow said this: "If I had the power I would arm and uniform in the federal habiliments every wolf and panther and catamount and tiger and bear in the mountains of America, every crocodile in the swamps of Florida and South Carolina, every Negro in the Southern Confederacy, and every devil in hell, and turn them on the rebels in the South until it exterminated every rebel from the face of God's green earth. Every man, woman, and child south of the Mason-Dixon line I would like to see Richmond and Charleston captured by Negro troops, commanded by Butler the Beast.

We will crowd the rebels into the Gulf of Mexico and drown the entire race as the devil rid the hogs of the Sea of Galilee. I am one of those who believe the war has ended too soon. We have whipped the rebels, but not enough. The second army of invasion will, as they ought to, make the entire South as God found the earth without form and void. They will not and ought not to leave one rebel fence rail, outhouse, one dwelling in the eleven seceded states. As for the rebel population, let them be exterminated. When the second war is wound up, which should be done with swift destruction, let the land be surveyed and sold out to pay expenses. Let the first army then be the largest division and do the killing. The second—let the second division be armed with pine torches and spirits of turpentine and let them do the burning. Let the third and last division be armed with surveyors' compasses and chains that will survey the land and settle it with loyal people.

Burn and kill, burn and kill until the whole rebel race is exterminated." Now those are the words of one Reconstructionist governor. I'm sure that he probably had the best interests of the South in mind at the time, don't you? No, of course not. That was what our forefathers faced, that kind of attitude. Joe Crew, who was a Union League militia captain in Lawrence, South Carolina, is quoted as telling his men that if they wanted provisions and could not afford them, they should go into the fields and take what they wanted. If whites did not settle them the way they thought was right, they should burn them out of house and home because matches are cheap. In North Carolina, one company of the militia was commanded by Colonel George Kirk. He was known as Bloody Kirk or Cutthroat Kirk during the war between the states, because Colonel Kirk led pro-union guerrillas in East Tennessee, and he committed there many atrocities.

His crimes were denounced as a disgrace to the 19th century. What Colonel Kirk did was this: he arrested 50 to 60 men who were alleged to have some connection with the Klan. When some of them obtained a writ of habeas corpus, Kirk—Colonel Kirk—defied the state Supreme Court by saying, "These things have played out now." Kirk then proceeded to place a noose around the necks of these men and hang them temporarily, not killing them, but hang them temporarily, trying to force them into confessing that they were Klansmen. Well, they were not Klansmen and they were not about to confess that they were Klansmen. Come to find out, the order for this torture came from Governor Holden himself, who was the governor of North Carolina. When news of this got back to some of the northern senators, it certainly upset them. Listen to what Senator Bayard of Delaware said, and he was speaking before Congress about the crimes that had been perpetrated by Colonel Kirk. He said—and here's his quote—"Here are the facts.

50 or 60 unarmed men were taken without writ, without color of law of any kind, dragged from their homes, kept by Kirk, threatened with death instantly should an attempt be made for their rescue. Not only were they to be murdered as helpless prisoners, but the women and children of the town were to be put to fire and sword. And such conduct as this, Senators, is absolutely justified on the floor of the United States Senate." What was he saying? He is saying, we're the ones who've loosed these men. We're the ones who are responsible. You see, property was stolen. Lives were destroyed. Homes burned. Rape and robbery and pillage, all in the direction of the federal government. Albion Tourgée, who was the famous carpetbagger Supreme Court judge in North Carolina, wrote—now listen to what he wrote—that the Ku Klux Klan had broken into 4,000 to 5,000 homes, that is 4,000 to 5,000 homes, burned 14, murdered 13 in one county.

Later on, he said he was misquoted. He said, "I wrote 4 arsons instead of 14. Between 4 to 500 broken into instead of four and five thousand. I said that thirteen murders were committed in the state, not in the district." Still later it was found that all of the house burnings were perpetrated by Governor Holden's Union League to provoke the Klan into action. So out of all that he said the Klan did, they actually did none of it. It was the Loyal League that was doing all of it. You see, the corruption and the tyranny of Reconstruction are well documented. In North Carolina, the carpetbag Republican legislatures of 1868 and 1869 illegally authorized $28 million—now, you're talking 1868 and 1869—they illegally authorized $28 million in railroad bonds, which New York carpetbagger Milton Littlefield used to buy boats. The military government suspended the rights of habeas corpus. In Gaston County alone, the Loyal League members torched 28 barns belonging to whites in one week. All of these actions were intended to create ill will between the black and the whites and to do so for political gain. You see, the purpose of Reconstruction was to destroy the decentralized republic that we had that was established by our founding fathers. And once the political and military power was centralized in Washington, D.C., the pretense of protecting the former slaves was abandoned.

You remember each slave was promised, what, 40 acres and a mule? And they're still waiting on the 40 acres and the mule. Now, things, understandably, were not going well. The Ku Klux Klan, the original one, as I said earlier, was organized in 1865. It was disbanded by order of General Forrest in 1869. No one succeeded him after 1870. By 1871, all of the original Klan was gone. But still, Congress held hearings on the supposed atrocities committed by the Klan. You've got to understand that hearsay and rumors were accepted as well.

In fact, the testimony fills 13 volumes. There were 21 members of this committee who heard all of the testimony given concerning the Klan. Thirteen of the 21 members condemned the Klan. The rest produced what was known as a minority report, exonerating the Klan. I want to close by giving you this quote this morning, and I want you to listen to what the minority report from Congress was concerning the activities of the Ku Klux Klan from 1865 to 1869. Quote: "Had there been no wanton oppression in the South, there would have been no Ku Kluxism." "Had there been no rule of the tyrannical, corrupt, carpetbagger, scalawag rule, there would have been no secret organizations. From the oppression and corruption of the one sprang the vice and the outrage of the other. When the testimony before us is analyzed, the carpetbaggers, the Freedmen's Bureau agents, and the Loyal Leaguers, the Union Leaguers, who went into these states took as the theme of their harangues the wrongs the blacks had suffered and the right they had to take whatever they pleased of the property they had labored to acquire for their masters. When, in secret sworn organizations, that is the Loyal League, hatred of a white race was instilled in the minds of these ignorant people by every art and while that bad men could devise. When the blacks were formed into military organizations and the white people of these states were denied the use of arms, when arson, rape, robbery, and murder were things of daily occurrence, when the great masses of the most intelligent whites were disenfranchised and the ballot was put into the hands of the blacks by

the government at Washington, when every promise made and every law enacted was broken and disregarded by the federal authorities, whenever it suited their purposes to do so, when even the courts were closed and the federal officers, who were by Congress absolute rulers and dispensers of what they called justice, ignored, insulted, and trampled upon the rights of the ostracized and disenfranchised white men, while the officials pandered to the enfranchised blacks on whose vote they relied, in short, when the people saw that they had no rights which were respected, no protection from insults, no security even for their wives and little children, and that what little they had saved from the ravages of war was being confiscated by taxation and rendered valueless by the debts for which men who owned nothing had pledged it, and saw that all their complaints and remonstrances, however honestly and humbly presented to Congress, were either wholly disregarded as evidence of rebellious and unsubdued spirit, many of

them took the law into their own hands and did deeds of violence which we neither justify nor excuse. But all history shows that bad government will make bad citizens. And when the corruption, extortion, and villainy of the governments which Congress has set up and maintained over Southern states are thoroughly understood and made known, as we trust they will be someday, the world will be amazed at the long-suffering and the endurance of the Southern people." Isn't that amazing? Here the minority report said, look, if Congress had left the South alone and not treated her as a conquered territory and not tried to force her

Application: Do Not Follow a Multitude to Do Evil

Weaver concludes that God's command applies to civil governments as well as individuals. Right is determined by God, not by majority vote. Believers must stand for truth regardless of what multitudes do.

in the reconstruction, things would have been entirely different. As I said in the beginning, the original plan was disbanded in 1869. Most of the atrocities committed were done by the Loyal League. And many of those atrocities that had been supposedly committed by the Klan were done by Loyal Leaguers dressed as Klansmen to produce hatred between the blacks and the whites. You see, while we deplore unbiblical, unconstitutional, and unnecessary violence, we must remember that such violence is wicked and wrong not just when one person does it, but it is just as wicked and just as wrong when a multitude of persons do it, even when the civil government does it. When God says, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil," it applies to civil governments as well as to individuals. Wrong is wrong. Are you listening?

