The nineteenth century Klan was initially composed as a social club by Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866. They obviously got the name from the Greek word kyklos, from which comes the English "circle"; "Klan" was included for similar sounding word usage and Ku Klux Klan developed.
The association rapidly turned into a vehicle for Southern white underground protection from Radical Reconstruction. Klan individuals looked for the reclamation of racial domination through terrorizing and viciousness went for the recently emancipated dark freedmen. A comparative association, the Knights of the White Camelia, started in Louisiana in 1867.
Britain had expected the Southern colonies to remain loyal, in part because of their reliance on slavery. Many in the Southern colonies feared that a rebellion against the mother country would also trigger a slave uprising against the planters.
