America isnt a very open minded country in general.
They have a “my way or no way” attitude, and it shows in examples like the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan itself was based on ignorance and bigotry. They established the Klan because they were bored, but little did they know how much their small club would impact American history. The Klan started slowly with few members but then it grew to 550 000 at the official end of the Klan. The Ku Klux Klans eventual collapse and early declined in active protests against blacks was due to the probing congressional investigation, the surge of disobeying members in the late 19th century and the Klans lack of respect people had for them by 1870. By the early 1868s the Klan was having organizational problems because they were expanding, once again, very rapidly.
Congress had been keeping an eye on the Klan because they had been gotten many complaints about the activities that the Klan participated in. Due to the shear amount of complaints that the government got congress started to keep their eye on the Klan. By keeping an eye on them in reality they were conducting an investigation. This was not a fully frontal one but in fact a quiet one, until congress spotted a moment of weakness or rebellion in the Klan. They waited for this because they believed that if they interviewed thought to be members while the Klan was in a moment of rebellion they might have been able to pry information from them more easily.
This was a large misconception that Congress had about getting the members while they were in a state of rebellion. The Klan members were a very devout group of individuals. They were faithful to the Klan oath to never reveal anyone or any secrets about the Klan. Though these people were hard as rocks to get information out of, the on going investigation continued throughout most of the southern United States.
The initial idea behind the investigation was to find who was supplying the Klansmen with their robes and such. The Government believed that all their robes were tailored, once again they had poor information. The Klansmen had their robes made privately and were very different from each other, unlike the Governments idea that they were like military fatigues, the same for each person. Now all these small facts seemed inconsequential to the leaders of the Klan, or Wizards. The reality was that it was unnerving the lower ranked Klansmen.
They were starting to get nervous about the probing Government officials, for when they were brought in for examinations the questions were leading and some witnesses coached to get others to admit Klan secrets. As I mentioned before they didnt fall to easily for the trick questioning but they did get quite hassled by the authorities. This didnt help the Wizards of the Klan either because after being hassled the Klansmen would often take their aggression out on blacks. By the end of the Congressional investigation, which essentially achieved nothing but a vote or two, the Klansmen were ready for a revolution against their country or the Klan.
Even with a large investigation going on in the Klan there was a surprising amount of new members just before the official order to disband the Klan. The surge that the Klan suffered right before the silent collapse was due to the hype about the Klan and the number of people that were racists. The majority of the new members were from the south and they were very passionate about their hate for blacks. The surge was thought to be a very good thing in the beginning, towards the decline of the Klan the Wizards started to notice where the problems were.
The problem in the beginning was not that there was too many people, but what to do with all of them. With the increase in members the Wizards had to keep them occupied, like children they had to do something or they would get in trouble. The Wizards had a small problem on their hands that, at the moment, could handle. Once the surge of new members started to become uncontrollable by the