Might does not make right. And just because you have a number, just because you have a majority, just because you have a multitude does not mean that what that majority has voted for or wants is right by any stretch of the imagination. Right is determined by God. Wrong is determined by God. And God tells us individually, familially, ecclesiastically, civilly, and nationally, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." We must learn to do what's right and stand on our own, even if everyone else does wrong. I would encourage you, you go home, get on your computers, check out the Loyal League, the Union League, and you'll find it was the original Klan, Washington's Klan, for the destruction of the South. Father, we ask in the name of Jesus Christ today that you would help us to do that which is right and holy. May we always follow Thee and Thy Word and stand for Thy truth, regardless of what others do, regardless of what multitudes do. May we honor Thee in every area of our lives. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Study Guide

Major Themes

Biblical Prohibition Against Following the Multitude

Summary: Exodus 23:2 forbids joining a multitude to do evil, applying to individuals and civil governments alike. Right and wrong are determined by God, not by majority opinion.

Evidence: Weaver reads Exodus 23:2 and states, 'When God says, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil," it applies to civil governments as well as to individuals.'

The Loyal League as the Original 'Washington's Klan'

Summary: The Loyal League was a secret, oath-bound society sponsored by the federal government to enforce Radical Reconstruction, control black votes, and destroy Southern white political power.

Evidence: Weaver says, 'It was the Union Klan. It was known as the Loyal League... sponsored by the government of Washington, D.C.'

Reconstruction as Centralization and Re-education

Summary: Radical Republicans aimed to replace the South's decentralized constitutional republic with a centralized nationalist system, using schools and propaganda to reshape thinking.

Evidence: Weaver quotes J.P. Wickersham: 'With free schools in the South, there will be no rebellion in the future... we will become one person possessing one organic nationality.'

Disenfranchisement and Tyranny of Reconstruction

Summary: Southern whites were stripped of voting rights and legal standing, while black militias under the Loyal League enforced martial law, leading to widespread violence and corruption.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'ex-Confederates had no rights of citizenship. Southern whites were completely disenfranchised with no legal standing.'

Historical Revisionism and the Loss of Heritage

Summary: The victors wrote the history, leading to a generation ignorant of founding principles and true liberty, now molded into 'good little nationalists and internationalists.'

Evidence: Weaver quotes J. Best Curry: 'No conquered people have ever written the accepted history of the conquest,' and laments the loss of heritage.

The Original Klan as a Reaction to Oppression

Summary: The original Klan (1865–1869) arose in response to Loyal League atrocities and was disbanded by General Forrest; most violence attributed to it was actually committed by Loyal Leaguers.

Evidence: Weaver cites the minority report: 'Had there been no wanton oppression in the South, there would have been no Ku Kluxism.'

Key Arguments

The Loyal League was the real 'Klan' sponsored by Washington

Summary: The Loyal League, not the original KKK, was the violent, secretive arm of the federal government designed to oppress Southern whites and control blacks.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'It was the Union Klan. It was known as the Loyal League... sponsored by the government of Washington, D.C.'

Reconstruction aimed to destroy the constitutional republic

Summary: The Radical Republicans sought to centralize power in Washington and eradicate the South's principles of limited government, states' rights, and self-defense.

Evidence: Weaver says, 'The South, as it existed according to Reconstruction, embracing... limited government, a constitutional republic, states' rights... could not be allowed to continue.'

Atrocities were falsely attributed to the Klan

Summary: Congressional testimony and the minority report show that Loyal Leaguers disguised as Klansmen committed murders, arson, and other crimes to foment racial hatred.

Evidence: Weaver says, 'most of the atrocities that were attributed to the Klan were in fact committed... by loyal leaguers themselves who were black union leaguers and who disguised themselves as Klansmen.'

Re-education produced ignorant, compliant citizens

Summary: Federalized education under the Freedmen's Bureau replaced Southern principles with nationalist ideology, creating a generation detached from liberty and heritage.

Evidence: Weaver quotes Wickersham and contrasts with Cleburne's warning, concluding, 'We have sired an entire generation of people who know nothing of the founding principles.'

God's law condemns collective evil by governments

Summary: Exodus 23:2 applies to civil governments; majority rule does not make an action right. God alone defines right and wrong.

Evidence: Weaver says, 'When God says, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil," it applies to civil governments as well as to individuals.'

Scripture References

Exodus 23:1-3

Context: Weaver reads the passage, focusing on verse 2 as the foundation for the message against following a multitude to do evil.

Exodus 23:2

Context: The key verse: 'Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.' Weaver applies it to individuals and civil governments.

2 Kings 17

Context: Weaver compares the Assyrian repopulation of Samaria to the North's strategy of moving populations to change thinking.

Historical References

Fort Jackson

Context: The meeting location, noted as Robert E. Lee's first duty station.

Robert E. Lee

Context: Mentioned as having his first duty station at Fort Jackson.

Original Ku Klux Klan (1865-1869)

Context: Organized in 1865, disbanded by General Nathan Bedford Forrest in 1869; Weaver distinguishes it from later Klans.

General Nathan Bedford Forrest

Context: Disbanded the original Klan in 1869; his office expired in 1870.

J. Best Curry

Context: Confederate and U.S. Congressman quoted: 'No conquered people have ever written the accepted history of the conquest.'

Loyal League / Union League

Context: Secret organization begun in Ohio in 1862/1863 to support Lincoln and Radical Reconstruction; Weaver calls it 'Washington's Klan.'

Copperheads

Context: Northern Democrats sympathetic to Southern views of limited government; the Loyal League was formed to counteract them.

Dr. Henry Whitney Bellows

Context: Unitarian minister who began the Sanitary Commission, forerunner of the Loyal League and American Red Cross.

William Seward

Context: Secretary of State who said loyal men must put the country ahead of the Constitution.

Freedmen's Bureau

Context: Full title: Bureau of Freedmen, Abandoned Lands and Refugees; controlled ex-slaves, white refugees, and confiscated lands under General Oliver Otis Howard.

Important Quotes

Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment:

Significance: The foundational Scripture for the entire message, establishing that collective evil is forbidden by God.

No conquered people have ever written the accepted history of the conquest.

Significance: Sets the stage for Weaver's argument that the victors' version of Reconstruction history is distorted.

It is time that loyal men had to put the country ahead of the Constitution because a nation on fire made any debate on the sanctity of law out of order.

Significance: Shows the Radical Republican willingness to ignore constitutional limits, a key point in Weaver's critique of centralized power.

