The first Klan was founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, by six veterans of the Confederate Army. Ku Klux Klan groups spread throughout the South as an insurgent movement during the Reconstruction era in the United States. As a secret vigilante group, the KKK targeted freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder, against black and white Republicans.
According to Wikipedia, there were three Klan periods in history. The first was the period after the Civil War primarily in the 1870’s reconstruction period. The second, was a revival in 1915 which peaked in the early 1920’s and the third was the period many of us can still remembers, the 1950’s and 60’s.
Williamson County had obvious Klan activity in at least two of those periods, the first two and realistically, probably the third as well.
The first period of the 1870’s is recaptured by the writings of Milo Erwin, in his early accounting of Williamson County history.
Milo Erwin, in his history, makes his feelings on the Klan very clear by saying, ” In 1872, the Ku-Klux numbered 135 members; but that same year they were broken up, and did not meet again until 1874, when a few of them formed a klan in the west side of the county.”
“On the 15th day of April 1872, Isaac Vancil, the first white man born in this county, a man seventy three years old, living on the Big Muddy, was notified to leave the county or suffer death. He did not obey the order, and on the night of the 22nd, ten men in disguise of Ku-Klux, rode up to the house, took him out about a mile down the river bottom, and put a skinned pole in the forks of two saplings and hung him, and left him hanging. Next morning he was found, and all around was still, blank and lifeless. I suppose that it must be a source of but little satisfaction to that infamous herd of desperate men to look upon that horrible scene, and feel and know they are the guilty authors. They are hid from the face of men, but a just, certain, inexorable retribution awaits them. In the last day, God will make requisition for the blood of Vancil, which has stained Heaven with its vulgar blot. Until then we must submit to the arbitrament (arbitration) of time, and calmly wait with patience and resignation the unbiased inquest of the future.
I know nothing of Ku-Klux, but conclude that they are bound by abhorrent oaths, for a squadron of devils could not drive them from their allegiance. It is a hard thing for a man to swear blind allegiance and implicit servitude to a master over both soul and conscience, and never again feel the pure, untainted, dashing blood of freedom course his natural veins.
Who can succumb to such a disgraceful yoke? Leon in his holy indignation could make no greater demand than this. A den of these infernal demons holding their hellish, midnight revelry, with their blood-shot eyes glaring with untold crimes, and their haggard visages bloated with an impress that tells of woe and mean distress, must be a nice gathering!
It may be that some old bridge, on some lone creek, could tell a tale of a soul in mortal strait, and the constellation of the weeping Hades dropped tears on a scene like this, where the trees have plead for mercy for some other man in the clutches of these men, sneaking, lowdown, white-livered scoundrels. Vancil was an honest, hard-working man, but had some serious faults.
Still, God gave an equal right to live and none the right to deal death and ruin in a land of peace. Soon after his death eighteen men were arrested in Franklin County, charged with the murder; but were acquitted. Pleasant G. Veach, Francis M. Gray and Samuel Gossett were then arrested in this county, and admitted to bail in Benton.
In a few days, Jesse Cavens, Wm. Sansom, Samuel Sweet, Jonas G. Ellett and John Rich, of this county, were arrested and lodged in jail at Marion. In eighteen days, Ellett and Gossett were bailed, and the others sent to Perry County jail, where they remained until December, when they were all tried in Franklin County, on change of venue, and acquitted.
Some of these parties were indicted in the United States Court at Springfield, under the Ku-Klux Act (a.k.a. the Civil Rights Act of 1871), but all came clear. Colonel Ambrose Spencer prosecuted them, and he was, on the 6th of January 1873, arrested for having them falsely imprisoned, and put in jail himself for a short time, and Jonas G. Ellett got $4,000 damages against him in this county.”
During the Bloody Vendetta era of Williamson County in the early 1870’s, Erwin goes on to say, “If there were ever any regular Ku-Klux in this county, outside of the band who hung Vancil, it was in 1875, in the west and southwest sides of the county, and a small band which probably included some members of the Vendetta.”
It actually became clear that some members of the Vendetta were Klan members and leaned on them for protection by joining their ranks.
In 1875, at the culmination of the Vendetta era, after the sentencing of Marshall Crain, a guard of ten men was detailed from the militia to guard the jail by night and two by day. The county jail was located in the 100 block of S. Madison just off the square at the time.
This guard did its duty faithfully until after the execution. Nightly attacks were expected from the “Ku-Klux,” which were supposed to exist in the county. The guards were often summoned to fall into line at some apparent alarm.
Serving as deputy Sheriff in this time was William Hendrickson, who helped form the militia company to guard the jail and prevent a jail takeover upon authorization by the Governor of the state. William was commissioned as a militia Lieutenant during this event.
Another of our illustrious citizens, Brice Holland, was serving as assistant Deputy Sheriff for Williamson County who activated the trigger at the hanging of Marshall Crain for murder.
After this event in 1875, the Klan appears to have slipped back into the shadows of Williamson County and would go unseen until the early 1920’s, when bootlegging and lawlessness would bring them back with a vengeance.
For more information on this subject, see the post The Ku Klux Klan in Williamson County, Part Two
Sam’s Notes: In this time period, the three western precincts of Williamson County from north to south were the Western, Eight Mile and Grassy precincts. The murder of Vancil occurred in the Western precinct which includes Blairsville and Hurst Bush. Today the precinct is called Blairsville Township.
(Extracts from Milo Erwin’s, Bloody Vendetta, the History of Williamson County, 1876; Wikipedia; compiled by Sam Lattuca on 09/19/2013)