THE KU KLUX KLAN
AND THE ORDER OF THE PALE FACES
It has been said many times that the Civil War never ended in the South. It instead evolved into a terrorist and political network of White Supremacist culture.
In neighboring Giles County, the Ku Klux Klan was formed by Confederate veterans. In 1865 the KKK opposed Reconstruction and harassed and murdered Blacks and whites sympathetic to Blacks. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general responsible for the massacre of Blacks who surrendered under a white flag at Fort Pillow near Memphis, became the grand wizard of the KKK. By 1870 the KKK had spread to every state in the old confederacy.
Hoping to curb the KKK, Governor William G. Brownlow got the legislature to reestablish the militia and give him the power to declare martial law when necessary. Members of the Klan and other secret societies engaged in terrorism were subject to arrest by any citizen, a five-hundred-dollar fine, and imprisonment for up to five years under a so-called Ku Klux Klan Act. Brownlow, who wanted to convict prominent KKK leaders to make examples of them, sent a private detective, Seymour Barmore, to infiltrate the Klan and gather information. After Barmore’s body turned up in the Duck River in 1869 with a rope around his neck and a bullet hole in his head, Brownlow declared martial law in nine counties. Later, Nathan Bedford Forrest, believing that the Klan had served its purpose, called for the members to destroy their robes.
KKK Lynchings in Maury County
From Freedmen’s Files, 1868:
John Courtney
Tom Jourdon
Marcum Mayberry
Alf Rainey
Unnamed Black Child
Unnamed Black Man
From Military Committee in Relation to Outrages Committed by the KKK in Middle Tennessee:
Tom Kelley, perpetrator
Tom Galloway, perpetrator
3 Unidentified Black Men, victims
From Columbia Daily Herald, 1868:
Simon Peters
From Brookville American, Brookville, Indiana:
Fitzpatrick
Maury County Members of KKK
From Testimony before Military Committee 1868
Captain of Klan: Milton Voorhies
Tom Kelly
Tom Gallaway
Tom Holcomb
Knox Canidy
Tom Booker
Oliver Williams
Joe Belefont
William Richardson
Tommy Hickman
Jesse Tomlin
Barney Ramsey
Samuel Mayes Arnell
Following the passage of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution formally freeing the slaves (June 13, 1866), Tennessee was readmitted to the United States of America. In 1866, a chapter of the newly formed Ku Klux Klan was organized and began a series of terrorist raids and lynchings in Maury County. In August 1867, Samuel Mayes Arnell, a state representative, organized more than 1,000 African-American men in a group called the Mary County Union League and marched to the courthouse to vote in an election for the first time. In early 1868, the Radical Republican 39th Congress with Samuel Arnell as the congressman from Maury County passed the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (first Voters Rights Act).
Samuel Mayes Arnell and the Unionists
Discovery of Remains of Detective Barmore
The Pale Faces of Maury County
The Order of Pale Faces was the Maury County version of the KKK. In his historical sketch of Maury County, Judge William Swope Fleming writes, “The order originated in Columbia and soon had subordinate organizations not only in Tennessee but all over the South. Our fellow townsmen included William J. Alexander, James Freil, John Bicknell, E.H. Jordan, H.B. Cochran, W.M. Voorhies, Wile George, Samuel Taylor, A.H. Powell, and Hugh Akin.
“John Bicknell, a Columbia resident, was murdered by John Pitts near Summertown. Bicknell was a charter member of the Pale Face. Members of the order marched in the procession as the body was carried to Rose Hill, where they were joined by about 30 members of the KKK wearing red silk gowns with black cowls over their faces. At the grave, the Pale Face read their funeral rites. The KKK Grand Cyclops raised his right hand and made a circular motion and the Klansmen formed a circle around the grave. All KKK knelt on their knees and said, ‘We solemnly swear to avenge the death of our brother.’ They mounted their horses and rode away. John Pitts was captured and lynched.”
Membership spanned all social and economic classes, although most members were young men. The group was so accepted and highly regarded that the street going south from the Courthouse (now South Main St.) was called Pale Face on the 1870 D.G. Beers Map of Maury County.
In an account from a book entitled The Ku Klux Klan in Maury County, the author relates information from an article in the Nashville Republican Banner on March 10, 1897, and his own recollections:
“On the 9th day of Jan. 1868 there was organized in Columbia an organization known as the Pale Face Camp No. 1 by W.M. Voorhies, Jr., president; Hugh Akin, vice-president; Wiley George, inspector; Wm. J. Andrews, secretary and guard. The other members were James Friel, J.T. Hunt, John Bicknell, Sam Taylor, John B. Bond. Camp No, 2 was organized at Culleoka on Jan. 30 1868. On Feb. 2, 1868, James H. Allison, John Kelly, Richard Hagan, James M. Davage, and James. L. Guest were made members—they were all from Nashville. They organized into the Orphan Camp No. 3. Other Nashvillians who were members included Thomas J. Haile, who was several times recorder of Nashville. Mr. Haile put up his heart and his means into the order, and let every effort in his power to building it up, and from his energy it grew very rapidly, camps being organized in many leading cities and towns in Tennessee, and getting a foothold in nearly, if not all, the Southern states. I have often heard it said, the largest funeral procession ever held in Nashville was on the occasion of the burial of a member of that order. I am not positive of his name, but as I now remember it was Clark…”
It is argued among revisionists that the Pale Face were organized to tamp down and put a lid on the illegal and immoral acts of the local KKK organization. If there is any truth in this, they failed miserably, as Maury County was one of the counties in Tennessee with the most lynchings and atrocities. Other members of the Pale Face were Mayor J. Andrews and the son of A.O.P. Nicholson, a former U.S. Senator and State Supreme Court Justice.
Newspaper Articles About Palefaces