With free schools in the South, there will be no rebellion in the future. When our youth learn to read similar books, similar lessons, we will become one person possessing one organic nationality.

Significance: Reveals the re-education goal of Reconstruction to create a homogenized, centralized citizenry.

Had there been no wanton oppression in the South, there would have been no Ku Kluxism.

Significance: The minority report's conclusion that the original Klan was a reaction to Reconstruction tyranny, not its cause.

Might does not make right. And just because you have a number, just because you have a majority, just because you have a multitude does not mean that what that majority has voted for or wants is right by any stretch of the imagination.

Significance: Weaver's application of Exodus 23:2 to modern political majoritarianism, emphasizing God's law as the standard.

Discussion Questions

How does Exodus 23:2 apply to civil governments and majority rule? Can you think of modern examples where a majority has endorsed evil?

Context: Weaver argues that the command not to follow a multitude applies to governments as well as individuals.

In what ways does the history of the Loyal League challenge the common narrative about the Ku Klux Klan and Reconstruction?

Context: Weaver presents the Loyal League as the real 'Washington's Klan' and claims most Klan atrocities were committed by Loyal Leaguers.

What parallels can be drawn between the re-education efforts of Reconstruction and modern educational or cultural trends?

Context: Weaver quotes Wickersham's goal of 'one organic nationality' and warns of global citizenship indoctrination today.

How should Christians respond when they see their heritage and history being rewritten or suppressed?

Context: Weaver laments that 'we have sired an entire generation of people who know nothing of the founding principles.'

What does the minority report's conclusion that 'bad government will make bad citizens' imply about the relationship between tyranny and violent resistance?

Context: The report states that oppression led to secret organizations and violence, which it does not excuse but explains.

How can believers stand for truth 'even if everyone else does wrong' in a culture that pressures conformity?

Context: Weaver's closing exhortation to do right regardless of the multitude.

Applications

Do not follow the multitude to do evil

Summary: Believers must evaluate actions by God's law, not by majority opinion, and refuse to participate in collective wrongdoing even when sanctioned by government.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'When God says, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil," it applies to civil governments as well as to individuals.'

Guard against historical revisionism

Summary: Christians should study history from primary sources and be wary of narratives written by the 'conquerors' that erase or distort the truth.

Evidence: Weaver quotes J. Best Curry and warns that the victors' history has produced ignorance of founding principles.

Resist centralized re-education

Summary: Recognize and oppose educational systems that aim to produce 'one organic nationality' or global citizens rather than teaching liberty and constitutional principles.

Evidence: Weaver contrasts Wickersham's goal with Cleburne's warning and says we are now being educated to be 'global citizens.'

Understand the roots of racial strife

Summary: Acknowledge that much post-war racial hatred was deliberately instigated by political operatives using the Loyal League to divide blacks and whites for power.

Evidence: Weaver says Loyal Leaguers disguised as Klansmen attacked black hamlets 'in order to instill hatred of white people into the blacks.'

Stand for truth regardless of consequences

Summary: Even when disenfranchised or persecuted, believers must uphold God's standards and not compromise with evil majorities.

Evidence: Weaver exhorts, 'May we always follow Thee and Thy Word and stand for Thy truth, regardless of what others do.'

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | clean_readable_transcript | 2026-06-06T12:53:16Z

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | weaver_study | 2026-06-06T13:33:29Z

Clean Transcript

Washington's Klan

Clean readable transcript. This view follows the Commentary.net cleaned segment text while preserving timestamps for audio follow-along.

