The Ku Klux Klan was a group started by ex-Confederates to opposereconstruction by a Republican Congress. The KKK began as a society to prevent blacks from revolting. Its goals were to confiscate guns and other weapons from African Americans and to keep whites in power in the government. They did this by scaring blacks away from the polls.
The KKK was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee in May, 1866. They were successful in creating fear in towns with their secretive language, nighttime rides, and disguises. The lynching of 1,300 people in 1868 by the KKK had the effect of having only one vote cast for Republican Ulysses S. Grant in the presidential election in Colombia County, Georgia.