We're meeting today then at historic Fort Jackson, and let me just say that any distractions you hear is from the Army Corps of Engineers fixing the shoreline here, and this, of course, is Robert E. Lee's first duty station. So I would encourage you then to listen carefully so as not to be distracted by the outside noise. I want you to open your Bibles, if you would, to Exodus chapter 23. I'm just going to be dealing, basically, with one or two verses and giving a history lesson. And so I want you to look closely at Exodus chapter 23. Very simple passage. In fact, let's just read the first three verses. Verse 2 is the verse I really want to deal with. Exodus chapter 23, verse 1.
#1 | 0:00 to 0:47 | cleaned
"Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment: Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause."
#2 | 0:47 to 1:05 | cleaned
Now look closely at verse 2: "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." I want to deal with a subject today which I am sure that most people here have never, ever heard spoken of before. The subject is entitled, "Washington's Klan, The Loyal League."
#3 | 1:06 to 1:26 | cleaned
Now, certainly the message that I'm going to be giving today is not a vindication of the modern day Ku Klux Klan. I'm certainly going to be mentioning the Ku Klux Klan, but you've got to remember the original Ku Klux Klan began in 1865. It was disbanded by General Forrest in 1869. He himself had his office expire in 1870, and by 1871, the original Klan, of course, had been disbanded.
#4 | 1:27 to 1:47 | cleaned
Now, when everyone hears of the KKK, at the mere mention of the words, or at least the mere sight of those representative letters, usually what everyone thinks of is racism, and especially Southern racism. Well, Confederate and United States Congressman J. Best Curry said this: "No conquered people have ever written the accepted history of the conquest." And certainly that is true. It may surprise you to know that the original Klan that murdered blacks as well as whites was an agency of the federal government. Now, does that surprise you?
#5 | 2:00 to 2:43 | cleaned
It was the Union Klan. It was known as the Loyal League. The KKK, the original KKK, gained its notoriety in its opposition to the Loyal League and its many and varied activities. Now, the Loyal League was originated in the North. It worked for the ideas and policies of the North and was sponsored by the government of Washington, D.C. The Union League, also known as the Loyal Union League or the Union Loyal League or the Loyal League, was a secret organization begun in Ohio in 1862. Now some say 1863. It may have begun in 1862, but originally chartered then in January of 1863. The reason the Loyal League was formed to begin with was to bolster Northern morale and support the policies of Abraham Lincoln. Ohio Republicans established the first Union League in America in 1862.
#6 | 2:44 to 3:53 | cleaned
And they were doing so to counteract the groups such as the Copperheads. Now, the Copperheads were people who lived in the North who were extremely sympathetic to Southern views and the Southern idea of limited government and a constitutional republic. Not only that, but then Democrats in the North even were winning some victories, and the North was experiencing great defeat on the battlefield. So in an attempt then to arouse enthusiasm for the war effort and to infuse new vitality in the Republican Party, the League then quickly spread throughout the North, serving not only as a social, but as a political force as well. Within one year, the League had spread to 18 northern states and many, many among the Unionists of the South.
#7 | 3:54 to 4:48 | cleaned
Now, the Loyal League raised troops, paid their expenses, sent supplies to the field, and distributed political literature. At the close of the war, it was the Loyal League that worked for the radical reconstruction of the Southern states, for the punishment of Southern leaders, for the confiscation of Southern property, and for Negro suffrage.
#8 | 4:48 to 5:13 | cleaned
Now, an interesting thing is, as I was doing some research on this, I found that the original power behind the League was a man by the name of Dr. Henry Whitney Bellows, who was a minister at the All Souls Unitarian Church in New York. It was Dr. Bellows who began what is known as the Sanitary Commission, and the Sanitary Commission was not only the forerunner of the Loyal League, but also of the American Red Cross. Now, the interesting thing was, Dr. Bellows had heard Secretary of State William Seward make a speech. And in this speech, the Secretary of State said this: "It is time that loyal men had to put the country ahead of the Constitution because a nation on fire made any debate on the sanctity of law out of order," end quote. Now, that was the Secretary of State, and he said it was time that loyal men put the country ahead of the Constitution. In other words, it really didn't matter what the Constitution said.
#9 | 5:15 to 6:28 | cleaned
They were going to do what they were going to do regardless. Now, after the Freedmen's Bureau, and I'll explain this in just a moment, but after the Freedmen's Bureau's agents and other Northern whites obtained command of the League in the South, it simply became a machine to control the votes of the blacks. The League ceased to be important in the North, although it was headquartered in New York City.
#10 | 6:29 to 6:54 | cleaned
Each southern state had a grand council, and each county had one or more councils. The Loyal League had a constitution and an elaborate ritual that was adopted, making it an oath-bound secret society whose members were sworn to support one another on all occasions, and in elections vote only for Negroes or for Northern men in order to overthrow what they called the Southern white oligarchy. No ex-Confederates were allowed in the Loyal League, and certainly very few Southern Unionists were permitted to join either. At each Southern League meeting, the members were taught from a catechism prepared by the radical Republicans of Congress that they must beware of their white neighbors as their worst enemies, and that the Democratic Party, to which Southern whites had belonged, had opposed emancipation and were still opposed to any rights to the Negroes. In order to prevent the moral control of the Negroes by their former masters, the Loyal League issued what was known as an Exodus Order. Now the Exodus Order just simply meant this: it meant that any Negroes who were still living with their former masters must leave them and then find different housing because they could not stay there at all.
#11 | 6:55 to 8:32 | cleaned
In these meetings, of course, the Negroes were not just simply taught the equality of men, but they were also taught the right of the Negro to his master's property and to any other property that they desired. The votes of blacks during Reconstruction were controlled by a few white Republican leaders. No black man could break away and vote independently. Negroes who voted with the mass of Southern whites were not only persecuted, beaten, but in a few instances, they were also killed.
#12 | 8:33 to 9:07 | cleaned
Now, the Loyal League died out about 1870, but not before it had succeeded and literally become incorporated with the Freedmen's Bureau and other forces which were permanently trying to array blacks against whites and opposing political parties. Let me tell you just a little bit about the Freedmen's Bureau. The Freedmen's Bureau had a rather large title. When we think of the Freedmen's Bureau, we normally think of a bureau that just simply existed for the benefit of black folks. Well, listen to the title: The Bureau of Freedom, or the Bureau of Freedmen, Abandoned Lands and Refugees. Now that is the full title of the Freedmen's Bureau.
#13 | 9:08 to 9:57 | cleaned
It shows the extent of its power and also its jurisdiction. The Freedmen's Bureau, Abandoned Lands and Refugees, controlled 4 million ex-slaves and millions of whites, that is, the refugees who were displaced by the war, and tens of millions of acres of property that were confiscated from the traitors, that is, Southerners and Southern Confederates. So the Freedmen's Bureau then not only controlled the 4 million ex-slaves, it also controlled all the whites who had their property confiscated, who were now counted as refugees, and of course it then had control over all of the land that had been confiscated as well. The commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau was General Oliver Otis Howard.
#14 | 9:57 to 10:53 | cleaned
Now, General Howard's right arm had been blown off at the Battle of Seven Pines. This severe wound embittered him intensely against the South. Howard himself describes his agency's power. Listen to what General Howard said concerning the Freedmen's Bureau. I quote: "The law establishing the Bureau committed it to the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen from the rebel states. And this almost unlimited authority gave me scope and liberty of action.
#15 | 10:55 to 11:32 | cleaned
Legislative, judicial, and executive powers were combined in my commission. I controlled all abandoned land solely for the purpose of assigning, leasing, and selling them to refugees and freedmen." In other words, General Howard is saying that basically he was a dictator. He was also telling us that basically the Freedmen's Bureau was a shadow government for the North in the South, and it was backed up by armed forces.
#16 | 11:33 to 12:03 | cleaned
Now, let me just give you several things that may shock you. In fact, I hope some of the quotes that I give you will indeed shock you. But let's consider just for a moment the goal of Reconstruction. I foresee, as I began studying this issue, that probably there will need to be many more messages in the future explaining this. But when you see how broad this spectrum is, it's absolutely amazing. So consider for a moment the goal of Reconstruction. You see, the South, it was determined by the Radical Republicans in Congress, had to be ruled with an iron hand and forced into Reconstruction. Now, the Loyal League and the Freedmen's Bureau were led by the Radical Republicans who were in control of Congress. In fact, most of the Loyal League officers were federal employees.
#17 | 12:04 to 12:57 | cleaned
Judge James Edmunds was National Union League President from 1863 to 1869. Simultaneously, he was also the Republican Commissioner of the General Lands Office in Washington. It was through his efforts the National Council of the League joined forces with Republican leaders to combine their resources for a Southern organizing campaign to bring loyalty and nationalized patriotism to the traitorous South. The process then fused the League with the Republican Party. So all the Loyal League was then was an extension of the Congressional Republican Party.
#18 | 12:58 to 13:42 | cleaned
The South, as it existed according to Reconstruction, embracing the concepts that it embraced—that is, the concept of a limited government, a constitutional republic, states' rights, and the right of self-defense—could not be allowed to continue. It must be reconstructed. Thus, the League then was operating in concert with what you and I would know as the Republican Party, and it was an instrument then in reconstructing the South.
#19 | 13:42 to 14:15 | cleaned
Now, Republican Thaddeus Stevens, who was a wicked, wicked man, by the way, he was also a congressman. And here is a letter that was written to him by Gilly F. Watson, who was the lead chairman in Virginia. This letter was written December the 5th, 1865.
#20 | 14:16 to 14:38 | cleaned
Now, I'm going to show you why Southerners could not be allowed to vote. I'm going to tell you later how they were disenfranchised by the Reconstructionists. That is, they could not vote. And here is why. Gilly F. Watson wrote this letter on December 5, 1865, to Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Listen carefully. "Honorable Thaddeus Stevens, honored sir, having been appointed as a committee of correspondence by our loyal league, we take pleasure in addressing you as one of the leading men of the nation, and in calling your attention to a few facts, which we think clearly show that Virginia is not yet prepared for restoration of civil rights. Your attention has doubtless been called to the elections in this city and state since the surrender of Lee's army, and you could not have overlooked the animus exhibited in those elections."
#21 | 14:38 to 15:37 | cleaned
Now listen to what he says, "...in every instance avowed rebels have been chosen over union candidates. And in one instance, the president had the election set aside, that is, the one of mayor, because the choice of the people was a rebel officer. This spirit is rampant with the people today as ever, and is being exhibited in the General Assembly now in session. On the organization of that body yesterday, Colonel James B.
#22 | 15:37 to 16:08 | cleaned
Baldwin was elected speaker over a conservative gentleman, and we believe for the reason that he was a member of the Confederate Convention in Congress, the aid of Governor Letcher to muster the Virginia militia into the Confederate service, and afterwards a Confederate colonel. Mr. Baldwin is a man of ability, an old-line Whig, and opposed to secession before the war commenced. But when Virginia entered into the arena of strife, he pitched headlong into the fight, and no man then surpassed him in violence.
#23 | 16:08 to 16:42 | cleaned
Now, let me just stop momentarily. He's talking about Colonel John B. Baldwin. Those of you who know your history know it was this Colonel John B. Baldwin who, before the war actually broke out, approached President Abraham Lincoln and told him, "If you will just simply undo these unjust and ungodly tariffs, the South will come back. We're not going to put up with these tariffs of 40 and 50 and 60 percent." It was Colonel Baldwin who was trying to persuade President Lincoln to head off the war. And now this gentleman says Colonel Baldwin was the man that no one surpassed in violence. Let me continue. He says, "In the Senate, Captain Harrison was elected sergeant at arms over Mr. Thompson, the old incumbent.
#24 | 16:42 to 17:39 | cleaned
His great recommendation being that he fought against the United States government. Clerks, doorkeepers, all were chosen for their rebellious proclivities over men of Union sentiments, thus showing the old Adams still living, and that the general government will have other troubles with this people as soon as the military power is removed. We represent the loyal people of this section, many of whom have fought and bled and lost their all in defense of the stars and stripes.
#25 | 17:40 to 18:13 | cleaned
Let me just pause there. What about all those southern men who had lost all they had in defense of their state? But he says, "We represent the loyal people of this section, many of whom have fought and bled and lost all their all in defense of the stars and stripes. Are these men to be turned over to an excited and infuriated mob by the United States representatives?
#26 | 18:15 to 18:43 | cleaned
Or are the rebels to be held in check till their passions have subsided and they've had their constitutions and laws amended to conform to the requirements of Congress? Is it not the imperative duty of Congress to see that the amended laws of Virginia before admitting her representatives to seats? Are the loyal citizens, the freedmen, the national debt, the Confederate debt, all to be left open questions, to be acted upon as the rebels may feel inclined? Are the leaders of the rebels to become leaders in Reconstruction? These are questions that hold at bay the vitality of the Union and should be settled satisfactorily before any national privileges, we have forfeit all, are granted."
#27 | 18:43 to 19:29 | cleaned
Now listen to what he says. "Virginia is no more fit for Union legislation now than she was in 1863. Six of the seven presses in the city are rebel organs and the leading ones are living on the rebellious reputations of the past. What are the friends of the Union to gain by hurriedly taking into fellowship these disorganized hordes? Nothing. Better it would be for Congress to say to these people, 'We will manage your political affairs till your passions cool.'
#28 | 19:29 to 20:03 | cleaned
You can go to work on your farms and your stores and elsewhere and restore shattered fortunes. And when you're ready to elect union members of Congress and of the legislature, when you have passed union laws and adopted a union constitution, we will give you union representation. But until then, it shall not be. Let this course be adopted. Let General Butler, better known as Beast Butler, let General Butler be sent here with plenary powers as military governor, and Virginia will become herself again. Any other course, in our opinion, will lead to trouble, anarchy, and confusion."
#29 | 20:04 to 20:48 | cleaned
Very respectfully, yours, Gilly F. Watson, Chairman.
#30 | 20:48 to 20:51 | cleaned
Now, did you hear what that man said? The man said, look, Virginia, in choosing people whom she desires to rule over her, they're just choosing the wrong people. And these wrong people have the wrong ideas. And therefore, we, the radical Republicans in Congress, must say to Virginia and to the other states, "We will manage your political affairs until you are able to do as we tell you and think the way we tell you to think."
#31 | 20:52 to 21:21 | cleaned
I find it interesting he closes with this one sentence. He says, "Let General Butler be sent here with plenary powers as military governor and Virginia will become herself again." How can Virginia become herself if she is made into something she is not and was not? Well, very obviously, the goal of the Loyal League was to reconstruct the South so that the South could think and act like good Unionists. The second goal was the goal of re-education. One of the ways the South was to be re-educated was by repopulating the South with loyal Northerners on land confiscated from Southerners. And did you realize that many Southerners were then shipped to the North in order to transform them into loyal and progressive Unionists?
#32 | 21:22 to 22:23 | cleaned
Now let me tell you. That little escapade was not something just simply thought up. But if you study your Bibles, you'll find out in 2 Kings 17 when the king of Assyria captured the ten northern tribes whose capital was in Samaria. He then took the ten northern tribes and brought them to Assyria and other places and then he repopulated Samaria with people from all other countries. And so they were taking the loyal unionists and bringing them down south and taking loyal southerners and sending them up north in order to change their thinking.
#33 | 22:24 to 23:03 | cleaned
Now, the Freedmen's Bureau also had a peacetime federal educational mandate. It was not only to teach freedmen in order that they could survive as freemen, but it was also to transform the whites into being good citizens. Let me give you a quote. I hope it kind of ruffles your feathers, but J.P. Wickersham, who was a noted radical Republican, stated this. Now, as I give you his quote, I want you to think of the brilliant men and women we had in the South. I want you to think of R.L. Dabney. I want you to think of Robert E. Lee. I want you to think of Mary Gay, a diarist, Mary Boykin Chesnut. I want you to think of our poet laureate. I want you to think of all the men who were genuine scholars and literary agents here in the South.
#34 | 23:03 to 24:05 | cleaned
But listen to what he said. "What can education do for the non-slaveholding whites of the South? The great majority are deplorably ignorant. As long as they're ignorant, they will remain tools of political demagogues and therefore be incapable of self-government." Excuse me? I thought the South had gotten along admirably well until then, but he says, "As long as they're ignorant, they will remain tools of political demagogues and therefore be incapable of self-government. They must be educated. A Republican form of government cannot last long without providing a system of free schools. Ignorant voters endanger liberty." Are you listening?
#35 | 24:05 to 24:53 | cleaned
I'm still quoting J.P. Wickersham. "With free schools in the South, there will be no rebellion in the future. When our youth learn to read similar books, similar lessons, we will become one person possessing one organic unity." So, he says, what we're going to do is we're going to re-educate the South and get them to think the way we think so they will act the way we act. Congress enforced a federalized education into the South through new state constitutions which compelled tax-supported schools controlled by Washington. The Freedmen's Bureau put the law into motion and soon 2,118 schools were placed upon confiscated land under the Freedmen's Bureau control.
#36 | 24:53 to 26:00 | cleaned
Now, I want you to compare what I just read to you with what Confederate General Patrick Cleburne said. Patrick Cleburne gave a dire warning concerning the subjugation of the South. Let me just go back before I read this and give you what J.P. Wickersham said again: "With free schools in the South, there will be no rebellion in the future. When our youth learn to read similar books, similar lessons, we will become one person possessing one organic nationality." Now listen to the warning General Patrick Cleburne gave. He said, "Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late. We can give but a faint idea when we say it means the loss of all we now hold sacred.
#37 | 26:02 to 26:57 | cleaned
Slaves and all other personal property, lands, homesteads, liberty, justice, safety, pride, manhood. It means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by northern school teachers, will learn from northern school books their version of the war, will be impressed upon all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision. It means the crushing of southern manhood, the hatred of our former slaves, who will on a spy system be our secret police." Do you know something?
#38 | 26:57 to 27:39 | cleaned
Everything that General Patrick Cleburne warned against came to pass. Everything that J.P. Wickersham desired came to pass. You know what we've done today? We have sired an entire generation of people who know nothing of the founding principles of our founding fathers. We've started a generation of people who could care less about their heritage or their history. We now have a generation of people who know nothing of true liberty and true freedom.
#39 | 27:41 to 28:19 | cleaned
Government is now in every area and every avenue of our lives, and we now have come to the place where we expect it to be there. We expect it to do literally everything for us. In fact, our attitude has become, "Well, after all, are they not doing this for our good?" You see, the truth is this: unknowingly, most of us have been molded into good little nationalists and good little internationalists.
#40 | 28:20 to 28:48 | cleaned
We're being educated not only to be loyal unionists, but to be global citizens. What was begun as an endeavor to re-educate the South into centralist views has now become an indoctrination for North and South in global views. The Loyal League and the Freedmen's Bureau were not only interested in reconstruction, but also in re-education. The third truth is this: the third goal was redistribution and regulation, redistribution and regulation.
#41 | 28:48 to 29:34 | cleaned
Did you know—and since I began this message talking about the original Ku Klux Klan—but do you realize that there was a committee of 21 who heard the reports, the eyewitness accounts, and even the hearsay accounts concerning the actions of the Ku Klux Klan before Congress? And there's ample evidence to prove that most of the atrocities that were attributed to the Klan were in fact committed not only by other anti-Reconstructionist organizations and outlaws impersonating the Klan, but also by loyal leaguers themselves who were black union leaguers and who disguised themselves as Klansmen, and they would attack the Negro hamlets in order to instill hatred of white people into the blacks. You've got to understand the mentality of the Reconstructionist governors. The Reconstructionist governors that we had hated the South, hated the Constitutional Republic, hated everything we had. Let me tell you that in the summer of 1865, Governor Brownlow of Tennessee, who was a Scalawag governor, a Reconstructionist governor—he was also a Methodist preacher. I don't know how well he preached, but he's sometimes known as Parson Brownlow.
#42 | 29:35 to 31:16 | cleaned
But he said in 1865 that "the persecutors of Union men"—that is, he's talking about ex-Confederates—he says, "the persecutors of Union men have forfeited all rights to protection and life." The same year, one delegate in the Tennessee Constitutional Convention stated that the only right the rebels had was to be hanged. There's ample documentation that the Unionists, in seeking revenge for what happened during the war, used their position to jail their enemies on trumped-up charges. On the vaguest of rumors and hearsay evidence, cavalry units calmly put the torch to the homes of citizens.
#43 | 31:16 to 32:01 | cleaned
Vengeful Unionists formed the Loyal League ostensibly to suppress crime, keep order, and maintain discipline among the Negro population. In fact, it was the Loyal League that acted to intimidate their political opponents and the ex-Confederates, worsening, of course, the wartime situation. Were all of the infamous carpetbaggers and scalawags who sought personal profit and political power by exploiting the plights of both the black and the white. The radical Republicans declared that the Southern states would have to be reconstructed before they could ever be readmitted to the Union. Until then—now listen—ex-Confederates had no rights of citizenship. Southern whites were completely disenfranchised with no legal standing. They could not vote. They could not hold public office or petition for redress of grievances.
#44 | 32:02 to 33:00 | cleaned
Do you realize the South was then divided into five military districts? Throughout the South, it was the freed Negroes who then formed the black militias under the Union League or the Loyal League, and in most of the instances, they were given the task of enforcing martial law. Led by corrupt officers and self-serving politicians, the Union League became the most violent and murderous arm of Reconstruction to blacks and whites alike. Now let me tell you what Parson—or Governor—Brownlow said to show you the animosity, the hatred that existed in 1865 and 1866 when the South had been defeated. Governor Brownlow said this: "If I had the power I would arm and uniform in the federal habiliments every wolf and panther and catamount and tiger and bear in the mountains of America, every crocodile in the swamps of Florida and South Carolina, every Negro in the Southern Confederacy, and every devil in hell, and turn them on the rebels in the South until it exterminated every rebel from the face of God's green earth. Every man, woman, and child south of the Mason-Dixon line I would like to see Richmond and Charleston captured by Negro troops, commanded by Butler the Beast.
#45 | 33:00 to 34:26 | cleaned
We will crowd the rebels into the Gulf of Mexico and drown the entire race as the devil rid the hogs of the Sea of Galilee. I am one of those who believe the war has ended too soon. We have whipped the rebels, but not enough. The second army of invasion will, as they ought to, make the entire South as God found the earth without form and void. They will not and ought not to leave one rebel fence rail, outhouse, one dwelling in the eleven seceded states. As for the rebel population, let them be exterminated. When the second war is wound up, which should be done with swift destruction, let the land be surveyed and sold out to pay expenses. Let the first army then be the largest division and do the killing. The second—let the second division be armed with pine torches and spirits of turpentine and let them do the burning. Let the third and last division be armed with surveyors' compasses and chains that will survey the land and settle it with loyal people.
#46 | 34:26 to 35:31 | cleaned
Burn and kill, burn and kill until the whole rebel race is exterminated." Now those are the words of one Reconstructionist governor. I'm sure that he probably had the best interests of the South in mind at the time, don't you? No, of course not. That was what our forefathers faced, that kind of attitude. Joe Crew, who was a Union League militia captain in Lawrence, South Carolina, is quoted as telling his men that if they wanted provisions and could not afford them, they should go into the fields and take what they wanted. If whites did not settle them the way they thought was right, they should burn them out of house and home because matches are cheap. In North Carolina, one company of the militia was commanded by Colonel George Kirk. He was known as Bloody Kirk or Cutthroat Kirk during the war between the states, because Colonel Kirk led pro-union guerrillas in East Tennessee, and he committed there many atrocities.
#47 | 35:31 to 36:44 | cleaned
His crimes were denounced as a disgrace to the 19th century. What Colonel Kirk did was this: he arrested 50 to 60 men who were alleged to have some connection with the Klan. When some of them obtained a writ of habeas corpus, Kirk—Colonel Kirk—defied the state Supreme Court by saying, "These things have played out now." Kirk then proceeded to place a noose around the necks of these men and hang them temporarily, not killing them, but hang them temporarily, trying to force them into confessing that they were Klansmen. Well, they were not Klansmen and they were not about to confess that they were Klansmen.
#48 | 36:45 to 37:32 | cleaned
Come to find out, the order for this torture came from Governor Holden himself, who was the governor of North Carolina. When news of this got back to some of the northern senators, it certainly upset them. Listen to what Senator Bayard of Delaware said, and he was speaking before Congress about the crimes that had been perpetrated by Colonel Kirk. He said—and here's his quote—"Here are the facts.
#49 | 37:33 to 38:01 | cleaned
50 or 60 unarmed men were taken without writ, without color of law of any kind, dragged from their homes, kept by Kirk, threatened with death instantly should an attempt be made for their rescue. Not only were they to be murdered as helpless prisoners, but the women and children of the town were to be put to fire and sword. And such conduct as this, Senators, is absolutely justified on the floor of the United States Senate." What was he saying? He is saying, we're the ones who've loosed these men. We're the ones who are responsible.
#50 | 38:03 to 38:46 | cleaned
You see, property was stolen. Lives were destroyed. Homes burned. Rape and robbery and pillage, all in the direction of the federal government. Albion Tourgée, who was the famous carpetbagger Supreme Court judge in North Carolina, wrote—now listen to what he wrote—that the Ku Klux Klan had broken into 4,000 to 5,000 homes, that is 4,000 to 5,000 homes, burned 14, murdered 13 in one county.
#51 | 38:47 to 39:21 | cleaned
Later on, he said he was misquoted. He said, "I wrote 4 arsons instead of 14. Between 4 to 500 broken into instead of four and five thousand. I said that thirteen murders were committed in the state, not in the district." Still later it was found that all of the house burnings were perpetrated by Governor Holden's Union League to provoke the Klan into action. So out of all that he said the Klan did, they actually did none of it. It was the Loyal League that was doing all of it.
#52 | 39:23 to 40:01 | cleaned
You see, the corruption and the tyranny of Reconstruction are well documented. In North Carolina, the carpetbag Republican legislatures of 1868 and 1869 illegally authorized $28 million—now, you're talking 1868 and 1869—they illegally authorized $28 million in railroad bonds, which New York carpetbagger Milton Littlefield used to buy boats. The military government suspended the rights of habeas corpus. In Gaston County alone, the Loyal League members torched 28 barns belonging to whites in one week. All of these actions were intended to create ill will between the black and the whites and to do so for political gain. You see, the purpose of Reconstruction was to destroy the decentralized republic that we had that was established by our founding fathers. And once the political and military power was centralized in Washington, D.C., the pretense of protecting the former slaves was abandoned.
#53 | 40:02 to 41:11 | cleaned
You remember each slave was promised, what, 40 acres and a mule? And they're still waiting on the 40 acres and the mule.
#54 | 41:11 to 41:18 | cleaned
Now, things, understandably, were not going well. The Ku Klux Klan, the original one, as I said earlier, was organized in 1865. It was disbanded by order of General Forrest in 1869. No one succeeded him after 1870. By 1871, all of the original Klan was gone. But still, Congress held hearings on the supposed atrocities committed by the Klan. You've got to understand that hearsay and rumors were accepted as well.
#55 | 41:20 to 42:03 | cleaned
In fact, the testimony fills 13 volumes. There were 21 members of this committee who heard all of the testimony given concerning the Klan. Thirteen of the 21 members condemned the Klan. The rest produced what was known as a minority report, exonerating the Klan. I want to close by giving you this quote this morning, and I want you to listen to what the minority report from Congress was concerning the activities of the Ku Klux Klan from 1865 to 1869. Quote: "Had there been no wanton oppression in the South, there would have been no Ku Kluxism."
#56 | 42:03 to 43:07 | cleaned
"Had there been no rule of the tyrannical, corrupt, carpetbagger, scalawag rule, there would have been no secret organizations. From the oppression and corruption of the one sprang the vice and the outrage of the other. When the testimony before us is analyzed, the carpetbaggers, the Freedmen's Bureau agents, and the Loyal Leaguers, the Union Leaguers, who went into these states took as the theme of their harangues the wrongs the blacks had suffered and the right they had to take whatever they pleased of the property they had labored to acquire for their masters. When, in secret sworn organizations, that is the Loyal League, hatred of a white race was instilled in the minds of these ignorant people by every art and while that bad men could devise. When the blacks were formed into military organizations and the white people of these states were denied the use of arms, when arson, rape, robbery, and murder were things of daily occurrence, when the great masses of the most intelligent whites were disenfranchised and the ballot was put into the hands of the blacks by
#57 | 43:09 to 44:25 | cleaned
the government at Washington, when every promise made and every law enacted was broken and disregarded by the federal authorities, whenever it suited their purposes to do so, when even the courts were closed and the federal officers, who were by Congress absolute rulers and dispensers of what they called justice, ignored, insulted, and trampled upon the rights of the ostracized and disenfranchised white men, while the officials pandered to the enfranchised blacks on whose vote they relied, in short, when the people saw that they had no rights which were respected, no protection from insults, no security even for their wives and little children, and that what little they had saved from the ravages of war was being confiscated by taxation and rendered valueless by the debts for which men who owned nothing had pledged it, and saw that all their complaints and remonstrances, however honestly and humbly presented to Congress, were either wholly disregarded as evidence of rebellious and unsubdued spirit, many of
#58 | 44:25 to 45:36 | cleaned
them took the law into their own hands and did deeds of violence which we neither justify nor excuse. But all history shows that bad government will make bad citizens. And when the corruption, extortion, and villainy of the governments which Congress has set up and maintained over Southern states are thoroughly understood and made known, as we trust they will be someday, the world will be amazed at the long-suffering and the endurance of the Southern people." Isn't that amazing? Here the minority report said, look, if Congress had left the South alone and not treated her as a conquered territory and not tried to force her
#59 | 45:36 to 46:27 | cleaned
in the reconstruction, things would have been entirely different. As I said in the beginning, the original plan was disbanded in 1869. Most of the atrocities committed were done by the Loyal League. And many of those atrocities that had been supposedly committed by the Klan were done by Loyal Leaguers dressed as Klansmen to produce hatred between the blacks and the whites. You see, while we deplore unbiblical, unconstitutional, and unnecessary violence, we must remember that such violence is wicked and wrong not just when one person does it, but it is just as wicked and just as wrong when a multitude of persons do it, even when the civil government does it. When God says, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil," it applies to civil governments as well as to individuals. Wrong is wrong. Are you listening?
#60 | 46:29 to 47:47 | cleaned
Might does not make right. And just because you have a number, just because you have a majority, just because you have a multitude does not mean that what that majority has voted for or wants is right by any stretch of the imagination. Right is determined by God. Wrong is determined by God. And God tells us individually, familially, ecclesiastically, civilly, and nationally, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." We must learn to do what's right and stand on our own, even if everyone else does wrong.
#61 | 47:47 to 48:40 | cleaned
I would encourage you, you go home, get on your computers, check out the Loyal League, the Union League, and you'll find it was the original Klan, Washington's Klan, for the destruction of the South. Father, we ask in the name of Jesus Christ today that you would help us to do that which is right and holy. May we always follow Thee and Thy Word and stand for Thy truth, regardless of what others do, regardless of what multitudes do. May we honor Thee in every area of our lives. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
#62 | 48:42 to 49:31 | cleaned

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | clean_readable_transcript | 2026-06-06T12:53:16Z

Washington's Klan

John Weaver | Freedom Ministries

John Weaver teaches from Exodus 23:2 that God forbids following a multitude to do evil, applying this principle to the history of Reconstruction. He argues that the original Ku Klux Klan (1865–1869) was a response to the federally sponsored Loyal League, which he calls 'Washington's Klan.' The Loyal League, an arm of the Radical Republicans, used secret oaths, black militias, and disenfranchisement of Southern whites to reconstruct the South into a centralized, nationalist mold. Weaver contends that most atrocities attributed to the Klan were actually committed by Loyal Leaguers disguised as Klansmen to stir racial hatred. He warns that the same centralizing, re-education impulse now threatens liberty by producing global citizens ignorant of founding principles.

Introduction and Scripture Reading

Weaver opens at Fort Jackson, reads Exodus 23:1-3, and focuses on verse 2: 'Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.' He introduces the topic 'Washington's Klan, The Loyal League.'

The Original Klan vs. the Loyal League

Weaver distinguishes the original Klan (1865–1869) from modern perceptions, asserting it was a response to the Union-sponsored Loyal League, which he calls the real 'Washington's Klan.'

Origins and Purpose of the Loyal League

The Loyal League began in Ohio in 1862–1863 to bolster Northern morale, support Lincoln, and counteract Copperheads. It spread rapidly, serving as a political force for Radical Republican aims.

The League's Role in Reconstruction

The Freedmen's Bureau as Shadow Government

Goals of Reconstruction: Re-education and Centralization

Atrocities and the Minority Report

Application: Do Not Follow a Multitude to Do Evil

Washington's Klan

John Weaver | SermonAudio

Lecture Metadata	Details
Speaker	John Weaver
Source	SermonAudio
Media ID	62404152632
Subject	Civil Government
Course	Civil Government: Power, Nations, and Constitutional Order: Where We Are & How We Got Here
Genre	Sermon
Date	2004-04-25
Dictation Name
Book	Book 009: Civil Government: Power, Nations, and Constitutional Order — Chapter 4
Source Timed Segments	62

Lecture Guide

Outline

Introduction and Scripture Reading: Weaver opens at Fort Jackson, reads Exodus 23:1-3, and focuses on verse 2: 'Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.' He introduces the topic 'Washington's Klan, The Loyal League.'
The Original Klan vs. the Loyal League: Weaver distinguishes the original Klan (1865–1869) from modern perceptions, asserting it was a response to the Union-sponsored Loyal League, which he calls the real 'Washington's Klan.'
Origins and Purpose of the Loyal League: The Loyal League began in Ohio in 1862–1863 to bolster Northern morale, support Lincoln, and counteract Copperheads. It spread rapidly, serving as a political force for Radical Republican aims.
The League's Role in Reconstruction: After the war, the League pushed for radical Reconstruction: punishment of Southern leaders, confiscation of property, and Negro suffrage. It became a machine to control black votes and instill hatred of Southern whites.
The Freedmen's Bureau as Shadow Government: The Freedmen's Bureau controlled millions of ex-slaves, white refugees, and confiscated lands. General Howard described his power as legislative, judicial, and executive combined, backed by armed force.
Goals of Reconstruction: Re-education and Centralization: Radical Republicans sought to destroy the South's limited-government, constitutional republic. They used re-education, confiscation, and population transfers to mold Southerners into loyal Unionists and global citizens.
Atrocities and the Minority Report: Weaver cites evidence that Loyal Leaguers committed atrocities while disguised as Klansmen. A Congressional minority report exonerated the original Klan, blaming oppression by carpetbaggers and the Loyal League for the violence.
Application: Do Not Follow a Multitude to Do Evil: Weaver concludes that God's command applies to civil governments as well as individuals. Right is determined by God, not by majority vote. Believers must stand for truth regardless of what multitudes do.

Major Themes

Key Arguments

The Loyal League was the real 'Klan' sponsored by Washington

The Loyal League, not the original KKK, was the violent, secretive arm of the federal government designed to oppress Southern whites and control blacks.

Weaver states, 'It was the Union Klan. It was known as the Loyal League... sponsored by the government of Washington, D.C.'

Reconstruction aimed to destroy the constitutional republic

The Radical Republicans sought to centralize power in Washington and eradicate the South's principles of limited government, states' rights, and self-defense.

Weaver says, 'The South, as it existed according to Reconstruction, embracing... limited government, a constitutional republic, states' rights... could not be allowed to continue.'

Atrocities were falsely attributed to the Klan

Congressional testimony and the minority report show that Loyal Leaguers disguised as Klansmen committed murders, arson, and other crimes to foment racial hatred.

Weaver says, 'most of the atrocities that were attributed to the Klan were in fact committed... by loyal leaguers themselves who were black union leaguers and who disguised themselves as Klansmen.'

Re-education produced ignorant, compliant citizens

Federalized education under the Freedmen's Bureau replaced Southern principles with nationalist ideology, creating a generation detached from liberty and heritage.

Weaver quotes Wickersham and contrasts with Cleburne's warning, concluding, 'We have sired an entire generation of people who know nothing of the founding principles.'

God's law condemns collective evil by governments

Exodus 23:2 applies to civil governments; majority rule does not make an action right. God alone defines right and wrong.

Weaver says, 'When God says, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil," it applies to civil governments as well as to individuals.'

Scripture References

Exodus 23:1-3: Weaver reads the passage, focusing on verse 2 as the foundation for the message against following a multitude to do evil.
Exodus 23:2: The key verse: 'Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.' Weaver applies it to individuals and civil governments.
2 Kings 17: Weaver compares the Assyrian repopulation of Samaria to the North's strategy of moving populations to change thinking.

Historical References

Fort Jackson: The meeting location, noted as Robert E. Lee's first duty station.
Robert E. Lee: Mentioned as having his first duty station at Fort Jackson.
Original Ku Klux Klan (1865-1869): Organized in 1865, disbanded by General Nathan Bedford Forrest in 1869; Weaver distinguishes it from later Klans.
General Nathan Bedford Forrest: Disbanded the original Klan in 1869; his office expired in 1870.
J. Best Curry: Confederate and U.S. Congressman quoted: 'No conquered people have ever written the accepted history of the conquest.'
Loyal League / Union League: Secret organization begun in Ohio in 1862/1863 to support Lincoln and Radical Reconstruction; Weaver calls it 'Washington's Klan.'
Copperheads: Northern Democrats sympathetic to Southern views of limited government; the Loyal League was formed to counteract them.
Dr. Henry Whitney Bellows: Unitarian minister who began the Sanitary Commission, forerunner of the Loyal League and American Red Cross.
William Seward: Secretary of State who said loyal men must put the country ahead of the Constitution.
Freedmen's Bureau: Full title: Bureau of Freedmen, Abandoned Lands and Refugees; controlled ex-slaves, white refugees, and confiscated lands under General Oliver Otis Howard.

Important Quotes

Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment:

The foundational Scripture for the entire message, establishing that collective evil is forbidden by God.

No conquered people have ever written the accepted history of the conquest.

Sets the stage for Weaver's argument that the victors' version of Reconstruction history is distorted.

It is time that loyal men had to put the country ahead of the Constitution because a nation on fire made any debate on the sanctity of law out of order.

Shows the Radical Republican willingness to ignore constitutional limits, a key point in Weaver's critique of centralized power.

With free schools in the South, there will be no rebellion in the future. When our youth learn to read similar books, similar lessons, we will become one person possessing one organic nationality.

Reveals the re-education goal of Reconstruction to create a homogenized, centralized citizenry.

Had there been no wanton oppression in the South, there would have been no Ku Kluxism.

The minority report's conclusion that the original Klan was a reaction to Reconstruction tyranny, not its cause.

Might does not make right. And just because you have a number, just because you have a majority, just because you have a multitude does not mean that what that majority has voted for or wants is right by any stretch of the imagination.

Weaver's application of Exodus 23:2 to modern political majoritarianism, emphasizing God's law as the standard.

Discussion Questions

[Question]

How does Exodus 23:2 apply to civil governments and majority rule? Can you think of modern examples where a majority has endorsed evil?

[Context]

Weaver argues that the command not to follow a multitude applies to governments as well as individuals.

[Question]

In what ways does the history of the Loyal League challenge the common narrative about the Ku Klux Klan and Reconstruction?

[Context]

Weaver presents the Loyal League as the real 'Washington's Klan' and claims most Klan atrocities were committed by Loyal Leaguers.

[Question]

What parallels can be drawn between the re-education efforts of Reconstruction and modern educational or cultural trends?

[Context]

Weaver quotes Wickersham's goal of 'one organic nationality' and warns of global citizenship indoctrination today.

[Question]

How should Christians respond when they see their heritage and history being rewritten or suppressed?

[Context]

Weaver laments that 'we have sired an entire generation of people who know nothing of the founding principles.'

[Question]

What does the minority report's conclusion that 'bad government will make bad citizens' imply about the relationship between tyranny and violent resistance?

[Context]

The report states that oppression led to secret organizations and violence, which it does not excuse but explains.

[Question]

How can believers stand for truth 'even if everyone else does wrong' in a culture that pressures conformity?

[Context]

Weaver's closing exhortation to do right regardless of the multitude.

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Format deepseek deepseek-v4-pro structured study JSON | Source Commentary.net transcript enrichment

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | weaver_study | 2026-06-06T13:33:29Z